The Corporations of the World

It turns out that my cell phone account can now be upgraded with a new two-year contract. At first I was quite excited to get a new cell phone but my search for which model to get has ruined my excitement. Why? Greed. There are two cell phones I will use as an example.

My carrier offers one of these cell phones for $80 and the other for $100 out the door. The $80 phone is wonderful - it browses the Internet like a PC, it has tremendous e-mail and business capabilities, and it can run high bandwidth applications easily. Obviously it is a high-end and somewhat expensive phone. The base price on the phone (before contract discounts) is over $400. The $100 phone is far less capable and is only given a more trendy name and color. Why ask $20 more for a phone with a base price far less? Greed.

It has been my experience that most people who are more concerned with popularity, trendiness, and style than values, honor, and compassion are less inclined to "think things through." My cell phone carrier seems to have noticed this too and overcharges their customers who shop for trendy rather than valuable phones - sometimes by a lot. In the past, this would have been called "taking advantage of someone."

Nearly every major corporation now-a-days seems to have no problem taking advantage of their customers. Auto dealerships are another example. The service department at my dealership quoted me at $220+ to change one of my headlight bulbs. They also told me that it was extremely likely that they would also have to replace the ballasts, control center, and/or another part. This was much more common than just the bulb going out, they said. I called around and talked to another professional and they quoted me at under $170 and told me that they has never seen anything but the bulb going out on my model of car. Was the dealership being dishonest with me? Of course I cannot prove it but such experiences are not uncommon and I am sure that you, the Reader, have had similar experiences.

Another corporation charges $50 for an item that costs $17 to manufacture, distribute, and stock. That same corporation charges almost $6 for a small battery that costs about 50 cents to get to the peg in the store. Why? Dishonest greed. Where does that money go? A great portion of it goes directly into the pockets of a very few people at the top levels of the corporate bureaucracy.

Do not misunderstand me - those in higher positions in a company do deserve higher salaries. However, when the head of a company literally makes as much per day as the average employee in their company will make in ten years, something is wrong. When the net salary of a CEO could feed every person in almost any country in Africa for a year, something dishonest or immoral is going on.

Please add any similar experiences you have had in the comments section.

The Wonder of the Wide Web

While working on my family website earlier today, I began a discussion with my Grandmother about the Internet. My mind is still rolling around the impression I have of how tremendous the Internet is! She was born in 1941. In her words, "Even telephones amaze me - that I can pick up a telephone and talk to Jason in Iraq just amazes me." Then it hit me - the Internet is not just a way to communicate words one with another. The Internet allows us to exchange who we are. This includes our personalities, ideas, motivations - our very selves.

How can this be? Never before in human history has a method of communication existed that allows a person to share text, audio, visual, and (now) emotion. How do we share emotion on the Internet? It used to take a lot of skill to bring emotion into the written word. Even with pictures, no author could express emotion without a certain degree of training or talent. Now a simple emoticon can express emotion. It takes little or no training or talent and requires only a minimal investment of time.

So, not only is the world connected more completely and quickly than ever before, it is connected more deeply and expressively. How will this change the world in the long term? We have only seen the creation of the ability and not fully the impact. It has only been around fifteen years since the public gained regular access to the Internet. It has been in common use even less a time than that. What will the world be like in fifty years? Who will become the leaders of the deeply connected world? Will we even know their name or just their screen name? Might "holyanne8745" one day be elected president? Doubtful. But holyanne's power to influence who will become the president might be tremendous.

Use this new power wisely, Reader. The world may one day depend upon it!

Discovery

I've just discovered that I can e-mail posts onto my blog from my cell phone! This will allow me to do more blogging than I otherwise would have done. The posts will not be able to be especially long because it takes longer to enter text using a cell phone but they should be interesting as they will be created "on location."

In one of my next entries, I will do a brief sketch of who I am. While I am no unusually special person, I do think my life is somewhat interesting and filled with many unique experiences. However, this blog is presently a way for me to express myself through the written word. I do keep two written journals - a personal journal (pertaining to experiences and events) and a study journal (pertaining to my study of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and other scriptural things). This blog will be my way to write about issues and topics which I feel are important. These might include current events, politics, science, philosophies, school, and other random outbursts ad nauseum.

My hope in the Reader is that they will enjoy reading the posts and that those posts will provide a seed to pondering. If there is one message I have to the world, it is that we must increase the amount of pondering we participate in. Pondering brings fuller understanding, stronger mental self-control, and greater recall ability. Therefore: ponder, Reader, and do it often and with focus. Think about things instead of only reacting to them. Examine yourself, others, ideas, and beliefs. Agree with something only after you have considered and accepted it. Otherwise life will become an unchanging string of actions based on prejudices gained in earlier years.

Greetings!

Hello there, Reader! Welcome to my first blog. I am a little unsure how this will pan out - I do not spend a lot of time on the computer so these entries might be somewhat far and few between. They should be interesting, however, and hopefully entertaining for you and me!

The name "Ergodic Quanta" refers to the idea that this blog is composed of many small pieces which all tend to be related in some random ways. Similar subjects will return again and again but in no obvious pattern. Hence the use of the terms "ergodic," which implies random repetition (as it were), and "quanta," which implies many small parts.

To learn a little about me, feel free to e-mail me or just read my profile. Thanks for participating and have a wonderful day or night, whichever applies to you presently.