Passionate Living

Plenty has been said about how TV is bad for you. In the modern Web 2.0 era, several digital media experts even say that broadcast is obsolete. With the advent of online programs, now you can choose what to watch, when to watch, and where to watch it.

Fatty watching himself on TV by Cloudzilla

The generation that grew up sharing a culture – everyone watching Happy Days or The Brady Bunch – doesn’t apply any longer in the digital era. Each person tailors her own consumption of entertainment, everyone having their own versions of top hit singles and favorite TV shows. The possibility of us all going “Hey, I haven’t heard that in a long time!” in the future is a small possibility.

Yet, in the middle of this rapid digital distribution, TV can be good for you. The uncontrollable aspect of major broadcasting can sometimes lead to serendipitious discoveries. The things you discover while watching uncurated programs or mindless browsing through the channels just might inspire you with something new.

Here are 3 ways that we can all do to make watching TV in an internet era be good for us:

1. Keep an open mind

The basis of this is for us to be open to new possibilities. TV programs are less specific than niche websites, but they are diverse enough to display several topics within one hour of programming. Simply tuning into several different channels for 30 minutes or 1 hour and interpreting it with our own minds can lead to some interesting discoveries of our own.

2. Don’t watch the news

The programs produced on TV can open our eyes towards new things and new information we might else not discover in our curated internet world. Yet, the danger of uncurated information is that it can be negative and affect how we feel throughout the day. Therefore, it’s better to avoid definite sources of negative information, such as news channels, and spend time on the positive information channels, such as:

3. Watch community programs

This is the most important aspect of watching TV: if you have a local channel, or at least one that is broadcasted by your city for your city, community programs are an excellent way to learn about what’s happening in your neighborhood. You can learn much about your environment, what is the primary concern of the moment, what kind of hobby groups and activities are going on at the moment, and whether you are interested enough to join in the activity or not. Also, plenty of entrepreneurs can make a comfortable living establishing a community based business: a small business that caters to the need of a limited community. Therefore, knowing about the needs of a community is important if you are interested in developing a business.

Serendipity is the name of the game. You can do this also with magazines and radio. Just because the internet is there, doesn’t mean we should abandon all other media channels, even though we could. The curated nature of broadcast programming subjects us to the personal flavor of the program producer, music director, and magazine editor and can expose us to new information that can be good for us.

So, start exploring today: watch a little more TV, buy one or two local magazines, and listen to the radio on your mobile – you’ll never know what you’ll discover.

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Boys having fun! by Ray

I drive a metallic blue 1997 Kijang Krista, a classic Indonesian SUV. Though it’s more than ten years old, the engine still runs smoothly and rarely gives trouble – since my father is an automobile enthusiast, he treats all the cars in the family with great care (and no one in the family drives recklessly). But about a month ago, the Kijang started to have hiccups while I was driving on my way to the studio, so I had it checked at our usual car shop.

It turns out the car needed a change of spark plugs, condensers, and a certain part cleaned by DCS (I don’t understand most of this stuff either, since – unlike my father – I am not an automobile enthusiast). It didn’t take a long time to get the car fixed, but during my time at the car shop, something caught my attention and also my sympathy: the mechanic who worked on my car had two assistants – both of them young boys around the age of 14-15 years old.

The mechanic taught these boys as he went along and unscrewed, unwired, unplugged several parts of the engine, which I think is a good thing that he’s taking the time to teach these children. But as I paid attention to the expression on their faces, it looked like they were thinking about their future – where being a mechanic may not necessarily be their passion. It’s not that they don’t have a choice, but they may believe they don’t have a choice, or they aren’t educated about the choices made available to them.

Awareness of choice

Now, I’m not saying being a mechanic is lowly work; there are wonderful mechanics who are natural geniuses with engines. What I’m saying is that sometimes children are given paths to walk down on, instead of choosing that path for themselves. Most of this arises from the lack of privilege the children have, or lack of education to strive for a better condition.

Most of these children simply follow the paths they believe to be the only choice for them. But I believe children should be educated that what they think is the only choice, is not the only choice they have – and that they can explore other avenues and what they want to become. They should be made aware of the possibilities that can happen in their lives.

I think it’s sad when a child locks in his future, just because he thinks there’s no better way. There’s nothing wrong with doing humble work as a beginning, but they should be aware there are other choices they can make. It doesn’t have to be like in the pre-industrial revolution days when a child simply follows the profession his father had.

