[LINK] XML isn't evil, just misunderstood

[Stilgherrian]

On 09/11/2008, at 12:05 AM, Darryl (Dassa) Lynch wrote:
> I believe there comes a time when the advancement outstips the  
> advantages
> gained.  I'm fast approaching the point where I don't feel any need  
> to keep
> on top of the current trends.  I am getting to the point where the  
> benefits
> of maintining current knowledge is not worth the effort and we are  
> quickly
> reaching a crux point where the advances in technology are the  
> reason there
> are so many downgrades  in other areas of our  society.


I wonder whether this is driven by a personal internal life-clock  
rather than that "the world is going too fast". Just like there are  
triggers which say "this leg is long enough now, time to stop  
growing", there's a point where the brain changes to say "you should  
stop changing and absorbing new things now, you have learned what your  
tribe needs", and it subsequently takes more "need" for you to "want"  
to learn something.

Like anything evolutionary, perhaps there is a spectrum of neophilia  
to neophobia in the population, so that if the pace of change a  
society faces increases then the neophilia genes can be expressed  
more. And vice versa. Maybe this can be detected on the fly, just as  
kangaroos can "decide" to breed or not breed depending in the climatic  
conditions.

I've often wondered this because I seem to always have friends younger  
than myself. I feel that when most of my contemporaries hit about 30yo  
they stopped learning or thinking new things... they "settled down" to  
use a popular phrase. But society needs people who are continually  
looking at new things, and perhaps I'm one of them.

This sort of relates to a blog post I saw the other day which talked  
about "Delayed sleep-phase syndrome" (DSPS), .e. the fact that some  
people more naturally wake at noon and hit the sack at 4am http://nickholmesacourt.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-nocturnal-habits-explained-by.html 
  ... I posited in a comment that calling it a syndrome made it sound  
like something was wrong" when perhaps it was just evolutionary good  
sense to have humans with a range of natural patterns in the gene pool.

I think the "many downgrades in other areas of our society" is just  
SNAFU. ;)

Too thoughtful too early. I does not has DSPS.

Stil


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