My Generation

"[...] the cold truth is that not all of us are brilliant, we are not all big thinkers. Not everyone's TED talks will change the world , some of us will just dissipate into the ether."

I've chosen this sentence not because it is very profound, but because I regularly watch TED talks on the internet. And what Clare says is actually really the truth: every single one who comes on that stage for his speech, which are all absolutely amazing by the way, thinks that he can or is changing the world. At least they think that they have a brilliant idea or project or did a honourable action. And some of them really do, but there are others which seem quite fluffy and superficial.

In my opinion, there's is nothing wrong about that. I appreciate people with ideas, ambitions and values, who strive for a goal and want to change the world. Almost any of them actually really do. I've seen with some exceptions only brilliant ideas, some of them with more others with less potential. But you recognize that these men and women standing on that stage had an original idea which they pursuit passionately.

I believe that such people are crucial for our society. They push the human race forward.

Here the links to some really great speeches (that maybe will change the world;p):

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/graham_hill_less_stuff_more_happiness.html

My Generation

„It’s hard to fully enjoy avoiding maturity if you’re worried that it’s more like maturity is escaping you.”

Obviously, young people do not face the truth. They pretend to live a life they have chosen, but in reality, “the situation has chosen them”. I can see the point in that statement. Of course, I do sometimes have such thoughts as well. I envy people for living an easy life but in fact, it is not enviable at all. For me, it would be fun not to work or go to school for a week or two, but when I think of being unemployed for a longer period, I would be desperate. Life would be boring and I would be worried about my future.

In my opinion, there are two types of young people. Maybe also a third, but those people are rare. The first category includes the lazy people who accept the current situation. They do not want to change something, even if they are unemployed; they look at the bright side and talk themselves into believing that they have chosen it. The second type is made up by people who adapt to the current situation. The article mentioned a girl who chose to study a subject in which she only has a slight interest. For me, those people put themselves behind their career. Studies, professions and therefore also money and reputation are more important to them than their own interests and happiness. The sad thing about this group is that they do not really have a choice. They decide what is best for them and from what they can benefit most. It is some kind of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”. Only people who can adapt to current situations can “survive” in society and especially economy. The third and last group includes, from my point of view, the luckiest people. These people chose a profession they like and earn enough money to be able to live.

Nowadays, young people have so many different opportunities, but sometimes, it is even harder because they cannot choose. The circumstances they live in force them to do something they actually do not like. Economy and society are unpredictable forces when it comes to life-changing decisions. Sometimes they only influence us, but they really can make the choice for us.

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Quote of article „my generation“ / „If I could go back again, I think I’d try … not going to college“

Since I was a little boy, everybody was telling me that I will need a good education to have a good job which allows me to have an independent life. As this has made some sense, I tried to do my best at school/university. For me, it definitely paid off, as I have a good job and can pay my bills by myself.

Unfortunately, not everybody who went to a college or university can say the same, especially in America. I was shocked when I read that 55.3 percent of people ages 16 to 29 do not have a job. Most of them are highly educated and looking for a possibility to start their career, as they have to pay back their student loan. But without having a regularly income, they are not able to become debt free.

With this background knowledge in mind, I can understand the guy who said: “If I could go back again, I think I’d try … not going to college”. However, I ask myself at the same time, what is going wrong in the American society and economy that this guy is regretting going to college. One cannot blame the recession as the only reason for this problem, as other countries are suffering as well from the recession, but they do not have such big problems with unemployed young people.

One of the problems are the student loans. Young people, who do not have rich parents, need to get a loan from a bank. As a consequence, students are broke when they finally graduate. They do not have time to find the best possible job, they have to accept the first job they get offered in order to earn money to pay back the loan. In Switzerland, the fees for going to universities are very low (approx. 1’000$/year), which means that young people do not have a large sum of debts after graduating. Therefore, Swiss are not in the need of accepting the first job they get offered.

Another problem, maybe even the bigger one, is the American economy itself. Compared to other Western countries, the USA seems to have a lot more trouble during this crisis. If this will not be fixed soon, do not ask me how they can do that, the rate of unemployment of young people will raise even more.

Twitter

Twitter: "In Silicon Valley, Twitter is already legend, one of those once-a-decade sure things, on the level of Microsoft or apple or Google or Facebook - that not only changes the nature of the world but eventually makes it hard to remember a world in which it didn't exist."

What I find astonishing about this statement (and about so many others in the tech world concerning this topic!) is that huge excitement about Twitter. It's difficult to argue against it, as it has certainly been one of the greatest success stories of start-up companies in our last decade, as the World Wide Web serves as an excellent breeding place for new internet platforms. But nevertheless there are so many people who don't even know what Twitter is! That's a phenomena that I've seen several times now. Twitter only seems to be popular among people of the IT branch. To tell you the truth, I know not one singe person of my circle of acquaintances who uses Twitter, compared for example to Facebook, where it seems that almost everybody uses it.

I use Twitter personally because it's a comfortable news source for me. Fast and short, from all the people and firms I'm interested in. But often the tweets are so short that you can't get much out of them. I would use twitter much more, if my friends would use it too. And that's the point were the social aspect comes in and and I must say, Facebook is, at least in our country, far superior in that.

Twitter

„Twitter as the most important measure of human history“

It comes as no surprise that the perception of the importance of an event is likely to change very quickly because our society is also constantly changing. Consequently, new methods are needed to measure these events. One of these is Twitter’s “tweets per second” (TPS), which is considered as today’s measurement of important happenings.

Although I must admit that the amount of tweets per second is a good indication of a special event, I do not think that it is the most important measure of human history. I doubt that all of the events with a huge amount of TPS are highly significant for human history. However, I do acknowledge that Michael Jackson and Beyoncé, both of whom broke a Twitter record, might be important for music history, but they might not necessarily be considered important for human history as a whole. Therefore, Twitter can be a good indicator to support the statement that something was important but it cannot be the only measure for the importance of an event.

On the other hand, if I think about the measurement of the significance of an occurrence, I cannot come up with a much better solution than Twitter. I do not think that a lot of technologies can gather the immediate reaction of the people all over the world and convert it to reliable statistics in a short amount of time. Since most of the people are tweeting regardless of the fact that nobody cares about their tweet, Twitter can easily get the numbers. Unlike other statistics, people are not asked actively to participate in a survey and therefore Twitter does not have to spend money to produce these statistics.

In conclusion, most of the times Twitter is rather useless to most of the people but this can change going forward. I even might have found one of many business opportunities for Twitter…

Twitter

Quote from the „Twitter article“: „But with more than 650 employees to support, and income projections for this year well below $200 miilion, it’s not yet clear how it gets from here to there.”

I’ve asked myself many times how these social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter can bring up the money to pay their debts. Twitter does not only have 650 employees who would like to get a salary, they need to pay their infrastructure like buildings, servers and electricity as well. As Twitter users don’t have to pay to be a member of Twitter, Twitter has to find another source for their income.

The article mentions that Twitter recently has raised $400 million and they used that money to buy out early investors. But what happens when they have to pay out these new investors? Do they again have to find new investors or will they be able to pay them by generating profit with their business? The only source of income which I could imagine is some sort of advertising, but I don’t think that they can add an advertisement directly in tweets as this would upset users. The only possibility to place advertisement would be on their webpage, but I have doubts that this could generate enough money to pay all their debts.

“I want to have that ‘aha’ moment” says the article at the end pointing out that Twitter has to come up with some good ideas. I’m very interested to see what ideas they can bring up.