Social Media as a Woman’s World

BlogHer, the women’s blog network, found that 42 million women in the United States (roughly 53% of the 79 million adult women in the United States who use the Internet) participate in social media at least weekly. That doesn’t surprise me, because the more I become familiar with how social media works, the more I am reminded of conversations I’ve had with women and about women.

And I don’t say that critically—on the contrary. It’s just a matter of evolving or adapting to a different mindset.

Let me explain—as a male my focus online has generally been goal-oriented—to get things done.

My main website is like most, a corporate brochure of who I am and what I can offer to clients, along with a way to see what I’ve written and perhaps purchase a book or eBook.

Then when I got on Facebook, and eventually Twitter, I was disinterested at first by what I perceived to be mindless drivel, minutae and chit chat; if this sounds like something an honest male might say about having to listen to a lot of stuff about “a woman’s day” I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.

So as I continued to track the social media juggernaut and saw how it enabled many to thrive online, I began to realize what I was missing. Where I had attempted to use my social networks and status updates in a traditional way—by simply promoting myself and asking people to buy or go to my site(s), I began to study the trend and noted that this was not the point.

Every social media commentary I have read, including the very excellent book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff , the J.A. Jones Blog, and the Mack Collier Blog - @mackcollier have led me to the realization that social media constitutes an evolutionary shift in consciousness in the online business world.

All of these books, and many more, stress the fact that if you are goal oriented in social media or heavy handed in your self-promotion, you are self defeating. On the other hand, if you listen to the ideas and concerns of others, contribute to a community of ideas, and generally participate without looking only for self gratification, you will see significant rewards in all areas of your endeavors, particularly in self fulfillment, over time.

In other words, social media is not a one night stand—it’s a long term relationship.

Mack Collier, for example, makes it a point to inform his followers on Twitter and his blog that he will simply ignore pitches of any kind from those with whom he hasn’t communicated already; those who pitch him “on the first date” don’t qualify for his attention.

If this sounds an awful lot like the current trend in dating and relationships as “friends first”, preferred by so many women, it is.

As a supposed computer expert I was surprised when I first confronted this reality in discussions with a great friend who happens to be female. At the time I had discovered Ning, and was writing an eBook which I intended to self publish.

I was concentrating hard on the nuts and bolts of Ning—how to upload content, construct the interface, and generally “get things done” when she told me the secret of Ning, or any social network.

“Make sure you welcome all of the new members,” she said, “and acknowledge their birthdays. You need active moderators on the discussion forums to ensure that every post is given a sincere response.”

Wow, I thought to myself, I’ve been teaching her what I thought was technology, but she showed me what I had always prided myself on knowing – why this software is important.

In my tech writing about Microsoft products I had always tried to accentuate its practicality and how it was used, and if possible its human application (communicate visually with PowerPoint, for example).

But in trying to “master” this new phenomenon of Social Media, I had completely missed the point. Either I had dismissed it as chit chat and drivel; or I had tried to force it into a role that it was not meant to fulfill.

While I try to resist wholesale generalizations, what I needed to do was listen to what social media was telling me, the same way I sometimes need to learn to listen, and not try to fix or control, women I know.

As a guy, I still tend to measure my success in quantity—like my followers on Twitter—with each new add I get a little, well, twitter.

But more and more my thrill comes from a sense of contribution. I’ve begun to shift my focus, and while I still may pitch and promote I try to do so judiciously, and mainly with those with whom I’ve established a connection.

More important, when I see something of value, I try to put it out there and share it without trying to figure out how it’s going to get me something reciprocal right away.

What I’m getting is that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are really a giant pot luck or Tupperware party, and in order to get nourished you need to bring something to the table – preferably without too much concern with short term gain.

And again, this brings me back to how it resembles dating—if you’re always worried about who’s going to pick up the check, or how the evening is going to end, you’re missing the point.

Just Another Microsoft Morning

Maybe this has happened to you. You woke up inspired, with a project in mind and you turned on your computer hopefully. You did this prior to your shower, or as you prepared breakfast, because you knew that Windows Vista would take about ten minutes to start up.

