When will it be enough? All the enhancements. All the improvements. All the advancements. When will it be enough?

There is a lure in the possibility of never having to die, isn't there? The thought of living forever; of being young forever, is so powerful that it makes my heart pound as I write this. What drives us to continuously enhance everything imaginable? I don't think it's for maximum efficiency. I also don't think it's to make the world a better place. At the heart of it all, I can't help think that we are trying to strive for none other than immortality.
 
But it's not because we are afraid to die. No. That's probably not it. I think it's because with every once-unimaginable new technology becoming real, we suddenly lick our lips and salivate as the idea of immortality becomes a reachable possibility. If computers can save an infinite amount of data, what's to stop them from being able to hold memories to such a degree that it feels like life had never been taken away? Our fragile bodies turned into indestructible sheets of metal and series of wiring that overtake heartbeats and the flow of our blood. After all, the changes have already begun, haven't they?
 
In July 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote an article called 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' Here he wrote lengthily about how the availability of massive data using the internet has altered the way our brains function. No longer are we able to sit for hours engorged in books; completely able to comprehend and make sense of all the words we're reading. Today, getting through a lengthy essay is taxing. Our brains have been modified to function in a way that suites the technology around us. We skim read. We lose focus. We only need the vital bits and pieces. Classic books have no room in our lives.
 
When I was seven years old, I read a book a day. Roughly 20,000 words of fiction. Every single day. This went on until I reached high school with my choice of text becoming longer and longer appropriately. Reading was a thrill. It was exciting. When I entered university, the amount of school work I had to do, my extra curricula, and expanded social life (and romantic relationship) took away my time for reading. I began to spend more time using the internet as I struggled to do a large amount of quality work all crammed into whatever time I could find to cram them into. For four full years, I didn't take time to read as much as I used to. Post university life happened and I realized I had lost my ability to read large volumes of words and comprehend them fully and quickly; something similar to what Mr. Carr struggled with. 
 
Slowly, I've begun to think tremendously about where all this technology is really going. Maybe it started as a business; people wanting to create services never before thought of and earning hoards of money they no longer know what to do with. But where will it end? I think to that once-unimaginable possibility of playing god. Will there come a time when death was a thing of the past? What kind of world order will that bring? What kind of meaning will people seek for in life if they knew they had the option to never die? Would I want to be part of that world? Would you?

I've heard it countless times. Don't sell yourself short. Don't waste your time doing things you don't like. Find something that makes you happy. You are meant for greater things. Everybody wants to be the next Zuckerberg or Jobs. Everybody wants to start something new while they're still young. Everybody wants an exciting job. Everybody thinks that working for a big company is a safe, routine, boring, and meaningless route. Well, everybody's wrong.
 
Not everyone who decides to invest in learning from a big company did so because they turned their backs on being a musician or a writer. Not all of them are too scared to risk or just don't know what they want to do with their lives. Not all of them are just in it for the money and prestige. But most of them, if not all, think that that's the case.
 
Life isn't like the movies. Sometimes, you do need to sacrifice things that made you happy as a child to pay the bills or just move forward. But what the world has taught us is that this is a sign of weakness. You've given up on your dreams. You've sold out. You've become the person you didn't want to be. Your life is not exciting and the only way for it to become exciting again is to quit your job and do something you're passionate about. Sadly, many of us believe this. Many of us allow this to consume our lives and we stop seeing beautiful things that's right in front of us because we're too busy wishing the week away and looking forward to the weekend when we can be ourselves and do things we like. I don't get it. I certainly don't buy it. Props to those who have found their niche or have started a company they love. Amazing people and I respect you. But to all of us who work a 9 to 5 job (or a 9 to god who knows what time) we don't have the short end of the stick. In fact, we've got so much going for us. It's just, like anything in life; we need to work at making work work for us.
 
The number one most important thing we need to stop believing is that our "boring" office job has nothing to do with what we've always wanted to be when we were young. Or what we realize we want to be after learning that becoming a pirate doesn't actually cut it. See, our "boring" office job doesn't have to be a road block. It certainly doesn't have to be a wrong turn. It can, if you do it right, be the bridge to whatever goal we set up for ourselves. 

How? 
 
There are a lot of essential things you will learn in a "boring" office job that will be difficult to find elsewhere. And these are things you do need to learn. Like, right now. 
 
