Time.

Fear not, readers who avoid the if word, as it is the word I avoid as well.

Practicality before day dreaming, thanks.


My topic today concerns the concept of time.


There are three states of time generally acknowledged.


The Future, The Present, The Past.


I am interested in how much, and what subjects, one can affect by altering the present, in respect to the current past modifying our future.


More on this topic after I return from the gym.



One can improve the mind through the body.

Price of

Say talk is cheap, how about written words?

If written words are cheaper, how about pictures, music, material objects...

How do you define cheap?

Are actions the most 'expensive'?

If so, then no action must be the cheapest...

...

My Only Truth.

Look closely into the window of her soul, and feel.

There, lives truth,
not here.

Of Communication & Technology

Sunset at somewhere in the world.

The internet, text messages, chat programs, phone calls, anything which brings technology between human beings and their communication is a negative, in my opinion.

We spoke about this topic for a while with a few friends yesterday..

Communication

Body language, the oldest language we know.

Technology and using it to communicate between people, often excludes the use of many of the senses we humans have. Sight, sound, etc.

We are used to communicating with other people face to face from our childhood, and when we transfer to communicating over the internet or using our phones, we sometimes might go too far or don't know what is appropriate and what not.

I consider technology biased communication a negative.

The use of technology in communication should be minimized and only kept as a way to create appointments etc, and never should it become the norm to express important feelings. Using it any other way, can make it harder for us to take on really important subjects in life face to face.

This is a very common problem in our modern society and it can be fixed by turning off your tv, computer & radio and visiting your friends to talk about something else than the weather.

He communicates with you without using any words and you understand most of it, depending on how good you can interpret body language. This is why I respect animals and am fascinated by them, because they still know the language common to all living entities and we can learn a lot about it from these guys.

For example, take a phone call and compare it to talking with someone using only text(like msn messenger, or many others..). It is so easy to say things you don't necessarily mean or for someone to misunderstand you because they cannot see you...

If you decide to go ahead and talk about important topics & feelings with someone using only text or the phone... what will you have to say when you meet face to face? maybe talk about the same things over again?

This is the main reason why I try to avoid using any kind of technology between my communication with my friends & loved ones.
Could she tell you how she feels with technology any better than we can to eachother?
...and can you really convey real feelings and meanings using technology?

Yea, sure, you can detect how long someone pauses when she speaks, and how loud she speaks, but you can't see if she looks you in the eyes & smiles when you smile, or how she holds herself when you speak with her(negative vs positive postures), or when you touch, how comfortable you are with eachother etc..
Can these two really understand their messages?
A phone call conveys emotion through the often unintentional use of intonation(the tone variations when you speak) and the speed of which you talk with + a few other things not commonly known by every person. Are phone calls more valuable than say msn messenger messages containing smilies and pictures just because you hear the intonation? hmm... Ever try smiling in the phone? ...

How about when you combine text, video, pictures and speech for instance, with skype, is it then the most believable and 'valuable' form of communication that you can have using technology? Still 2 senses short, so I would say no, but many would argue.
The female lures the prey to the pack with gestures of submission like holding her head down. Dogs chase the female and die.
Many of the old important parts of communication between people are lost in the modern society in my opinion.... But thank god for Italy ^__^ they are one of the masters of body language and in their society its ok if you are in physical contact with people ;) here in the northern societies, most people are very rigid...

I feel that the ability to use and understand our oldest language, can really suffer like any other language if we don't use it..

Conveying emotions and your state of mind through body language is very important to every human being, but it is not always reckognized that the subconcious mind is very much controllable and trainable as the concious one is, when expressing feelings from any range a human can express. This lack of control leads to people sometimes flipping out or to a variety of other minor mental health issues.