But then, maybe you got preoccupied; the phone rang, there was noise outside, or something else distracted you, and you forgot to get to the log on screen in time, and there was the screensaver already running. Damn!

(This occurs despite the fact that you know that you’ve disabled the screensaver innumerable times).

Now you’ve experienced this before, so you get a sick feeling in your stomach, because you already know that if you log in now, you may lose all of your Desktop settings (logging in as a new blank user).

You know the files would still be available, but you also don’t remember quite how you restored your desktop last time; oh yeah, by running System Restore, which took about another fifteen or twenty minutes.

At this point your great idea, and your inspiration, are slowly starting to fade into the recesses of your gray matter, but you are determined to persevere… You turn off the computer, and turn it on again.

You eat your breakfast, getting excited again about your project or idea, and this time when you see the log on screen, you spring up and sign in well ahead of the screensaver. Success—Windows is loading your user information.

You return to finish breakfast because you know that there are still another ten minutes at least before the computer is remotely usable. You’ve sat through the log in and you know that several dialog boxes will open that you have dealt with many, many times: The Adobe updater, the System Configuration utility (which you’ve tweaked in a vain effort to boot up and log in faster), the Windows OneCare, nagging you about doing a backup (but you have your own backup system because you don’t trust Windows to do it), Windows Update, telling you that there are updates to download and install…

But you have a project in mind, so you decide to wait with the updates. Windows tells you that you can keep working while the updates are installed, but you’ve taken that ride before, and you don’t want or need a sudden reboot or any surprises.

What’s this, another freaking balloon pops up, telling you that there is somewhere Microsoft can take you where you can get solutions to all of your Windows problems.

“OK, what about that log on screensaver?” you shout to yourself, but you are determined to remain calm, and you ignore the pop up because you know in your heart of hearts that there are very few solutions to problems with Windows, and what solutions there are seldom if ever found through Microsoft.

You remember all too well your experience with setting up your wireless network, when Windows promised to “diagnose and repair” whatever was screwed up, only to tell you to check with your System Administrator (which of course is you), or it returned you to the same opening page of a Help File loop you’d been through several times already.

So now, Windows is finally loaded, and it seems ready for you to get into your really great project. You keep a wary eye on Windows Update and OneCare, because they could pop up at any moment, but it’s time to get to work.

So you open Microsoft Word, to a new blank document, and then you remember, damn!

It’s that same default Word template that has the screwed up right margin!

Now, how did you fix that?

You try to remember the last document you created where this happened, and you fixed it, and saved a new blank template with the correct right margin, but you open a couple of more templates and each time you get the same freaking screwed up right margin!

So you drag the margin where you know it should go and you type your first paragraph and you’re feeling good because the juices are starting to flow.

You hit Enter and are about to begin the next paragraph when – crap – it’s the same bleeping right margin staring back at you.

Then you remember something you did once that worked for the current document. You hit CTRL +A selecting the entire document and then adjust the margins again. You hit Enter a few more times and it seems to work. You think, maybe I should save this as a Style or something, but then you realize that styles are really complicated and you don’t want to go there. You’re on a roll.

So you keep typing and thinking and the project is coming along really well until you’ve gone into a zone and an hour or two later you have the document finished.

You take out your flash drive and back it up immediately because last week Windows scared the crap out of you with a bogus “hard drive might be failing – back up immediately” message that almost gave you a heart attack.

Since you have a laptop, you figure you’ll move it there to upload it to your blog and share it on your social networks with the millions of people who will probably ignore it. But, at least that way it will be in three different places and your masterpiece will finally be safe.

You know you shouldn’t but you leave your laptop leave turned on all the time, just letting it go to sleep when not in use, despite the guilt you feel about wasting power but you like to use it to “relax” while watching TV, so you rub the mouse and it comes to life.

You put in the flash drive and a pop up window comes up asking if you want to defragment the flash drive; you decide no, not yet, and move the file to your desktop and open it in Word.

Holy crap – the file is read only again! You remember that that sometimes happens and it makes it impossible to edit and save under the same name but it really doesn’t matter because the project is done – it just has to be uploaded.