Maximizing Every Second

When I was 11 I decided I was going to be a writer. I do write, of course. In fact, I have a gazillion manuscripts that just aren't good enough to be published. And you know what? That's okay. Because I'm no J.K. Rowling and while I'm trying to be even half as good as she is, I don't go crazy doing nothing else but worry about why no publisher has gotten back to me. I can't write every second of every day. It's not that I'm waiting for inspiration (which by the way is so overrated). It's that my mind needs to take breaks in between to be able to write. So whenever there are slow days in the office or while I wait for a file to download, I use those precious moments to write a paragraph or two and I realize how a few minutes each day actually add up. There's no better place to be bored or feel like the minutes are excruciatingly long than when you're doing "boring" office work. And you realize that you have so many of those moments when you can be undistracted because there's just nothing to be distracted with! I've finished a mountain of books by using some of those minutes at work when there's just nothing to do. Heck, you might even end up learning a new language by the end of a year. And why feel guilty about it when it happens! It happens, people. It's reality. You can't change the fact that there really are "boring" moments in a "boring" office job. So instead of feeling bored (or playing Candy Crush), get creative! People who have all the time doing things that they love may ignore those moments and not realize that they exist. But you know it's there. They haunt you every day. So use them. Invest in them.

Allow Your "Boring" Office Job to Invest in You

You are a talent. In whatever company you belong to right now, you are considered one of their talents. And companies like developing their talents. They have a budget for it. They spend hours thinking of new ways to have the best damn talent in the market. So let them. Open your arms and allow them to tinker with you. They might light a fire that you never knew you had inside. Gain that confidence you've always wanted. Learn how to organize your thoughts and deliver a message clearly. Understand how to relate with people older and wiser than you. The point is someone wants to spend money in your growth. Someone wants to make you better and stretch you further. That's hard to find elsewhere. What have you got to lose?

Learn from People Who've Been There and Done That or Are Still Getting There and Still Haven't Done a Thing

Not everyone in a "boring" office job is your age. It's not like when we were in college and we were learning social skills and used them with people who worried about the same things we do or didn't have as much a clue as we did. A "boring" office job is so rich with stories just waiting to be heard. I actually understood my mother more when I listened to colleagues talk about how hard it was for them to reach out to their children than I did exchanging complaints with my friends. We all had problems with our mothers and we vented out. Who knew that they had problems with their kids and needed venting out too? I've had colleagues who've written books, moonlight as comedians, play instruments I had never heard of, and so much more! An executive director in his late 40's once told me, "Young people look at me as if I have it all figured out. But I'm just as lost as they are." Such abundance of life perspectives at your fingertips. So get up, head to the pantry, and talk to the next person you meet.
 
Brushing Up On Your People Skills

When you have a "boring" office job, you will most likely work with people you didn't choose to work with. Many of us hate it. We complain that so and so is just too difficult to work with. Well, here's the thing. You might actually be that so and so to someone else. Understand that being thrown into this crazy collage of personalities is a blessing in disguise. No one else will give you a more honest feedback than someone who hates your guts. And this world will be full of people who won't like you or you won't like – until you get to know them. 
 
Pick Up Values

Patience, humility, integrity, gratitude, and an open-mind are just some of the things you can learn in a "boring" office job. It can be demanding and scary when you're playing by someone else's rules. But it keeps you on your toes. You realize you are not perfect. You will make so many mistakes and you won't have the luxury of hiding from people who knew you've made the mistakes you've made. You'll see them again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. You'll hear office gossip and you'll be tempted to either join in or learn to be better than that. You won't be the best at everything but you'll find that you are good at something and other people will go to you for that. And you will go to other people for things that they are good at. You'll learn to say thank you to them. You'll learn to keep smiling despite the disastrous phone call you just had. You'll learn to wake up early in the morning because you are a responsible person, right? Yes, you'll learn many important things that can be applicable to what you want to eventually do in life (if you really don't want to stick it out in that "boring" office job) and you'll be thankful for it. But the trick is taking note of what you've learned and not taking them for granted. Because really, how else are you going to learn these tough stuff if you were never thrown in an environment like a "boring" office job that just tests your ability to hunt or be hunted every single day?

A "boring" office job is one of the best times to learn. Some people will (luckily or unluckily) not have to go through one. But for those of us who are in it, we are not wasting our life doing something that cannot add value to who we are as people. We can still do what we've always dreamed of. It's just that we need a little help getting there. We need to take time to learn some skills or understand ourselves with a little help from what our "boring" office job can offer. Because it does offer a lot. And when the time is right, we will know if we've gotten enough and want to leave or if we realize that we've always been in the right place and stay in the now no longer "boring" office job we used to think sucked the life out of us. 

