Category: Uncategorized

Information is important

I am beginning to appreciate just how much access to information means to our lives. I have been researching many different careers in the last several years, and the amazing amount of information available has allowed me to eliminate multiple careers paths from consideration. As someone with ADHD, choosing a career that challenges me and keeps me interested is extremely important. If something doesn’t interest me, my brain just won’t work. Without the internet, I very easily could have down a path that would not have interested me. This would have led to low performance, unhappiness, wasted time, and damage to my career.

The internet provides us the opportunity to improve ourselves. Let’s take advantage of the amazing amount of information available to us and learn and grow and make better decisions. We cannot decide what time we are given upon this earth, all we can do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. Let’s make the most of it, let’s be intentional with what we do, and let’s use the information available to us to make the best decisions we can. We owe it to the past generations of people who strived for knowledge and were denied.

How to declutter your Facebook News Feed

One of the complaints I hear about Facebook is that there is just too much information. It’s hard to find the stuff that you actually want to see. Here is a quick guide to help improve the signal-to-noise ratio by removing Pages from your News Feed.

Pages are specifically for brands or groups, they are not pages for individuals. It’s pretty easy to follow more of these then you realize, and it can clog up your News Feed with advertising that you didn’t know you asked for. Here is how to unfollow those Pages.

  1. Click on the down arrow at the top right of the screen
  2. Select “News Feed Preferences”
  3. Go to pages
  4. Select Alphabetical Order (The number of stories refers to how many of their posts you have interacted with in the last week)
  5. Unfollow the pages that you don’t interact with, and ones that you just don’t want to see their content anymore. I know I was following lots more pages than I realized.

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I hope this helps you enjoy Facebook a bit more. Let me know how it goes, and feel free to share any strategies you use to make social media more productive. If you have any questions about Facebook, or technology in general, that you would like me to answer, let me know in the comments or send me an email at AskTheDave.com.

If you want more of this kind of content, please follow the blog, and follow me on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

Facilitating a creative culture

This is an excellent article about creating a creative culture. Even if  you’re not a manger, we can all benefit from being more creative in how we go about our daily lives. Everyone has to deal with other people at some point to solve problems and create solutions. This article may help you be a more effective team. Feel free to share your thoughts and how you plan to implement some of these ideas!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2015/05/01/7-steps-to-enable-a-creative-culture/

The internet will be everywhere, and it will change everything.

This is a response to the article here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/nest-ceo-tony-fadell-on-the-future-of-the-internet-1430104501?. I suggest reading it before reading this response.

I think he is correct for the majority of the article, but the wheels start to come off when he starts talking about how the boat will take control and stop him from hurting himself. Connecting everything to the internet doesn’t mean that it gets to control us. We have to use the data wisely. Improve how we deal with the world around us? Yes. Stop us from dealing with it? No.

It shouldn’t control our lives, it should enhance and expand it. Technology can’t replace the uniquely human drive to push boundaries. If we rely on technology to keep us safe, we become complacent. We stop exploring, stop adventuring, stop learning things that you can only learn by doing something incredibly stupid. Sometimes the rewards are worth the risk, and sometimes we should do something just to see if we can.

Discovery often rides at the ragged edge of common sense. If we let technology keep us away from risk, where will reward come from?

We are unique, and nothing can replace our passion. We have to use technology as fuel to drive us forward, letting our hearts and imagination lead us forward. Tech should never hold us back! It should push us forward! Help us be better, give us the tools to come together and make the world a better place!

Why I’m here.

I have talked to hundreds of people, and the feeling I get, most of all, is that people don’t trust technology. As an optimist, I have been wondering why that is. Here are my thoughts on why so many people are worried, and why I’m not.

We hear a lot about how disruptive it can be, how much damage people using it for criminal or destructive ends have caused. News of credit card data theft, Wikileaks divulging national secrets with a click of a button, and faceless hackers taking over computers scares people. Seeing technology used in the service of chaos and disruption has led to people being very suspicious. They don’t want to get themselves caught in the crossfire.

The great dream of technology is that it will bring us together. It can eliminate the physical distances that separate us, and bring the whole world within our reach. It is also a great equalizer, allowing everyone to have a voice and connect to the rest of the world. It is used for good every day, although you won’t see it in the headlines. The Red Cross raised over $22 million through text-message donations alone after the earthquake in Haiti. A soldier, stationed overseas, can talk face to face with their family. Someone going through a personal crisis can talk to a friend or loved one far away, and it helps them get through another day. This is what technology is supposed to be used for.

The world is also changing rapidly. Businesses and industries fall and rise, crushed or carried by this wave of technology. Technology seems like a giant, faceless mass, and we don’t really know what to do with it. That’s OK, we will learn. We’ll get through this together. We have to, if we want our future to be as bright as possible.

I decided to start this blog because I want to see our world change for the better. I can’t just sit and watch it happen. I have to be part of it, joining with others to help and guide our world.

What do you think of the current state of technology? What are your concerns and fears? What great things do you see technology being used for?