But you notice a typo and you don’t want to fix it online because you might want to upload it to multiple places and you might forget so you fix it in Word and try to save it and it reminds you – it’s read only, pal, you need to rename it.

You sigh and resave and rename the file and go to your blog and sign in and put in the title, and then you copy the Word document to the clipboard and paste it into your blog (even though there is a way to do the blog in Word and upload it directly but you don’t remember the password right this minute) and--crap!

It took out all of the spaces between the paragraphs you just typed in Word. You know there’s a solution but you forgot what it was and to do it because you fixed the freaking margins and you were so inspired you actually wanted to start typing—so, sigh, you manually put in the paragraph spaces, and copy that file back to your clipboard before posting it to your blog.

You open Notepad, the generic word processor that never screws up because it’s so freaking simple and you paste the document in there and save it because you can post that version online again without going through and repairing all of the paragraph spacing…

But for a moment you feel good, you did it, you wrote the blog and it’s up there but then you realize—you’d better back up the Notepad version of the file to your flash drive and move it back to the other computer… just in case.

But that can wait, so you go on your social networks and link to the blog item, which is sort of like this article, complaining about Microsoft and Windows and Word, and pretty soon you get a bunch of messages that all say the same thing: get a Mac.

But you know what, you’ve worked on freaking Macs and you know damn well that they have their own set of problems. Besides you want a tool you can use, not a religious experience, and now you’re upset because every time you bring stuff like this up the Mac-heads come out of the woodwork and make you feel cheap and dumb for not buying something really cool.

You were determined not to buy a computer where a streamlined mouse costs $100 so you invested in a PC back at Windows 3.11 and you wonder – why does it still suck so bad?

But you find Macs overpriced and pretentious; you’ve used them and they have another way of thinking that isn’t necessarily simpler or better but just, as they say, different. A good friend has a Mac and you’ve had to get him out of pickles because he’s relatively new to computers (which is why he bought a freaking Mac) and you’ve been able to help him over the phone because, after all, you’re your own System Administrator, for Christ sake!

(But you can’t remember how to get the margins right in Word, or to log into Windows before the damn screensaver comes up).

You resist the urge to write all this in response to the Mac comments, and you wonder why no one with Windows has responded to your blog until you realize… they’re waiting for Vista to boot up before they can get online, and then they have had the same experience themselves and don’t find it all that unusual.

So you decide to run some errands and turn off your PC, because after all you do feel guilty about using up all that power, and you grab your car keys and get the hell out of the house, realizing that tomorrow morning, it will all start again.

Epilogue: You are not alone. Read this email Bill Gates wrote to his staff about his own “usability” experience back in 2003.

Try New Technology? VOIP? Thanks, But No Thanks!

For a while a friend had been touting the advantages of VOIP, saying he was paying $25/mo. for unlimited local and long distance phone service.

Since I have been looking to cut costs, like everyone else, the prospect of not paying AT&T for those services was enticing.

I called AT&T and confirmed that I could keep my DSL service going if I stopped my local and long distance features. They said yes; I should have asked them what the charge for just DSL would be, but I assumed (horrible idea ever) that my monthly DSL payment would cover it.

Then I looked at Vonage and saw that for $18 a month I could get 500 free minutes, which I figured would work for me since I also had the cell phone. I signed up online when I looked at their web site and saw that they could handle either a broadband cable or DSL connection—and they made installation sound like a breeze.

My first inkling of trouble came when I opened the package and noticed that in the middle of the easy installation instructions there was a blue square that said “DSL users, see other side…”

There it indicated that if the easy installation didn’t work, and the Vonage box couldn’t connect through the Internet, I should go t a V-Configure web page to sign on…

My Internet connection is fairly straightforward and common; I have a DSL modem connected to the Internet, and it also connects to my computer through a very reliable Belkin wireless router.

Again, Vonage suggested just connecting my router to the box and everything should be fine.

But predictably, it could not connect and I could not get a dial tone; the LED on the Vonage box indicated there was no connection yet. I opened my web browser, as the instructions suggested, put in V-Configure.com, and was greeted with a page that had no log on, but instead told me that I had a lot more work to do: my Internet connection wasn’t functional.