Being human is not to be a man. To be a man is biological. To be human is something so much deeper. I believe that humanity is not a state; neither is it an identity. To be human is a process; a journey in which the journey is the definition of being human. 
 
In school, we were taught that no man is an island; that humans constantly search for companionship, for love, for fulfillment, for so many things that complete us. We search for meaning in life, for truth, wisdom, and success. These are all beautiful things to hope for – to want. Without them, we cannot be happy. And happiness is the essence of living.

But in a changing world, many say that humans have become superficial. Values no longer exist. Integrity is hard to come by. People have become selfish and apathetic. What the world once was has been tainted by our insatiable hunger for technological advancement and sophistication. But, just as the world is constantly changing, maybe what it is to be human should be allowed to change
too.

I don't look forward to a world without patience, intimacy, or ability to communicate in a physical social gathering. I don't look forward to a world where philosophical questions about life no longer matter and where people are educated and trained for no other reason than to serve technological demands. I don't look forward to a world where people no longer grow from mistakes and life has become so "perfect" that errors no longer exist. But anxiety and fear are products of not knowing. Maybe the world won't burn in a self-inflicted apocalypse. Maybe humans will become something greater than what they are today. Maybe I should have faith that just as I believe that being human today is still a beautiful thing, maybe being human tomorrow, despite an evolved connotation, will still be a beautiful thing. After all, those before me would probably think that Starbucks, Facebook, Apple, and Disney all don't make sense and have crippled humans and created mindless zombies. 
 
We shouldn't judge the people of tomorrow based on what we understand as people of today. We fear that technology will create heartless and brainless creatures when heartless and brainless are words whose denotation is derived from how our world is and how our lives are. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant in our quest for progress. The future is shaped by our hands. Maybe how we understand certain values will change such as finding happiness in watching a butterfly hover over a flower but I think the core of every value will stay the same. I don't believe people will ever grow tired of finding simple pleasures. It will probably just not be through a flower next time. 
 
What is important today is not so much worrying about the amount of technology we produce but the kinds of people we create that will live with this technology. Should it matter how young they are when they start building their own Apps or the number of new technological courses we create to ensure that we have people capable of coping up with technology? I don't think so. Because at the end of the day, it's not technology that is at fault if and should the world become something we're not happy with. It's people. It's because we've forgotten to cuddle our children while their still young. It's because our ears have been covered by our mp3 players that we weren't able to hear our two-year olds' gibberish singing. It's because we taught them that there's nothing wrong with basking in front of the television during dinner time instead of talking about how our day went or sharing a joke we overheard in the train station. 
 
Who are what the world will be tomorrow because of all the rapid changes happening around us will be who and what the world will be. This is not what scares me. Putting the blame on machinery and pretending that the changes in humans and how we live are has nothing to do with us and everything to do with how we're influenced by computers and overflowing data is what makes me shiver inside. This is what scares me. This is what should scare you too. For even if the meaning of being human continues to change as time goes on, one thing should not change, it is that we are masters of our own lives. If we don't like something, we do something about it.

"They do not start by asking what children need to do to adapt to a machine world, but rather, which technologies can best serve human purposes at every educational level and how we can prepare children to make wise decisions about their use in the future." – Lowell Monke, The Human Touch

The new age has brought about a new way of living; a new way of thinking. But what
we call new is also what we know to be normal*.
 
Our normal is the product of past efforts by people who once thought they were creating solutions for a world they once knew needed solving.
 
But our normal today is not a reflection of the normal that people of yesterday pushed for. Our normal today is the product of the future they envisioned and worked towards. Meaning, whether or not this is what they wanted to achieve, the choices they made and solutions they created brought about this norm. This supposed new age; this new digital age.
 
But what I find interesting about humans is that what is normal is considered mundane; boring; nothing thrilling. It becomes a routine; a daily occurrence that receives no special attention. The challenges that come along with these new normal also becomes normal. They become part of everyday life so much so that we adapt to them; creating more solutions for them without remembering that they are a product of the past. They did not always exist.

Where does this lead my thoughts then? I've observed that the pattern is that humans love to solve problems. We create solutions and we have grown accustomed to believing that technology is our best bet at solutions. But my question is if the new challenges we face today did not always exist, do we need to create solutions for them or, to put it in the simplest possible way, can we just remove them? 
 
