INFORMATION, SPEED, AND PERFORMANCE

Speed is Good, Information Important, but Performance is King

JAPAN just launched a satellite today that as CNN states:

(CNN) -- "Japan launched a rocket Saturday carrying a satellite that will test new technology that promises to deliver "super high-speed Internet" service to homes and businesses around the world. " 2/22/2008.

Ah the wonders. Now an 80 hour work week can become a 100 hour work week as more is expected of you by the employer. Nothing short of heaven sent! AND, welcome rural China and other places that could never have sped up with the rest of us! All you need is a satellite dish and voila! You can have all we have faster than blinking your eyelids! (You should probably buy a refrigerator over a satellite dish first though. Keeping food longer in dishes you now own will help you live longer than dishes placed upon your roof.)

THE WORLD IS FLAT: Now we can sell anything to anyone! And, there are benefits. Information to enhance life such as medical, intellectual, spiritual, and in commerce will definitely be a plus for the deprived masses who do not live, as we do, 24/7 with the Internet.

The speed and output of the new satellite up-link connection is estimated at 1.2 gigabytes per second. One hundred years ago, a person connecting their Alexander Graham Bell talking device (phone) to another used "Mabel." (That would be a person with a wire and switchboard. ) A few minutes would go by, as you pondered upon the message and talking to a friend, loved one, or business associate. In fact, communicating across town or around the world was a treat!

Now it is an entitlement. In fact, now a person connects in real time faster than the time it takes to type in a telephone number on their keyboard.

Meaning? Time to access information is immediate. Speed to request it takes longer. If we expect performance to increase just because access to information does, we may be in for an anxiety-riddled reality check.

Those were the days -- rotary dial telephone. Our home number in a Southern California area code was 526-3104. Had that number forever. And when you asked a girl out for date you had enough time with the rotary dial to back out, or practice how you were going to ask her to go out. The nerves it took with all that time lapsing. How did we ever get anything done?

DRUGS: I can tell you we did it "all" without Prozac, other anti-depressants, and performance in personal areas of life didn't require "enhancing." (We had libraries, exercised through playing, walking, running, and adults who wished for intimate moments didn't need two bath tubs; aka the "Cialis" RX television commercial.) Information is like a drug for a brain constantly crying out for a faster way to connect, do, experience...

This is a shorter piece -- on purpose. My partner Mark Kastleman at http://www.powerthink.com/ and I are engaged in writing and creating audio on surviving and thriving in the modern age of mass communications, high speed demands, instant gratification, stimulation, and information overload; all creating more stress and anxiety than any other generation could have imagined.

"Power thinking" is introduced in my upcoming novel, "As a Man Thinketh...In His Heart." It is about a "heart-mind" alliance that maximizes the body's potential for using the right information in a high-tech world. The heart needs time, while the brain begs for more information in less time. With two competing vital organs, the human spirit needs some time as well, for meditative reflection just to sort things out. Life is coming at us fast and furious whether we want it to or not. If we simply absorb speed, information, and try to keep up in a performance mode, we will be headed for a super-cardiac arrest, not to mention spending more on RED BULL drinks and its competitors over food, just for the extra "kick" we want in order to "keep up."

Personal performance is what life really is all about. With the heart in the lead, and the brain obeying, the quality of life does not require the quantity of connections we have available to us now. We simply need to access information "use-full" to us. And, to make the point, "Mabel" down at the local telephone company, was a "new" invention a mere ten decades ago. Before that the telegram had it's day in the sun for fifty years, and before that there was the horse.

When personal performance is at stake, it isn't how much in gigabytes you get in a second, but which information available is most important and useful. The "right" information, the right use of it, will always enhance life, bring peace in high stress times, and focus attention on the "best" in personal performance. Power Thinking is an answer. More on its way...