At this point I was tired, but I made a few more attempts, this time bypassing my router (and thereby also removing wireless access from my network) and I still could not connect.

I tried a few more different ways, following the instructions carefully, to no avail. At one point I even had an Internet connection through the Vonage box, but still could not connect to the fabled V-Configure.com.

Forty minutes later I had restored my old Internet connection and my wireless network.
I was supposed to get another “welcome” phone call the next day, and perhaps an installation expert, but I contacted tech support by email, detailing my problems.

The first response referred me to the generic web support page, all of which I had already read and reread.

Three emails later, after a cryptic message about :
"I see that we have come up with an issue while transferring your number.
There is a feature (Internet) associated with your number. Hence, I would suggest you to contact your previous telephone carrier and have the feature (Internet) removed from your number. Once it is done, please reply to this email with the confirmation so that I will be able to assist you further."

After requesting translation service, here is what I received as an explanation:
“Your current phone company has placed Dry Loop DSL on your transfer number; The Dry Loop DSL must be separated from your transfer number. Please contact your current phone company to move your DSL service to a separate line, so that the number transfer process can be completed. Be sure to get a confirmation number that indicates your account has been updated with the change. We will need this confirmation number to continue your number transfer process. “

Easy, huh?

So in other words, the “seamless transfer” of my old phone number to Vonage now necessitated a call to AT&T to get them to separate it from my DSL, which obviously meant I needed another phone line for the DSL – cost? $35/mo.

Since my Vonage service for $18 really cost $25 (with fees and tax), this mean that the fiasco of moving service would yield little or no real savings.

Add to this the fact that on the Vonage site they have pages on “how to restore service after a power outage” and they barely acknowledge the existence of Microsoft Vista (support lists Windows 2000 and XP), except to say that one of their phones doesn’t work with it—and I was ready to cancel.

After all, I had a working DSL/local/long distance plan, at a pretty favorable rate, and a WORKING wireless network. Even if I got Vonage working, I still had no assurance that my router would keep broadcasting, not to mention the potential nightmare of resetting the network again after a power outage (summer is almost here).

Not surprisingly, my next “welcome” call never came.

I tried to cancel my “service” by email, but was told I needed to call, which I did right after the weekend. (Customer service is closed Saturday and Sunday).

After they tried to talk me out of it, they did cancel the service, but not before adding another $39 charge for return of the equipment, which would be refunded when my stuff arrived (not like they didn’t already have enough of my money for set-up of a nonworking service).
By the way, the confirmation email informed me that the $39 return charge was really $43—fees and taxes. Corporations are full of surprises, aren’t they? Tax and fees on something I didn’t buy, but was trying to return?

Of course now I will have to make sure the credit is put on my credit card for all of my charges.

I am not entirely sure that the rage focused on the banks and financial institutions is just about the credit swaps and economic crisis they allowed to occur. Truthfully, I think it is there beneath the service against all corporations and technology companies in particular, who promise something new and “easy”, and misrepresent the issues involved and end up costing us money, time and amazing stress.

Think about how “easy” it was to cancel AOL, to set up high definition TV for the first time, or to set up a home network after XP changed to Vista, and you’ll know why people are pissed off.
As for me, I am angry at myself for falling for the latest and greatest once again—from now on I will think not twice but four times before trusting anything a corporation promises—especially if it’s “easy.”

Why Is Software Getting Worse?

Just as there seems to be a class struggle in the political world between “Main Street” and Wall Street, so too is there an emerging conflict between end users and software publishers.

As usual, the main target is probably Microsoft; I’ve mentioned several issues in these blog posts relating to Vista and Office 2007, the gist of which is that once users are “programmed” to work efficiently on a given platform or suite of applications, pulling the rug out from under them with a new interface and removing features they’re used to is not cool.

