A Sense of Self in Everyday Life

A Sense of Self in Everyday Life What can a retired university professor tell you about your life, that you have never thought about? What do you have in common with Socrates, Rose Cherney and Aaron Swartz? How would your life have been different if you had married someone from another country? If your children had been born in Africa? Or if Neymar and the National Soccer Team of Brazil became a principal topic of your conversation? Before you fade into the oblivion of your personally selected music on Last.fm, stop for a minute. There are some topics that you will enjoy thinking about and could have been (can be…) important aspects of your own life. Nicholas Carr explained, in The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, that: “Computer systems are not, at their core, technologies of emancipation. They are technologies of control. … They will, to use a cliché that happens to be true, know more about us than we know about ourselves.” Let’s beat them at their own game! One thing is sure, the more you know about you, the better you will be able to plan, manage and enjoy life. But this is not a “self help” guide; it’s more like a Saturday morning conversation between two good friends. And it can change the way you think about yourself. David G. Francis, Ph.D.