Eighteen and a half minutes

To those old enough to remember the unfolding of the Watergate investigation, the words eighteen and half minutes have resonance. That was the amount of time that was erased from the taped conversation that then-President Nixon was having with JR Halderman, his Chief of Staff. This comes to mind when thinking about the ongoing conversation about the “right to be forgotten”. For those unfamiliar, this rule states “personal data must be erased immediately where the data are no longer needed for their original processing purpose, or the data subject has withdrawn his consent and there is no other legal ground for processing, the data subject has objected and there are no overriding legitimate grounds for the processing or erasure is required to fulfil a statutory obligation under the EU law or the right of the Member States.” In short, we can create our own eighteen and a half minutes of invisibility, take anything that happened and erase it when we think it is no longer appropriate to the current image we wish to project. While at once of two minds about this, I now have come down on the side that the past is something that we can reinterpret at will, it should not be something plastic to mold and form to fit into the current style.

While there are many who may argue over the Holocaust, perhaps the numbers of people extinguished, the importance or legacy that has left behind, but there is still a historical record, there are people who were there, who remember, photographs, lonely piles of shoes and glasses, the only remnants once-living people turned to ash. As we move to a more silicon-based memory, we must remember the physical is a testament too. While it may seem so, our entire lives have not been transformed by a blue light fairy into a Tron like existence, solely in a binary world. They used to say New York is a snake that devours itself every 50 years, are we not quickly approaching the same fate?  Are we creating a world where the past is simply a thing to be shed off in pursuit of an ever distant promise of becoming? Where ones past has no importance, or relevance. A world lost in a constant now?

 

 

Swept Away by the Tide of Innovation

A few years ago, I was working at at company that made promotional items and got a call from a client who was looking for an pen to match their brand color, a pantone color. Having not worked there long I asked one of my associates if it was possible for us to search our online cataloge in that way. “oh, no” I was told “we cant do anything like that”  All of the data was obviously in a database, in our computer and all known information. The thing lacking was either the skill or the desire to make the most of the resources that are easily available.

It seems that in many cases we are more interested in maintianing the status quo or our comfort zone than exploring what is possible and profitable. A recent article mentioned that banks outdated approach to IT could lead to their demise as they are unable to cope with disruptive technology. If you are standing on a slowly revolving disk, you need to keep moving slightly to keep staring at the same spot. Technology is making changes faster and that perimage our lives more and more every day.  We need to let go of our desire for the status quo and understand that change is the order of the day and as the rate of change accelerates, we have to learn to cope or be swept away by the tide of innovation.

No matter where you go, your there.

I am old. I say that not as a statement about my age but my perspective is that of someone who has seen time elapse and hopefully gleaned some wisdom or wonder from that. Nowhere is that more apparent than a recent trip through the 10 best rock albums of all time while completing a project at work. Earbuds firmly screwed into my ears, I started listening to old friends, and other albums that I was not familiar with in their entirety. While I did skip around a bit, I was most surprised to hear “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” and met with a familiar unfamiliarity. While we have discussed the Mandella Effect here before, this was a more immediate confrontation with my personal perceptions of the album. After the first few seconds of the album, I found myself checking the download wondering if this might have been a remix or a remastered version. Paul Mc Cartney’s voice never seemed to be such a light tenor and the whole sound of the album is different then I remember hearing from my brother’s stereo playing the new vinyl album. While not proposing this is a Pepper from an alternate universe, it does pose questions about our relationship to the past and our personal and collective history.

Again, there are those of us who may remember the excitement around the airing of “Wizard of Oz”, once a year on TV, popcorn was popped and it became an event that we looked forward to every year until we were too old or jaded to care. Yet, now, the thrill around seeing something is gone, we can watch it at any time, anywhere and watch for as briefly, or as long as we like. After my self imposed exile from Sgt. Pepper perhaps the only thing that changed was me. In this world with so much innovation and revolutionary changes, perhaps we need that unchanging still place in the movies or music of our youth. And while it may (or may not-remember the Mandella effect) change, it may be our need for a constant in this world of change that makes us examine everything, not realizing that the thing that has changed is us.

Try a little tenderness

Here at the Galaxy, we have taken a moment to step back and watch the parade of media pundits, soothsayers and prophets of doom commenting on everything from the fate of the planet and the democracy to the condition of the Bachelor after a freak accident and will he return. Instead of diving into this chaff to look for a grain of wheat we have decided to step back and to try to make the kindest choice we could for this week. This week we ask you to take a moment out of your day and click for a donation to the Hunger Site, a not for profit whose clicks go to feed those in need. While there are those who have told me that the site is a scam, perhaps now we need to live in the hope that each of us can make a difference.  Please take a moment, donate with a click. Perhaps in crazy times the sanest thing we can do is help one another.