You know, someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.
With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.
They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear. And we know we can’t do this by ourselves.
It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation.
And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.
This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.
Tag: future
Embrace the Internet Already!
Dear Newspapers and Television Networks, the fact that I can’t get everything you offer for free on the internet at the same time, or earlier, than when you print or broadcast it is unfortunate in this day and age.
Newspapers, most of you are starting to get it. But you’ve been slow on the uptake. The pay walls were not smart (Come on WSJ!). I understand you’ve yet to figure out how to make enough money from your websites to cover costs. That, coupled with declining print subscription rates is doubly bad.
My suggestion is this: stop paying reporters to write content for you. Cut that part of your staff. It’s got to be a significant portion. Instead, make the people your media. Tap the collective mind, and hire a smaller herd of editors to refine submissions. I’d be surprised if the contributions were not overwhelming. Exposure would be compensation.
It is here that we can take a page from Twitter’s book. At the rate the world turns today, printed news is old news. In fact, CNN is often old news. During an event nearly anywhere on the globe, search for relevant keywords on Twitter’s search and I assure you that you’ll be more in the know than anyone reading a newspaper or watching cable news.
Broadcasters, you, too, need to accept the web. I can deal with the commercials you splice into your online offerings. I get that your linear brains see that as the obvious way to do things. There were commercials on TV, so there should be commercials on the internet, right? Wrong, but I forgive you for the time being.
There can’t be a delay and the content needs to be high definition. Further, you need to flip your current stance and make the Internet your primary focus and television your secondary focus. New goes online because online is where we find new things now. That’s where it will be shared on Facebook, talked about on Twitter, and recut for YouTube.
Stop showing kids toys they can’t play with. Instead, give them the toys early and let them play and share them. Embrace that the kids may find new uses for the toys you didn’t think of instead of being scared of such an outcome. The worst case scenario is that the toy sucks. Best case scenario – the kids love the toy and do your marketing for you. Do yourself a favor and loosen up a little!
Future Creep
There is a NYT blog post titled, “I Love It, It’s Perfect, Now It Changes” that has received over one thousand comments about great products that people love, but have been discontinued due to “feature creep.”
Feature creep is a “phenomenon generated by market forces, media hype and twitchy retailers [that] creates a cycle in which products are constantly improved even if they don’t need to be.”
After reading about 100 of the comments, it seems that what people really miss is simplicity, dependability, and familiarity. A lot of the commentators don’t like additional features, whether the feature actually adds value or is purely extraneous.
I have felt this way at times. For example, camera phones. Until the phones came with a camera that offered one megapixal capabilities, I saw no use for them. The pictures looked grainy, and although they were a novelty that surely sold more phones, they were more of an annoyance than anything.
This all reminds me of a book I bought, but have yet to read, titled, “The Paradox of Choice.” I saw the author speak and was intrigued by the concept that having more choices often makes out lives more difficult. Instead of choosing between three pairs of jeans, we have hundreds to choose from. One of the pairs will fit perfectly, but at what cost?