I saw a post about work/personal life balance on http://positivesharing.com/ where a comment was posted saying:

Sorry I just don’t get this!! Work is work play is play. I cannot stand it when people “decorate” their cube etc. this is not kindergarden it is a place of work treat it as such.

Grow up! This constant moaning from people really annoys me. If you are not happy at your Job leave. How about this for a motivation to do your job, your SALARY!!

Look at people in the third world and their plight and get some perspective! Be glad you have a Job!

From there the question was asked…

Why do we want to be happy at work? Why is it not enough to go to work and get paid for it? Why do we want work to be more engaging, playful and fun?

My response:

To say that work is work and play is play is either overly simplistic or not simplistic enough. I would rather simplify this by saying “Life is life”. Sometimes your life is about work and sometimes it is about play, but it is unrealistic to completely seperate your work and personal life. The only way as a IT professional for me to keep my work life completely out of my personal life is to not have a job and the only way to keep my personal life out of my work life is to not have friends, hobbies, hopes, dreams, etc.

Follow the conversation here.

Thinking of technology and the World Cup, here is another opinionated segment.

I think the concept of absolute fairness is a black hole; a place where common sense is corrupted into political correctness. We do not enforce an even playing field today in competitive sports. For example, some kids have better health care or can afford a better trainer.

The question to my mind regards the impact of these ’smart shoes’. Is there a significant improvement to a runners ability? Does it reduce the chance of injury? In my opinion the point of competition is for human beings to spur themselves to greater heights by comparing their achievements to others. If this is the point and smart shoes measurably improve runner performance then there is a case for them to be banned, the case that this is a competition of humans, not humans and machines.

It is an interesting problem that we have not dealt with on an emotional and ethical level. If we make judgment calls about what counts as unfair and what does not, then we risk losing the objectivity that fairness is built on. If we make blanket statements about not allowing ‘enhanced’ humans compete, how do we deal with the kid that has the aural implant to allow him to hear or the chip in his brain to control epilepsy. This kind of conflict of which science fiction blockbusters are made.

[tags]competition, fairness, techology[/tags]

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

- Herbert Simon, “Computers, Communications and the Public Interest”

[tags]quote,attention[/tags]