Two quick frustrating Vista examples come to mind. During log in, even if you have de-activated your screensaver, you must log in promptly or the screensaver loads anyway. Then, when you do decide to log in, your Desktop configurations along with many of your user settings may be simply wiped out (you can retrieve them by running System Restore, if you’re lucky). More frustrating are the inconsistent View options in Windows Explorer; You can set the Date Modified option as many times and even in some default option screens as you want, but the view seldom comes up as the default, and it’s a crapshoot whether Date Modified will appear in any given window—you need to right click on the categories and add it manually in order to find files in a window by this very important parameter.

For both of these issues there is probably a very dangerous Registry fix or all-day workaround that might address the issue--for a couple of days--until Vista (or Office) revert to some default because they've been "updated."

Oh well.

But it’s not just Microsoft. Today there was a headline: 94% of Facebook users hate new design.
Combine that with the uproar over the Terms of Service recently, and users are not that happy with the world’s major social network.

For me, another painful example is Yahoo Maps. I loved the old maps and was able to go back to the “dial-up” version when the “new and improved” Maps were introduced. I preferred the ease of finding hotels and restaurants, and the new Maps really suck—the location is off in a corner if it is even found at all (it misses a lot) and zooming in and locating points of interest is an exercise in frustration. Finally Yahoo completely discontinued the old maps, and I found a lot of dissatisfied folks online. A Yahoo Customer “Care” rep told me the new maps were now the only maps.

Fortunately one dissatisfied user let out the knowledge that the UK/Ireland “beta” maps are still the original, and putting U.S. Addresses into them works just fine (but for how long)?

It goes all the way down to my Wells Fargo ATM. Out of the blue, without warning, a new “system” for scanning in checks was implemented, causing lots of delay at the ATMs and promising to “save thousands of trees” because deposit envelopes were eliminated. Given that the truth-telling record of banks is a bit suspect these days, I suspect the real reason was… money.

And that goes right back to the software publishers—if they don’t “upgrade”, what are they going to sell, particularly the shrink-wrapped dinosaurs like Microsoft? Marketing clamors for new features, even if they are irrelevant and destroy the sanity and productivity of end users.

Programmers need to come up with something different to justify their existence; product managers need an excuse to say the word “really” over and over again, as in “the new version is really, really scalable.”

The mission statement on the wall talks all about customer satisfaction, and focus groups and beta testing is supposed to address the end users’ concerns, but with the crap that is being foisted on us lately, one has to wonder whether anyone in the main office is really using these products?

(Don’t they notice that they can’t find files by the last dates on which they were modified? Do they really think that a slick “Aero” interface where you can see the open windows sideways is cool and more useful than finding the last saved version of a real file?)

Now again there is lots of talk about Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8, with Office 14 due out a bit later next year (if they manage to make it work “in the Cloud”), but the only ones really excited about these prospects, I dare say, are the tech journalists who make money reviewing the new versions and figuring out their features and explaining them to frustrated end users.

The end result of all of this is alienation, discontent and inevitable rebellion on the part of end users. There may not be a guillotine in store for software publishers, but there are a lot of people running clandestine installations of Windows XP, and web-based versions of Office like Open Office and Zoho are definitely gaining market share.

I know you Mac-heads are claiming a religious experience that insulates you from this trend, but I know people frustrated with Macs just like others are with Windows and Linux.

It’s the nature of the beast, upgrade, change or die.

And you can make the point that change is not welcomed in our society, particularly by old fogies like me. But change for the sake of change is a recipe for frustration and disenchantment.

I particularly dread my next cell phone, which will come with a manual of 12 pages printed in tiny fonts with the 12 pages divided into four languages, and I will have to figure out a new software platform when all I want is a consistent dial tone.

This is the real Terminator and Matrix—machines taking over and driving their creators (us) literally insane.

Do Your Own Ning Thing Now Available

A bit of shameless self promotion: my new eBook on creating your own social network is avalable on my web site. Or click the widget in the right panel.

How is Computer Programming the Same as the Genome—And What Does It Mean?

From my first blog on the topic of genetics, based on an amazing video on TED by Juan Enriquez, I speculated that the presence of programming as an underlying feature of Life means that an intelligence is ultimately the source of all being.

In the video, Enriquez uses the analogy of an apple, which executes code (DNA) when it receives enough energy from the sun, and drops from the tree. He adds that by modifying the code we can change the nature of the apple, or any organic life form.

