Wednesday, October 18, 2006

I was gasping at my creations, looking pleased and possibly with a smile on my face... "Wow!!!  I've never written that much all my life" well writing for money or good grades, I might have, for good colle I will, but for just plain writing would be plain laughable.  A blog is just that.  I must admit that I wasn't too selfless though.... I wanted to earn money from this blog as well.  However, today, after possibly two weeks of blogging and around a week of earning money from them which current;y stands at a total of $105(not bad for a nepali student in a week, eh?)  which is a little short by around $244 to buy this cool ebook reader by sony http://sony.com/reader/I'm seeing myself as a character in the classic Chekhovian story "the Bet" who places himself in a room for 20 years for a huge sum of money but then finds that knowledge is far more precious than any money he can earn, which he has earned now... thus he leaves the room just before he completes 20 years.  Well there might be a million possible interpretations for this story and even in relation to my analogy with it but I can see a common thread in both my experience of 1 week and the character's 20 years, we have both gained knowledge and seen the power of it.  Something smeagol never learnt.... heheI am shocked and awed by how much work the "working class" people do and still they earn less than us lazy computer nerds.  I spend hours programming or trying to write something both sitting lazily in front of a computer screen and still manage to wipe out $100 in a week.. Maybe it was a fluke, maybe I was too lucky but one thing is certain that we are living in a society governed by mind.  Often times, I end up discussing the knowledge based architechture of the society.... As it is often put, knowledge management.... The early pioneers of the internet put it as "Content is the king".  After the boom and bust it's sure that one party won, who?  haha... you guessed it.... the consumers(if you haven't got it on your own)People change as do times; i still remember the jovial emotion I felt when I first saw a computer in class 5 in our living room.  By then I had just touched a mouse, clicked things and seen this beast obey... I felt like I came one step closer to being god, although I don't believe in one I would surely like to be one.  Then I got another one (well, this one) in class 8 which had a dialup internet.  By that time I was a super computer geek in school with knowledge in the application and QBASIC programming... Then came this internet thing into my life.  I was not much of a social guy looking into chatrooms trying to make new friends.  In fact, i think now that I might have voluntarily secluded myself from the popular culture pretty much like one of my heroes "Kurt Cobain" and numerous other scientists with an exception of Neumann.  Seclusion is good at times, and combine that with my dad's constant pressure to study I was soon into the world of books and bits and bytes.  I still think that "the hacker manifesto" is my self expression and "knowledge is power" but the most important thing was that my knowledge was increasing in so many fronts apart from the obvious computers. I cannot possibly explain all the forces at play that put me in this position to declare myself as a "bonafide blogger" but I can surely say one thing for sure that I have an immense desire to progress and be at least two steps forward of the world.  I have always aimed high and reached there.  I've had frustration, struggles, near addiction, etc but it's not your experience that matter(it does matter) but in what light do you want to portray that experience to yourself.  I learnt or at least tried to learn from every fall and every stumble so that I can attain the goal of being the best someday, yet today's world changes so fast that keeping pace with it is hard enough, let alone leading it. This is possibly an example of writing for the sake of writing, thousands of people write.  One thing I want to add is that there will always be technophobes who will say people will stop reading after internet takes off.. Well have a look around people, people are reading more than ever.. and take that RIAA... I presume that music has got to be cheaper than $.99... No DRM or putting secret rootkits is going to stop us...