A Digital Tomorrow and Sight are two short films which explores alternative futures catapulted by today's increasing technological advancements. Both films visually represent a reflection of how today's society might try to answer more challenges and what the outcome of this will be. From tiny issues such as machines unable to recognize complex human pronunciation (think Siri just not getting your accent) to larger ones where people are unable to engage in honest and sincere interaction ("How am I supposed to know that when it's not on your profile?"). Many a people may begin inventing new technology to address these issues. New programs that understand variety in accents and inflection of tones may find its way into the market soon. Studies, books, workshops, or new Apps may be invented to re-shape human ability to interact and understand other people. Or, alternatively, people could just pick up the phone and punch in the numbers themselves or log off their Facebook accounts and engage in real conversations with peers. 
 
Create new technological solutions or eliminate the challenge? 
 
Using this perspective while reading Stephen B. Balfour's Assessing Writing in MOOCs: Automated Essay Scoring and Calibrated Peer Review™ as I read through the many challenges presented by Mr. Balfour in his analysis of two scoring systems used by MOOC (Massive Online Open Courses) hosts such as EdX and Coursera, I couldn't help but think that, as this new form of mass education is continuously searching for more innovative technological ways to improve its efficiency and effectiveness, these new challenges may not need to exist from the very beginning. This is not to say that I do not appreciate MOOCs, what they are capable of providing, or the new technology that has been invented and currently being developed. Participating in MOOCs myself, I think they do wonders. However, I found myself asking the question, "Can't we just eliminate this challenge?" The challenges presented in the paper all had to do with whether new assessment methods for essays in MOOCs are effective, credible, fair, and improves student learning. It explains a new process where teachers are no longer solely responsible for grading essays and have been replaced by either computer-based assessments or peer assessments. I do not subscribe support to either at this moment in time. I limit my thoughts to only one thing, as we approach this new digital age and become accustomed to new norms that have breathed life to new challenges, should we rely on technology to create solutions or would we be better of just discarding the challenge altogether?

I welcome your thoughts and end this post here.

 *Merriam-Webster defines normal as:
·        according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, or principle
·        conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern  

Technology is not a 'tool' – it actually drives change and creates society.

 I am a member of Generation Y. I grew up at the time when desktop computers first made it inside homes, when the Playstation and Gameboy became children's playmates, when cellphones were not only a form of communication but an extension of personal identity, and when Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube fulfilled everyone's desire to be heard. I am a member of the Peter Pan Generation, the generation that has done all it could to delay adulthood. I am a member of the "self-centered" generation, the "impatient" generation, and the generation filled with "short-cuts". The generation that wants respect but does not know how to respect. The generation that always looks for an easy way out. Yes, that generation. At least, this is how we have been described by people from the outside.
 
What we consider the norm has been blamed on technology. We look for instant gratification because we grew up in a world filled with instants. One minute e-mails instead of week-long posts. Text messages instead of phone calls. Video streaming instead of having to wait for TV shows once a week. Wikipedia and Google have replaced libraries. Distance Education is a popular alternative for school campuses. We can shop while sitting in our rooms and listen to e-books instead of reading our favorite fiction. 
 
People's behaviors have been altered. Mindsets have changed. Perspectives have widened. But was all this a product of technology? Have we truly been creating machines or have machines created us? And if so, has this been for the good or just the opposite?
 
There are many ways to dissect technology and how it has influenced society. Daniel Chandler in his paper Technological Determinism explored many of these variables. Among his many outlined theories, he included one that expanded on technology as the single independent variable towards the changes in society. Technology has pushed society; creating needs and wants instead of being created to answer them. As a member of Generation Y, a generation so large yet so largely criticized, I wanted to take a step back and understand how our incredibly judged way of living came about and if we should even try to remedy it. Or, better yet, are we even really broken?
 
It's easy to play the blame game. It's easy to make excuses; to tell the world that this was the world we were left with and we had not chosen to have been born and to grow uduring the time of the fastest technological advancement in human history. Why do it the hard way if the easy way's already been invented? Why work for a company and start from the bottom when I can establish one and start on top? Why ask someone how they're feeling when I can just read a cryptic status message and decode it for myself? Why go through all the trouble when I don't have to?
 
And this, I believe, is the new society. A society whose reasoning has been made logical by the convenience brought about by technology. A society that cannot be faulted for choosing what makes sense over what wastes seconds. A society whose needs no longer included patience for patience is for the lazy. A society that no longer needs simplicity for simplicity is for those who do not work hard enough to have more. A society that no longer needs society for society is for those who are not strong enough to be independent. We are not a broken generation. We simply have thrown away what older generations thought they needed to survive and replaced them with the needs our generation today faces. 
 
Well, you know what? I disagree.
 