The genetic code itself is being sequenced (decoded) according to the patterns of four letters, AGTC—which represent the names of the nucleotide bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, in a molecule of DNA. (Wikipedia).

As Gina Smith explains in her book, The Genomic Age, “Scientists figured out, in 1967, how DNA specifies the building of protein... Recall that in every life-form, the letters A, C, T, and G (i.e., the bases) perform the same function. They build proteins by instructing another chemical, called RNA, to put the proteins together one building block after another… The building blocks are called amino acids, and there are precisely twenty of them.”

So there is a code that gets executed that can be represented symbolically that underlies all of our life functions—physiologically and presumably also psychologically.

More recently there have been advances in the field of epigenetics, which is the study of the chemical reactions that turn the genes on and off, and do so apparently on the basis of complex interactions with the environment.

Now bear in mind that Enriquez merely doesn’t use the apple as an analogy—he states literally that the code in the apple is the same as in files or programs you can move on a flash drive.

But even if you are viewing this blog in a web browser, you may not be aware of what code or programming really represent.


For example, if you click on the setting in your browser that lets you “View Source”, under Page in Internet Explorer, you see a symbolic representation of this blog page that informs the browser on how to display it.

It’s pretty obvious that a conscious mind had to create the program that does this, at least to me.



A billion monkeys, even if they had a Windows PC each, would not produce the code or the program that could enable this to happen in a trillion years.

Let’s look at one more example—a macro in Microsoft Word. This macro runs the commands upon the click of a mouse that creates a red rectangle in a document.

Notice in this macro that if you change the language by changing the numbers representing the RGB (color) values, you change the nature of the rectangle—it changes color.

This is precisely like the Enriquez example—if you change the genetic structure (code) of its DNA, its nature is changed.

In programming this is called the object’s properties. In life it might be called the qualities of the life-form. What it is capable of doing is called its method in programming; again in life it may be called its being or nature.

So what does this mean?

Well for one thing, it means that we created computer software "in our own image"—consciously writing its code according to various intentions we had predetermined as meaningful and significant (displaying a web page, writing and editing a document, running a macro).

The internal logic of both the genetic code and our computer code is precise; if I change the code of the macro I change the rectangle, or if I screw up, I put a bug in the program and the result is an aborted macro and an error message.

In life, this might be deemed a mutation, or in the case of cells that don’t know what they should be doing, or do the wrong thing, cancer.

But we know how the computer and software “evolved”—it was no accident. No lightning bolt hit a bog or pile of primordial sludge and shot it awake like Frankenstein. Many brilliant scientists created increasingly sophisticated ways of switching on and off (zeroes and ones) various devices to make calculations and run programs, and increasingly sophisticated programs (instructions) were consciously created to run on these hardware devices, after being translated (compiled) from symbolic (English) language into machine language.

So based on the evidence, how and why do any of us presume that life is any different?
Increasingly all branches of science are coming up against the barrier that what is knowable must account for the presence of us—that the observer or consciousness is intimately involved in not only our perceptions of reality, but literally in what reality is. From quantum physics, to bio-physics, to particle physics, there is nothing (literally) that does not ultimately come up against the reality of consciousness.

But what is consciousness? We know it as we experience it—it courses through our brains or more likely through our entire mind/bodies—and informs our perceptions and as biology has recently found, our thoughts and our health.

But suppose that the meaning of our science (and computers are our signpost or living metaphor) is that our deeper consciousness may literally connect us to whatever may be our programmer.

If we call the programmer God, it doesn’t explain anything—in the parlance of computer programming God is simply a variable for an unknown value—a mystery or a container for a value that is manifest through our existence.

But if we put aside our theories about God, or the programmer, what we can still say is that there are two ways for our program to run—programmed externally according to principles we barely understand, or possibly programmed by our “Self”.

But what is our Self?

If we meditate or self observe, we might reach the conclusion that it is not the bundle of thoughts that comprise our ego.

