A reoccurring thing

Sometimes I get discouraged
Sometimes I feel so down
Sometimes I get so worried
But I don't know what about
But it works out in the long run
Always goes away
And I've come now to accept it
It's a reoccurring thing

          Century City by Tom Petty

    

No substances required

I step out, close the door, look at my watch - 4:30 pm - plenty of daylight left. I walk past Señor Jim’s place ..struggle up an overgrown canyon and reach the trail to Franceschi park where I can see the waters of the bay below, pale blue ..and the fog, pearly white, rolling inland and up the mountainside directly ahead of me. The trail goes into it and I follow ..getting that magical feeling my head is in the clouds ..revealing possibilities I don’t ordinarily see (no wonder my teachers warned me about this). Apparitions of the Indians that used to live here re-appear (as always) ..reminding me that I’m just passing through. My neighbor Amanda steps out of the fog ahead ..shrugging and going “it’s a reoccurring thing” ..before disappearing behind. Now I’m wondering who, or what is going to happen next. Julie is waiting with the weimaraners she rescued. She hands me a tennis ball and I throw it and it goes ‘poof’ and disappears. Lotus chases it and disappears too. I look at Julie and she tells me not to worry ..he’ll reappear somewhere down the line. Then she disappears. I hike out of the fog ..slide down the hill next to the county bowl ..a natural amphitheater I’m lucky to have as a neighbor ..then walk past Marlena’s place and head home, thinking: sometimes foreign substances aren’t required.

Music never stops

“There is a road, no simple highway

Between the dawn and the dark of night

And if you go, no one may follow

That path is for your steps alone”

            Ripple by the Grateful Dead

        

The head of network services where I used to work had calendars from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s covering his wall with well over a thousand dates circled in red. Each one represented a Grateful Dead concert he had attended. On occasion, I would catch him leaning back and staring at them all glassy-eyed. He’d ask me to pick a date, any date ..and he could tell me not only what city they played, but how he managed to get there, who he was with and what songs the band played that night. You can verify the playlists online. We’re looking at a period of time spanning 3 decades. I have a hard time remembering what movie I saw at the theater last week.

Closed feedback loop

“What shows up on the Internet and cable television today is shaped by what we choose to click on and watch in the past” [link] 

I’m an information analyst. I study both computer and human information. Two systems that frequently dovetail on the Internet. That’s why I feel like my Internet experience is becoming increasingly shallow. Far from opening up possibilities, or sending me down information superhighways ..I’m being lead down increasingly narrow avenues that present me with only the most superficial hype. All I can figure is that I’ve entered a ‘closed feedback loop’. Simply put, a closed feedback loop narrows-down a range of activity based on feedback it receives about prior activity. On the Internet, activity means information. In other words, what rises to the foreground is determined by the things I paid attention to in the past while everything else recedes into the background. Robert Lewis Stevenson said it best “Attention to one thing is sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.” The Internet narrows it down beautifully. 

Sites like Google and Facebook are tuned to deliver information based on popular choice .. not credibility or merit. On the other hand, humans are hard-wired to receive and share information ..but not necessarily weigh its validity or merit. What we come away with is a feeling of familiarity based on prior experience. The Internet assures me I’ll get few surprises. That’s why the music I’m most likely to hear right now is from Rihanna or Jay Z ..when I know there’s so much more talent out there, it just doesn’t rise to the surface of ‘what’s trending’.