over the last couple of days, i’ve discovered TEDtalks, and the experience has been truly life changing. I often wondered about what it would have been like to have access to some of the greatest minds in the world, and to, potentially, life-altering idea’s. to hear them speak, to explain and put in their little quirks in the middle…

being in pakistan, that kind of outlet was only granted if i was lucky enough to chance upon someone remarkable. the chances of that happening, however were slim. not zero, but slim. i didn’t realize it back then, but i had one teacher for 3 years, whom i almost hated, but who was among one of those remarkable people.

now, TED has changed all that. it’s like almost overnight i have access to idea’s and thoughts that appeal to me but were always outside reach. Like Emily Livine’s talk about her theory of everything, where she introduces the trickster (something i discovered i share a lot of commonality with, but am continuously shunned for in my society. this video single handedly got me hooked onto ted btw).

Similarly, Jimmy Lee’s Wiimote experiments! Kevin Kelly’s the next 5000 days of the internet and the list goes on and on n on.

similarly, i’ve discovered Ignite. another platform to share idea’s on, but within a limited format of 5 minutes and 15 seconds per slide which automatically advance. it’s kind of like TED, but on steroids.

the explosion of all this information is starting to take it’s toll.. my addiction is back big time. the addiction to knowledge. at first, it was only blogs, but with blogs i had to filter out stuff, make context and generally do a hell of a lot of reading. though i still enjoy it, but this medium is.. well… much more visual.

when PTCL doubled their internet speed earlier this year, i never anticipated this would be the outcome. the most i was thinking about was streaming tv shows instead of downloading, but opening up a whole new world of information in such a visual sense was way way wayyy beyond my comprehension!

one of the side effects of all this new information is identfiying trends and threads within it. that’s part of what makes life as an engineer and a consultant all the more rewarding. i could take large amounts of data and synthesize context and meaning from it. doing it for a client, or to solve a specific problem is one thing, piecing together all this information from all over the place is a different arena and dimension all together.

needless to say, i’m loving it! and if i was full useless knowledge before, it’s about to get a whole lot worse :)