5 year olds know something about economy too

The other day I arrived at home and my wife says to my 5 year old: "so, tell your father what you have done". And the boy goes "I traded a Hot Wheels car for this card". I could not believe it! It's the second time he has traded something on his own initiative and both times he was ripped off. By another 5 year old. The first time he traded a Gormitti figure for another one of these awful looking Magic cards which was an equaly bad deal. And then I was explaining him why that was bad business: the car costs € 2.50 but a card comes in a 5 card package for 1 € or something. He got a bit upset because I think the chip finally fell so he was saying he was going to trash the card and was going to get the car back and so on. We calmed him down and I didn't give it another thought. But apparently he did. So, later on in the day he explains his mum why it was a good deal after all. His reasoning was that he didn't have many of those Magic cards, cause we never bought him any, but he had loads of Hot Wheels. So it made sense to trade something of which he had many for something he had almost nothing. And that actually makes economic sense... I think.

Ray Bradbury to Yahoo: "To hell with the Internet!"

Sci Fi Wire tells us about Ray Bradbury's reaction to Yahoo's proposal to put a book of his in the net. Apparently his answer wasn't as polite as one could expect, and I quote "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." Apparently Mr. Bradbury has very strong feelings about the Internet. It took me some minutes to digest his reaction. Mr. Bradbury sees the Internet as a very real threat to the public libraries system. And perhaps with some reason. But the vehemence of his reaction led me to think a bit more about the subject. Mr. Bradbury is not like some old people who don't really know what the Internet is about. He actually does. I think that, in his mind, the Internet is an incarnation of the fire-fighters in "Fahrenheit 451". The Internet will ultimately be the match which will set fire to all the books. He seems to be afraid that books in their paper form will be consumed by it. That would explain why he feels so strongly about the subject. Although, and since psychiatry wasn't part of my academic life, I could be completely wrong. There's a very high probability of that.

Immediacy: addendum

Something very important I neglected to mention on yesterday's post. One of the insidious aspects of Twitter's immediacy is it's luring aspect. The engine that Twitter so cleverly assembled bombards it's users with a continuous stream of news, thoughts and feelings. It's so easy to just sit there under the pouring letters. Sure, you can retweet (RT) some, tweet back some others. It's like a magnet, like the call of the sirens that led sailors to death by drowning. You're always waiting for the next interesting thing. A new article, a new joke, instant news, whatever. And while you look at this continuous stream of letters you're actually not producing. And I'm not even talking about the work you get payed to do (yes, sure, that's what makes the world go round, but this text is about something else). I'm talking about taking those thoughts out of your head and say your piece, build knowledge, add a new, even if only slightly, point of view of things. I'm talking about releasing your creativity and provide it with a solid bridge to cross over to an humanity-accessible medium. 140 characters is kind of flimsy.

Immediacy

This is my first text in English in this blog. My previous policy regarding this blog was to write in Portuguese (PT-PT). When I created my Twitter account I decided to follow an language-flexible policy. Portugal related entries I write in Portuguese, otherwise in English. This may not work that well for international readers, but I think it works fine for Portuguese Internet dwellers. And anyway, I'm not exactly trying to captivate a network of followers so I'll do as it damn well pleases me. One thing that has always amused/surprised me was how one so easily falls into a set of self defined boundaries in terms of the published contents. One of the reasons this blog is anonimous is because when I created it I decided that I would write about anything I wished. So I would write about social issues, politics, movies, whatever, as pretty much everyone does, but I would also write the most pornographic stories that came to mind. Well, if you (an eventual reader of this blog entry) cares to take the effort of googling this blog you'll find exactly zero entries with such content. Why? Was it because no pornographic issues crossed my mind in more than 2 years of blogging? Well, nothing couldn't be further from the truth. I think that the main reason is that as time passes and you start getting regular visits from other bloggers you sort of don't feel comfortable showing them that side of your mind. So you unconsciously define a set of rules and just follow them. It seems to me that the best approach if one wants to have a serious blog and still write about such stuff is to build another persona and another blog and with it a newly created freedom will be available. This is just an opinion, of course. People should do whatever feels right for them.

Well, look at that. I wanted to write about the immediacy of twitter versus the more thought out stage of blogging and I ended up all that as an introduction. Anyway, better late then never. When I started a Twitter account I was pleased by the freedom it offered. I mean, there's a limited ammount of ignorance you can insert in 140 characters. And that sort of protects you a lot. After all, when I used to blog it took me a lot of time to research stuff so that commentators couldn't simply point out a non-fact or a lie. In twitter you don't really commit that much. There is no space for very elaborated thoughts and it's hard to discuss matters with other people. So the 140 characters are pretty much ok for a "what are you doing?" but not very good for "what do you think about the state of the world?". OTOH, Twitter is very good for "what is happening as we speak" while blogging is better for "what is the background of what just happened?". So, all in all, these two tools of the Web 2.0 are complementary. And Twitter is also a very good as a blog promotion tool, so one ends up working as a percursor of the other.

O despertar de um longo sono

Ora aí está. Aproveitando as férias decidi também reactivar o meu blogue que ficou parado no tempo qual Capitão América, suspenso num bloco de gelo. Está tal e qual como quando o deixei, mas sem os efeitos da passagem de 2 anos, 9 meses e 16 dias. Olhando para o blogue quase que esperaria ver os artigos cheios de pó, com espessas teias de aranha unindo os cantos. Mas não. Brilha como se nem um dia se tivesse passado. No entanto o longo sono a que foi forçado trouxe algumas vantagens. As pessoas que o conheciam e me conheciam a mim já se esqueceram que este blogue alguma vez existiu, pelo que posso retomar a minha escrita sem o desconforto de ter, por exemplo, o meu chefe a lê-lo nas minhas costas. Temo no entanto que este despertar seja temporário. A verdade é que, com muita pena minha, fora de férias pouco tempo tenho para escrever.

Decidi ligar esta minha personalidade webiana à minha personalidade twittiana. Vou usar a mesma lógica que uso no Twitter. Artigos relativos a Portugal escrevê-los-hei em português. Artigos de carácter internacional, escrevê-los-hei em inglês. Gostaria que o meu próximo artigo neste blogue fosse sobre Israel, mas é um artigo que quero fundamentar muito bem, o que levará algum tempo. Por isso desconfio que não será esse o meu próximo artigo... aliás, enquanto escrevo isto heis que me surge uma ideia alternativa.