Although technology has re-shaped our concept of what is logical versus what is illogical, I don't believe it has affected our ability to differentiate what is rational from that which is not. And this is why I would like to argue that, although technology can push changes in culture, it is, inevitably, our choice to be pushed or dance hand-in-hand with technology. 
 
But have we been broken by technology? Do we need to be fixed? Are we not functioning properly? Are we not moving forward? Has the world turned chaotic? 
 
Maybe, just maybe, it's not that we're broken or that we have lost values that our generation never even had to begin with. Maybe, just as world wars have shaped our grandparents and made them stronger and more resilient, technology can do the same for us. Maybe if older generations just stopped criticizing us and looking at us as if we can't stand on our own without our iPhones and Facebook accounts, then they'll see that we're not broken; we're just in the middle of adding new modifications to build a stronger and more progressive society but without a blueprint in hand.
 
We are "impatient". We want things fast because technology has made it possible to have things fast. That's all well and good. There's nothing wrong with fast. The work is done. The work is good. No mistakes. And this is where I believe the human in us should come in. Technology has helped us do something. Now, let the person in us thinkof what we have done. You are happy with the work. Are we happy with ourselves? Do we need to do more things 'fast' to become happy with ourselves? We have twenty minutes to spare, should we call up mom or dad and ask them if something funny happened to them today? We've answered all the e-mails in our inbox. There's an hour left before work ends. We tap our fingers on our desk. We need more stimuli. We are bored. We wish we had our own company already so that we don't have to sit down in front of a computer all day like we did today. Do we pick up a piece of paper and start writing down the first draft of our business plan? 

The way we are, how we think, or how we process information has been re-shaped by technology. But if we put our hands up and say, "This is us, take it or leave it" then we only have ourselves to blame. We are Generation Y. We are the "impatient" generation. We are the generation that looks for "short-cuts". We get bored. We think of ourselves a lot. We didn't choose to have been born during the time of the fastest technological advancement in human history. Yes, technology has something to do with it. Something. Not everything.
 
Technology helps us do something. But the human in us is responsible to think about what we've done. I am a member of Generation Y and, I know, the world shouldn't be afraid that this generation is next in line to take over this technological world.

If the theory goes that we should be thankful because others have less, then, logically speaking, shouldn't we be unsatisfied that others have more?
 
It's a quote passed on through the years; one of those sayings whose origins are now unknown. I don't remember how young I was when I first heard someone tell me "You're lucky you have something to eat. Others don't have food on the table." What I do know is that I've never been comfortable with the rationality behind it. It's always been something I could never swallow, pass on as an advice to others, or incorporate into my life.
 
With the continuous rise of social media use, I've noticed that I've come across this reasoning more and more often lately. It's popped up on my screen in various forms, wording, and length. It's been superimposed on edited images, highlighted in various blogs, or uploaded as a modest quoted text on personal status updates. Whatever the form or however the method, there was just no escaping my most disliked overused quotation. 
 
While there is truth in learning contentment and adopting happiness, I find that citing the misfortunes of others as our constant in a learning gratitude equation is not the most ideal instrument. Do we really have to keep searching for the presence of adversities in others? Is it really impossible to learn appreciation by simply imagining life with the absence of things we take for granted in life?
 
Satisfaction through comparison limits happiness. It hinders a culture of reflection and promotes the need for contrast. We assume our lives are better or worse through the failures and accomplishments of others when better and worse should only be used to reflect on how we have fared in our own challenges. Despite this, I do believe that the quote was rooted on positivity and was meant to stimulate and instill good values in us. What has bothered me all these years is that it can subconsciously build a foundation of insecurity in some of us. We become predisposed to analyze our worth though the kinds of things other people have, the amount of blessings they receive, or the mistakes and shortcomings they've run into in their lives. 
 
It's possible that many of us have learned, without intending to, to judge others and create false impressions about the quality of their lives. We automatically assume that we are better off than that unmarried woman we met on the train this morning because we believe life is not complete without a constant companion. We find it difficult to respect that man who decided to sit in front of his piano instead of a large mahogany desk in his office on the 31st floor. We can't understand how that girl with glasses and thick bushy hair can possibly like wearing her plaid skirt and turtle neck sweater. The simple concept of comparing a life with food and without food can, as years pass, possibly turn into dangerous opinions, flawed perceptions, and irreversible discrimination. 
 
Is this essay in itself an uneducated assumption? Is it possible that there's no correlation between a quote and a blemished way of thinking? Maybe. But is it so difficult to tell our children to "be thankful they have something" and end it with that instead of asking them to "be thankful that they have more than what others have?"