Advocating education

That’s why I advocate for education – and by education I mean true education; not the superficial industrial era formal education we are doctrined at school. I’m talking about education of character, of wisdom, of adversity, and of humility to be the best person we can be. And I advocate that this true education not be made expensive or exclusive or limited only to the privileged – it should be made as publicly accessible as possible.

The strength of belief our surroundings imposes on us is great. Without a resilient character, we would fall prey to the pre-established social hierarchy we are expected to follow. Playing along to this game doesn’t necessarily lead to our happiness – since most of conventional society is designed to keep the people on top on top.

The first and most severe victims are always the children. They hold the greatest strength to make the greatest change, yet they are not yet fully developed – the wrong people with the wrong intentions can easily take advantage of this situation. That’s why we need to work on fundamental public education – a system where the central purpose is to bring out the strength in each child, not merely to train them for work.

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*I should’ve wrote this at the end of last month, but I forgot. So here is the periodic book review of this month’s best-seller:

I don’t know about you, but I feel that in today’s world success is determined largely by your marketing skills. Based on personal development books I’ve read, it seems the techniques written in these books are to help you better sell and promote your products. Either that, or most you learn about growing as a person and achieving happiness is heavily correlated to your success in business and your marketing.

It’s a shame, but I think that’s what our world is currently focused on: success as measured by material wealth. Personal development books are actually business books, only in a watered down and motivational language (even the spiritual ones aim to help you be better at business). So it becomes inevitable that in order to learn about self development, we need to read a business book or two.

Enter Six Pixels of Separation, a best-selling book on digital marketing by Mitch Joel [1]. Mitch is a leading marketing blogger, and you can read the daily version of the book in his blog by the same name. Now you might think “Why buy the book, when I can get the ideas for free in the blog?”, and I’ve thought about this also but I’ve found out the advantage of reading the book: it gives you context for the ideas, not just a semi-random sequence of them.

New media

Mitch talks about the current trends in digital marketing. We’ve heard the term Web 2.0, social media, and other marketing jargons often said, but do we truly know what they mean, what they function, and how we can use these new gadgets to achieve our success (again, measured by material wealth)? The underlying premise in Six Pixels of Separation is that everybody is connected, now that we are active citizens of the online world; therefore we should use the channels to get and stay connected.

The idea that intrigues me the most from all the ideas in his book is about mobile content or marketing. As a musician, I can’t abandon the trends of how the market consumes content, mainly entertainment content. Mitch’s chapter about mobile marketing states that this is still nascent, still a very early stage, and there’s much room for progress and innovation to be made.

Interesting, because in Indonesia, mobile content is a big if not the biggest content business. For music, the sale and purchase of CD’s is not the bread and butter of musicians; instead it’s the sale and purchase of Ring Back Tones (or RBT’s) that are the main meat for musicians seeking a living through their music (and a highly regarded musician friend of mine says that the Indonesian market for RBT’s is the biggest in the world). So, the trend in mobile marketing and mobile content usage is very important for those who plan to make a living being a creative person (one who creates digitize-able content).

Not-so-new media

There are a few ideas that I challenge in the book. One is when Mitch says that things are changing faster than ever before (I’m sure he says this somewhere, but I’m not sure which page – but I remember thinking about it when I was reading it). Why do I challenge the idea? Because, as according to the one universe theory, I believe that the challenges we face are not more difficult or sophisticated or complex than what the communities and societies faced before us. Change has always happened, and it’s always happening fast; it’s always abrupt, yet always needed as part of the natural growth of society. Saying that we have it tougher than they did is an overestimation of our culture and an underestimation of previous cultures.

The market place has always been there since the dawn of man kind. Humans are not stupid, and if we say that the generation before us are stupid for, say, saying the earth is flat or not acknowledging the rights of women, then the generation after us will also say we’re stupid for, say, introducing global warming and the interest-based economy. Yet we think we are part of such a sophisticated people (more on this in next book’s review).

Six Pixels of Separation merely brings again a principle that has always been with us (and as according to the theory of reincarnation, every generation needs to be re-introduced to these same principles): success is helped by being an active member of the community. It is in the community we make a living, and since the community today is a vibrant online mash-up of various cultures and historical backgrounds, having an open mind, big heart, and great sense of humor to explore these waters is a huge huge must if we expect to survive and succeed. Six Pixels of Separation helps us to navigate through these relatively uncharted waters.

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*Today’s featured music: ethereal female vocals meets steel acoustic rock guitar meets drum and bass beats with a dash of goth: (via @dubber)

[1] Learn more about Mitch Joel and his business, blog, and book in the official SPOS site