Lives Intertwingle

Websurfing hopscotch: I just went from coolmel to kottke to peterkaminski to Robert Frank on How Not To Buy Happiness, but my favorite snippet is the one kottke quoted:

Considerable evidence suggests that if we use an increase in our incomes, as many of us do, simply to buy bigger houses and more expensive cars, then we do not end up any happier than before. But if we use an increase in our incomes to buy more of certain inconspicuous goods -- such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job -- then the evidence paints a very different picture. The less we spend on conspicuous consumption goods, the better we can afford to alleviate congestion; and the more time we can devote to family and friends, to exercise, sleep, travel, and other restorative activities. On the best available evidence, reallocating our time and money in these and similar ways would result in healthier, longer -- and happier -- lives.

Lives intertwingle; conspicuous and inconspicuous regularly interact and learn from each other, mixing the happiness and unhappiness as people come together all the time all around the world. This reminded me of some words from Kevin Fox that really resonated with me:

So many other faded friends only entered my mind in the abstract, thinking about how lives are like branches, winding, sheltering, separating and diverging from common origins.

As an aside, thoughts of a Google Browser are making me happy, and John Battelle just reminded me that on the Internet no complaint goes unheard. ;) Which brings me back to...

Websurfing hopscotch, part 2: I just went from bibi's comment to bibi's talking about chatango which she found from Joi Ito who has a post about Craig Newmark from Craigslist which references Cory Doctorow's quote of the Wired interview by Josh McHugh:

Google's touchy-feely corporate mantra is "Don't be evil." What's yours?
Give people a break.

A break from what?
A break from how difficult our lives are. It's like, if you're walking out of your apartment building and somebody is coming the other way with an armful of groceries, you hold the door. It feels good - it's the neighborly thing to do. And our species survives by cooperating.

What poses the major threat to that survival?
Kleptocrats and sociopathic organizations that have the almighty dollar as their only goal.

I like the sound of "lives intertwingle; give people a break."

While I'm on the subject, why is the Google mantra a double negative ("don't be evil") instead of a single positive ("be good")? Is it because they don't want to sound like E.T.?

Ok, enough of that rathole. The important thing to remember when lives intertwingle is Pierre's founding principle for the Omidyar Network: " I've been inspired by people discovering their own power, and believed that every individual can make a difference... We realized that legal structure -- for-profit versus non-profit -- wasn't all that relevant to what we believed in. What was important was our simple core belief: that

every individual has the power to make a difference.

So, we created the Omidyar Network for one single purpose: so that more and more people discover their own power to make good things happen."

Shine on, you wonderful diamond!

Comments

[Bibi]

Interesting technique :)
I will try that websurfing hopscotch.

[Adam]

Bibi, websurfing hopscotch was made for people like you and me! ;)

[Kat Mahoney]

Hey
I accidentally lost your comment on my blog. I redid the template and it deleted comments. My apologies.

[Adam]

No worries, I'm sure I'll make more comments in the future. I can't help myself. :)