Rather, our true Self, at least in my humble opinion, is that part of us which is increasingly conscious of our connection to whatever (or whoever) is our programmer. While that connection is difficult if not impossible to define in words we can and do try (remember what there was “In the beginning”--the Word), but to the extent that we recognize that we are not in charge (our own programmer) and align ourselves with Life, Being, God, Higher Intelligence, Energy or whatever we might call it, we can manifest Its intentional higher consciousness through us.

This then would point to a split in what we do. If we act in alignment with what our higher intelligence suggests is true, we do good. If we remain oblivious to and disconnected from higher intelligence, and act unconsciously, that may be a pretty decent definition of evil.

And when we try to judge one or the other logically, with our left brain, we are caught up in paradoxical loops. The only way to truly know is through a higher center, probably in the right brain, that connects us with a higher logic—to our essential program and its Creator.

(In that sense, prayer or meditation might literally be "logging in...")

I remember when I first came to L.A. and needed a job, I worked at night at a law firm where an IBM word processing machine literally “trained me” in its internal logic, by going through a series of disks. Not surprisingly there was a bug in the program, and I needed to supersede it in order to get from disk 5 to disk 6. I got angry at the fallibility of the programmer, and yet I was in awe of the “mind in the machine.”

A similar insight can happen when you get pissed off at Windows. You can’t figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing—or what you’re doing “wrong.” Then through tech support, a friend, or by a miracle, you see the answer—and what’s clear is that by its internal logic—its “meaning”—the program is doing exactly the right thing. Now that you “get it”—you recognize the logic. But the intelligence behind it, until you got it, was literally “alien.”

We as a species are clearly at a crossroads. We can stay disconnected to the apparent higher source of our consciousness (unconscious) and become increasingly automated and mechanistic. As a recently heard, when Treasury Secretary Paulsen asked for the first TARP appropriation, and he was asked how he knew it was necessary, he replied, “the computers said so” [that without the funds the economy would collapse.]

Or through our science, technology and realization of the link between our creation (computers) and ultimate creation there is a higher intelligence (true consciousness) which we can connect with through our entire being (mind-body), and that by aligning ourselves with its truths (instead of our own imagined inferior (logical/ego) truths, we can not only survive, but truly evolve.

Now that's a program I'd like to download.

New Thoughts on Intelligent Life

It's now been nearly three months since my last post. Those have not been easy months for many people, and I combined the stress from the business pages with some personal issues to fall into a deep hole of my own.

At this point I see myself climbing out of my hole but only perhaps having reached eye level. I still need to get out completely, see the hole for what it was, fill it up with love, and plant a tree.
Friends have told me that my low period (that’s actually an understatement) will result in a new approach to life, and I am finally at a point where I can accept and embrace that possibility and view it as inevitable.

Continuing this blog is now part of that process.

In my previous post about Epigenetics, I addressed the apparent presence of “software” in our bodies that interprets environmental factors and switches our genes on and off.

This process, as it turns out, is explained and extrapolated in a fascinating book by Bruce Lipton, “The Biology of Belief”. In it he identifies the cell membrane as the “computer chip” that literally processes the information from the environment and comprises a conduit for the subconscious or automatic (autonomic) functions in our bodies – mainly functions like breathing, sensing and other parts of the so-called parasympathetic nervous system (right brain) that we literally don’t think about.

According to Lipton and many developments in biology and neuroscience, we are not the determined result of our genetic makeup but rather an evolving organism continually replacing our cells and interacting with an environment that switches our genes on and off and affects our inner process through our parasympathetic nervous system.

Beyond the identification of the process as literally data processing like a computer chip, Lipton goes on to state that this subconscious part of our existence, which processes information at an exponentially faster rate than our conscious mind – consider how quickly you blink if an object is thrown at your eye – is also the storage area for our assumptions about the environment - programmed into us by our parents and peers at an early age (and even before birth itself – in the womb).

The book ends with an Addendum on one technique for reprogramming these assumptions in a way that reduces automatic fear (in my case unquestionably a big factor in the intensity of my “low period”) and suggests that a more positive set of assumptions can be adopted that will have beneficial impact throughout the body, based on seeing the environment as not hostile, but rather essentially neutral, and infusing an attitude of self-acceptance and love into one’s subconscious thoughts.

