Friends on xanga who are graduating this month, how will you deal with SINGULARITY? The incredible explosion of technology, shared knowledge, and computing power on this exponential curve up, up and away. (click on the graph). 

I have lived in the lower and middle part of this curve:
When I was in grade school, handwriting was a key skill because that was how people communicated, by writing to each other.
In high school, I had to ask my mom to teach me typing, since that was a skill reserved to women who served as secretaries for the men who ran things. Not taught to guys.

When I began working, I brought my slide rule and book of logartithmic tables for calculations. A year or so later I paid 2 weeks salary to buy my first electric calculator. I was amazed!

“Long distance” phone calls? Rarely made. A call from coast to coast cost a day’s wage.

Computers were huge animals in a back room. My only interface was through a service window where I submitted pages of numbers which a female clerk typed onto cards that were fed into the computer. Results came the next day: 18″ wide paper bound into thick reports.

So that was then, only a couple decades ago. At the lower end of the singularity curve. This is now. I can hardly imagine what we will face as we progress from today up this rapidly steepening curve.

Can you imagine where we will be in 2045, a mere 34 years from now? When computing power is projected to “surpass the brainpower of all human brains combined?” What will we do with our power? What will our world be like? Will we still know how to handwrite a letter?

“Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”  —  Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa speaks about building our spiritual life – day by day – by being faithful in the small things that we face every hour of every day along our life’s path.  

Here are some ideas from Phil Humbert. These build on Mother Teresa’s wise words by showing how attention to small steps can also make a huge difference in other parts of our life:

“We have dreams and goals, we want “more” and we hope the future will be better than the present. We want great things for ourselves, and even better things for our children. And yet, we forget that every day–right now as we read this — we are creating our future.

Every day, our actions take us slightly closer to our goals, or we end up one day further away. Every day, we move in the direction we choose to go, or we drift that much further with the wind and current, the ordinary pressures of life.

Here are five steps Humbert believes are vital to creating our future:

1. First, we have to be clear about our desires. Write our goals down, whatever they are. Talk about them! Define and refine our vision. Whatever we want, we must be specific and take charge!

2.  Second, claim our power. We have enormous personal power. We make many Choices every day. We Choose how to use our time. We Choose how to spend our money. We Choose our friends, skills and aspirations. We must use our power!

3.  Third, have a plan. We are unlikely to transform our life or achieve any major goal without a clear, on-going strategy. Life takes time! We must have a plan that, day by day, step by step, will take us toward our desire.

4.  Fourth, get the support we need. Whatever we want, there are books, people, classes and environments that will help us “get there.” Surround ourselves with support!

5.  Fifth, be who we are! Stand up for our values and move in the direction we want to go. Take daily action, and persist. We don’t have to be rude or radical, but we do have to be “captain of our ship.” Day by day, we must take action. Make adjustments. Change the details. Try. Try again. Try until.

We truly can have the future we desire, if (day by day) we sail our ship in the direction we want to go.”

In this same way, we can also build our spiritual life, step by step, choice by choice, day by day, as Mother Teresa shows us.

College Memories…

My junior year abroad at L’Universite de Fribourg in Switzerland. We students hear this bridge is built by the same person who designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. So we call it “Le Pont Eiffel”. It spans a valley in French-speaking Switzerland. A couple years after graduation, I return to Switzerland and walk over this same bridge with the young lady who would become my wife…

College Memories…

My junior year abroad at L’Universite de Fribourg in Switzerland. We students hear this bridge is built by the same person who designed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. So we call it “Le Pont Eiffel”. It spans a valley in French-speaking Switzerland. A couple years after graduation, I return to Switzerland and walk over this same bridge with the young lady who would become my wife…