The Observationist

So, I am a technologist who has worked on the Internet since the first days of the web, so my interest in the Internet and Society, the focus of the Berkman Center,  is a keen one. Therefore, I hope one day to actually post something relevant here. But sometimes you just have to rant. Here’s today’s:

The other day at work, the lobbyists were complaining that the governor of New Jersey only cares about educational outcomes. That how the students fare is all that matters, was the complaint. This was apparently a very bad thing. But I had trouble understanding what the heck k-12 education is for if not to produce good outcomes for kids. Surely it’s not about serving tasty food, is it? Is that why kids go?

Have the teachers’ unions gotten so carried away with their own job protection that they can’t even understand that student outcomes are the most important objective of all? Of all the things I’ve heard, this was one of the most disconcerting.

So after a year of apparently observing nothing, I have decided to try my hand at my specialty: thinking about everything, but not too deeply.

I suppose that’s why I began life as a journalist. They say we’re a mile wide and an inch deep. Is that a bad thing? Jack of all trades, master of none?

I lost a job I despised this week. It paid the bills, although the bills were lower, as the job demanded lower expectations of life. But, unoriginal as this may seem, it made me really begin to think about what’s important. Oh boy, just what we all need. Another hackneyed discussion about what really matters.

But honestly, after fearing for some time that I would lose this  position, the total lack of regret is somewhat astonishing. I found myself at one of those superstores this morning vowing to only purchase coffee at super low prices from now on, and wandering into the garden center and suddenly feeling that I can’t remember the last time I felt such inner peace. OK. It was WalMart so I AM saying something original here: I found profound inner peace today in the garden center at WalMart.

So, this, my first post, will be a short one that very clearly states that the meaning of life can be discovered in the flower section of a big-box retailer, but I’ll be back to report my quest to survive without jobs that suck the life, and the raison d’etre, right out of you. I haven’t figured out anything more than that garden centers are critical, but as I do. I’ll be back to ramble on.

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