Controlling your emotions is not always good aswell, but I dare say it is better to have the control than to be out of control constantly. (Better to lose control when you really need passion ;) you don't want too much passion at the traffic lights :P )

If somebody gets angry of your mistakes, you can always choose someone else to talk to, online, but try this in a real world setting which is more location bound and where you can be the subject of mistakes(violence, insults, etc) aswell. Not so easy to press that "Block Contact" button when things go wrong and your not on your favorite online messenger but in a real social situation...
Taking risks is a part of life, these men knew it very well I think, but I bet they had experience to deal with these situations.
Experience in social situations can be your best teacher. Go make someone angry, happy, sad or laugh. But just don't do it using any technology. See if you still can read the limits of your counterpart and adapt to the mood she is in, read her body language and remember her postures for which every mood she is in :)

Hard subjects easier with technology? Yes, but at a cost.

People claim that it is much easier to talk about hard subjects using mostly text. Neither person is able to see the reactions and actions of the other except on text level and perhaps smilies, which makes me wonder about the human nature, and think that the communication will not be truthful because ones words cannot be verified by neither ones body language.

I think that if someone wants to talk about a difficult subject or a very hard problem, this should always be handled without any interference by technology.

Technology should only set the meeting point so that hard issues can be dealt with a concrete approach and solutions can be found together for any problem at hand, and it is better for the one with the issue to have real world support to show that they are not alone in this world.

I suspect that we all need this insurance from time to time.

Art expresses emotion well, even though it does not speak or write.

Should you appreciate text (msn,w/e) more than speech(skype, phone, w/e)?
Is face to face communication more 'worth' than say a normal text message?
This is ofcourse context dependant, but, I know I appreciate real face to face spoken communication over everything else because it is in my opinion, the most trustworthy way of knowing what people really feel & think. Actions speak louder than words. (Words deceive, actions don't.)

Enhanced messages online?

In addition to being used to seeing and hearing how the other person feels,
we also try to avoid confusion and to send a more clear message of how we feel when communicating by using various means to enhance our messages..

Women do this through wearing perfume, makeup & dressing up etc, to send a certain message, whereas men do the same but using different ways appropriate to the social culture in which the man is currently located in(Country dependant, also other dependencies exist). Some men don't believe in social culture restrictions.

One can't really experience these things and know how they affect yours or her communication when you cannot use all of your senses with the person in question when you talk, say over the internet... This is one more reason to lessen the value of technology biased communication over normal communication..

Did this happen a lot more in the past than in the present, because people didn't use to have ways to talk as much as nowadays? Or are we still waging wars as many as before?

We talked with my friends a bit about smilies in online communication aswell...

Have you ever wondered why people use such an insane amount of smileys and other images when they've communicated with you over the internet using some form of an instant messenger?

I think that the reason that these smileys exists, because pure text needs the addition of smileys like this :) in order to convey atleast some amount of emotion like we are used to receiving, when discussing in a normal setting with people in our everyday lives...

It gives our messages more 'weight' and makes them more realistic & believable, even though everything on the internet considering discussions with technology have, in my opinion, no weight on real life at all, with a very few minor exceptions. (Appointments etc, these have a lot of 'weight', any other communication online other than appointments, I don't appreciate. ) Necessary evils.

If we keep using only text, smilies and webcams to communicate between eachother, we might soon notice that we've gained some good communication skills, but in reality, the true communication skills are found & bound to the 'real' world, not the 'online' one. Online communication is lightweight and bears no actual meaning unless the initial contact is real world bound to your social circle. Because of not really communicating face to face, it is much easier to learn to communicate "appropriately" considering 'online' standards(which are pretty low in comparison to real world standards) but do you really learn to communicate?

Were people better at using their body language in the past?

Conclusion

If I would have to choose,
I'd rather not regard anything said using technology to have no bearing or 'weight' whatsoever towards my life.

I choose not believe anything I experience through communication with technology to be the true meaning of the persons message.

If you really want to know someone or someones opinion, go meet them, in person.

Me chilling ;P i bet you can understand my thoughts from this pic ;D

Felt like writing about the topic,
and so I did.

Jani.