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Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts

Friday, July 20, 2012

Technology And Intuition


Technology has moved us into a whole new world. We can know and do things that we never dreamed possible in the past. It also demands that we evolve with it. Major discoveries often make our current abilities obsolete and so it is with the world of technology. A developed intuition enables us to sift through this unprecedented amount of information and make choices to create the lives we want.



Once we discovered how to make matches, the skill to start fires by rubbing sticks together was no longer needed. After the invention of hand-held calculators, it was no longer necessary to memorize our multiplication tables. With the advent of the Internet we can access libraries of information without even leaving our homes.


Things are moving faster and faster, and we are required to make immediate decisions on more and more issues. There is less and less time for analysis. In this new world, how do we make informed decisions? What new abilities do we need to develop?


Life gets harder and harder every day for the ordinary person. This causes stress, and the stress continues to mount. The nervous system becomes overwhelmed. Affecting our perception, causing us to make mistakes. Mistakes bring more stress, and our life moves into a downward cycle. If we are doctors, nurses, pharmacists or pilots, our mistakes can cost lives. For most of us, our mistakes are less critical, but they still affect the quality of our lives.


What can be done about it? When we choose a lifestyle that focuses our attention on releasing the stress that builds up in the nervous system on a daily basis, the system becomes stronger. This strong nervous system provides clarity in perception, which helps us to achieve our goals. Achieving our goals makes us even stronger, and we begin to create an upwards spiral in our ability to create better lives for ourselves.





A developed intuition is crucial in order to function in a high-tech world. We can now get more information in a split second that we can ever use. It is more important than ever to be able to determine the value of the information we receive, and know if that information will be helpful to us. The intellect alone is not very effective in this high tech world. However, we can choose to develop our intuitive abilities, which allows us to make immediate decisions that are always in our best interest. Intuitively we can know. The intellect can only think or use reason and logic, which is much too slow for the new world where we find ourselves.


What is important? Recently I read an article about several people who were now billionaires many times over. They were young and had made an enormous amount of money as a result of technology.


However, the article said they were all severely depressed and could find no meaning to life. If you could be granted one request for your life, what would you ask for? Most of us would probably ask for happiness. When it comes down to it, the pursuit of happiness is one of the strongest drives we have as human beings. Have we been looking in the wrong direction for our happiness?


The technology we now enjoy is a major evolutionary step for us as a society. Technology seems to exist outside ourselves. It represents an outwards direction- pointing to a world beyond ourselves, a place where we seem to focus most of our attention. We have gained outer success, but what about what is more important within us.




Technology and everything in the outer world is only a means for us to use in our growth. It is the inner development that makes life really worthwhile. The self-actualized person functions well in the outer world because he knows both the inner and the outer worlds. Understanding how they relate to each other, he recognizes what is important. He has conquered fear, which allows him to feel peaceful, whole and complete regardless of what appears to be happening in the outer world. He knows that either world can be changed from within himself.

The soft stuff- high touch- is actually where the power lies. We usually think of high touch as our relationship to other people- the ones that help us to keep from getting lost among all of the machines and mechanical routines in our lives. High touch most importantly refers to our relationship with ourselves.


We have the power we need right within ourselves to create our lives to be just the way we want them to be. What kind of life will you create? It is all a matter of choice. By developing your intuition you will be able to just know, which is increasingly valuable in this age of information overload.
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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Guilty Of Music Piracy? Walk The Plank!



Piracy is the act of duplicating anything without prior permission and consent of the rightful owner.



Music piracy is nothing but the act of duplicating an original recording in an unauthorized manner in order to generate commercial gains. There is no consent in any form, from the rights owner of the recording. Piracy has forced many an upcoming artist to shut shop, and does not give artistes the recognition and money that they deserve to get. Record companies lose revenue and face heavy financial losses because of piracy.

Pirated copies of music are usually a compilation of several tracks of the performing band or artiste and are available in the market in CDs, Cassettes and DVDs. The advancement in technology and the availability of this technology to the public, especially the pirates has led to a dangerously high increase in the flow of pirated music in the market.
The internet is helping the growth of piracy?



When is the last time you wanted to download a track from a torrent site on the internet? Well, this is an act of supporting piracy, and in some countries, where copyright infringement is a big issue; you could be committing an offense. The extensive reach of the internet throughout the world, the inability to police the net effectively, and the humongous number of users the internet has, has indeed made the internet a haven for pirates. Pirates no longer find the need to burn music on scores of music CDs or DVDs, pack, and finally smuggle them, to be sold on the streets. All a pirate has to do is buy the original CD, rip the tracks from it, and upload it to his website on the internet. A few links around, and within days, his website will be flooded with traffic, most of whom only want to download the song.


Some pirates even sell the music for cheap rates! They end up making money on a bulk scale. When this is repeated for thousands of songs, they eventually build up a download library of sorts, and end up making enormous amounts of illegal money. Some sites also use illegal downloads as a tool to increase their website traffic or to gain popularity and make money advertising. This is also illegal and constitutes music piracy. Some people also have doubts regarding the use of P2P software to "share" music. If the music being transferred via the P2P file sharing network is not copyright protected, then it is perfectly legal. However, transfer or download of copyrighted music via P2P networks is illegal, as P2P facilitates the unauthorized distribution of the music, and it is done without prior authorised permission from the record label or artiste.

I urge every independent aratist to properly copyright their material as they may (already) be losing out big-time and losing out legally if not copyrighted.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Internet Radio





Independent music relies on alternative means to promote alternative music, since the idea is to eschew the standard music industry models of promotion. Independent music therefore has created it's own record companies and ways of doing things. It relies a lot on radio stations and websites on the Internet, for one thing.
There have been many things going on with this side of the business model that the average listener has, perhaps, been unaware of. For example, Sound Exchange recently decided that radio stations on the Internet should be held accountable for royalties and retroactively.
Naturally, there were parties who had disagreements about the fairness of this. On one hand, it seems like the fair thing to do for independent artists. On the other hand, the amount of royalties due from major providers of Internet radio such as Pandora would be in the millions of dollars and, for smaller Internet radio broadcasters, this would threaten to wipe them out.
A bill known as the Internet Radio Equality Act was introduced and rallied for, but the net end result of all of this was that the price of being a broadcaster went up.
It would seem that, sadly, the Internet is just absorbing the old business models and that these ways of doing business are what makes it difficult for the average listener to find and listen to new music, new independent rock and other alternative music.
Another example of this is that many Internet radio stations are so purely business that they charge the artists for airplay. The artists either pay a one time fee for airplay or can purchase a certain number of plays. This, of course, inflates the idea of just how popular the artist really is.
Even by voting, such as is done on some radio stations and music websites, the artist or band can more or less 'stuff the ballot box..'


Even though the consensus seems to be that the day of the critic is over, and it is true that they can often be wrong. Perhaps the need for reliable, knowledgeable sources to provide good music reviews is what is needed once again.