lunes, 23 de agosto de 2010

Intelligent environments

The tipping Point

The tipping point

The mozart effect

The Social Networks Trend

Internet is one of the most used tools that mankind has developed. This tool is actually used to chat, transfer files, enterprise applications, banking applications, shop, sell, and now meet people or be in touch with all the people that you know.

The best example of this is the Social Networks, but what is a social network in Internet?

A Social Network is a web based social structure made up of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.

There are a lot of examples of these social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, Hi5, MySpace, Badoo.

Personally, the success of this trend is the spread factor. Thanks to Internet Internet Social Networks have become one of the biggest trends in the global society.

But there are good aspects and bad aspects related to this trend.I will enumerate some of them. One positive aspect is the long distance communication among people. The increase of social interaction (even if the interaction is in a virtual way) improves communications among organizations, companies, and groups with everybody who is in the social network. However, we have some negative aspects as the loss of real social interaction, the increasing fear to this real interaction among humans, the increasing number of obese people due to their lack of exercising, and the increase of Internet addiction as well. Social networks are very useful depending on the way they are used, so it is up to us if we want to take advantage of this trend.

The Monasticism

Monasticism

Monasticism is a way of life in which the person goes far from the outside world and dedicates his/her life to spiritual exercises. The word monasticism comes from the Greek monos that means alone, according to the explanation given in the last paragraph this complements the real meaning of the word.

People who practice this way of life are called in the Christian tradition monks or brothers for males and nuns or sisters for women. The places in which they live are called monasteries for monks and convents for nuns.

It is important to note that the Christian religion is not the only religion that has this kind of practice. Also religions like Buddhism has their own kind of monks and nuns; these are called Bhikkhu for males and Bhikkhuni for females. The real translation of Bhikkhu is “beggar”, this is because the Bhikkhus only live with the minimum of materials possessions.

Another example of monasticism in different religions can be the Hindu monks; they are called Sannyasa, as well as other religions they offer their votes to chastity, poverty, and prayer.

In some monasteries or convents there is a big difference between the monastic life a century ago and the monastic life in the 21^TH century. One hundred years ago the monk used to live in castles with a minimum of external contact only dedicated to serve God and work for themselves because they said that the good that they provided to society was the prayer for all humans.

However, nowadays this situation has changed. It is true that this kind of monasteries that I mentioned before still exists; but now monks and monasticism in general are more open to help society, to be an example but a practical example of life.

An instance of this is the Salesians monks and priests; they offer their life, and votes for the young people and work for their future and life.

I think that this is the type of monastic life that should be practiced because this helps to improve society and the life of many people that need it.