Neuroscience and psychology have come together in a number of new developments to embrace mindfulness (focused attention on the body) as a practice (meditation) that literally reprograms the prefrontal lobe of the brain to effectively integrate the right and left – so that past grief and negative “programs” can be overridden with a corresponding physical re-energizing of the body and in effect, spirit.

Spirit as an element of biology, psychology or indeed neuroscience. Who would have thought?

As Lipton suggests, it happened with quantum physics and it’s inevitable in biology, psychology and neuroscience.

It was about a year ago when my own discovery of the science of programmability of the genome of all life – with its analogous implications in terms of how human software is created (with a conscious intention) suggested to me that life was by no means a random occurrence, but was in fact a reflection of a much higher mental energy or entity, indeed that the universe was conscious.

I suggested that just as Microsoft Word could not have accidentally “evolved”, but rather came about through the conscious efforts of humans, it now seemed that even the complexity of a single celled organism (with a genome not much smaller than that of humans) -- which is controlled by a set of software instructions from the environment (now identified as epigenetics) -- must be the result of not random occurrence but rather intentional intelligence.

While some would make the immediate leap to intelligent design – I don’t – cognizant that our intellectual capacities and very being might be inadequate to truly comprehend the magnitude of such an intelligence and label it in any meaningful way.

In fact, the mystical experiences that assert a connection to such an intelligence inevitably suggest that it is beyond language or our ability to verbally or intellectually describe or identify it.

To me, this confirms the reality that an idea (Plato’s forms would be my humble analogy) exists just as material exists – and indeed Lipton and neuroscientific work in psychology has confirmed that our thoughts are part of an environmental system that affect our very being. Unfortunately again, our conscious intellectual thoughts are inadequate to compete with the subconscious (with its superior processing power) to effect change.

Lipton says that “positive thinking” is insufficient. We need to reprogram our subconscious or at a minimum observe its effects through our body and sensation – the practice often referred to as mindfulness and sometimes called meditation.

We need to either learn experiential processes that allow us to communicate and reprogram the subconscious to change our own nature – or at a minimum begin to observe (rather than react automatically) to the input of our environment and our own negative conditioning, and reintegrate our connection between our right and left brains (notice our automatism and by observing it, slow down and reduce its negative aspects).

Remember that it is the automatic part of the brain that connects through our entire bodies with the environment using the cell membrane to process the information, and it apparently cannot be consciously controlled by our “intelligence”. It literally takes place on the level of software and data processing.

There is another interesting concept in Lipton’s work that I can connect with computers in a literal way.

He says that humans are a community of cells, and suggests that human evolution, now at a crossroads between transformation and extinction, must lead to seeing humanity as a community in harmony with an intelligent environment rather than trying to impose control.

One could make a case that the Internet is evolving as the nervous system of such a community of human cells living in cooperation rather than competition, and that perhaps even social networks (even the annoying ones like Twitter or those that keep pestering you with new connections and friends) are part of this evolution.

As this evolution proceeds, according to Lipton and many others, humanity must drop its own subconscious programming of the primacy of competition and perhaps even rethink our concept of individuality – not as a single cell in a hostile environment but as part of an organic intelligent whole with which we can connect in a loving and cooperative way.

And getting back to my low period, the key understanding that I need to organically embrace (and not just intellectually think I understand) is that as an individual I need to give up the illusion of control over my environment on a deep and fundamental level.

While my conscious mind has been able to think through many problems and create a reasonably comfortable existence, this existence has never been guaranteed, and at bottom, we all are subject to the vagaries of an environment that is likely neutral as far as individual humans are concerned, and possibly intelligently loving and benign with respect to our species itself, particularly if humanity can evolve to respect the environment and ultimately live in harmony (and not opposition or control) of it.

The inevitable results of our struggle for control are becoming readily apparent – both on a global and in my case on a personal scale. While this blog is an intellectual endeavor, hopefully my inner processes are also changing organically to reduce the need for a sense of control and I can effect a reintegration of my conscious thoughts and subconscious programming.

We’ll see.