Information Overload: I need a Google NextGen

Have you ever felt that you have too much information floating in your head that you need to somehow store before you lose it all....I have had that sinking feeling one too many times in the last few years...Books and television give us ample amount of time to view and digest information. Its not the same with the web though. Google news, other news sites, emails, forwards, blogs, feeds, text messages, email lists, newspapers, magazines and their online versions have made this a world of information overload for some of us. Sometimes I am amazed that my brain does not fall in to an endless loop or a data overrun error and crash much like a computer.

To top of all the previously cited information sources, we also have the MOTHER of all Google. My plea and request to the millionaires @ Google is to stop enhancing the search methods, yes we all love information, who doesn't? But what we need now is Google NextGen, the information search engine that also synthesizes and summarizes it so that our brain and eyes have to deal with only the most important details not the Holy Grail on any given topic.

Now that I have that one out of my stomach, I am amazed at how much has happenned this week in my boring and dull life. I have learned and experienced a lot in a few days and it would be simply stupid not to write and retain it.

Started this week with the never ending saga of my life: To be or not to be? Background: I can't live with or without you! However, thats not the interesting part. Instead of indulging in self analysis I found energy and insights from outsiders.

1. Jerry Lo, a senior at Evergreen High School @ San Jose wrote in the Mercury News:
"
Fellow members of the ``MySpace generation,'' please listen to me. It may be a few years away, but before you pop the question or say ``I do,'' think about what you are getting yourself into.
When you get married you'll vow to be with that person ``through sickness and health,'' and, ``till death do us part.'' Let's try to understand our vows before we say them.
Do we want our children to have to live through the trauma of divorce? Do we really want our children to grow up with single parents?
"
These are some intelligent words from a young adult that we all can learn from.
Read Jerry's views @
When marriages crumble, children suffer


2. Next, by a chance skipping of channels I landed upon Discovery Travel at primetime 9 pm and found an amazing show Jeremy Piven's Journey of a Lifetime. Jeremy Piven is this real cute and funny guy you must have noticed for sure in John Cusack movie Serendipity, HBO series Entourage and a bunch of theatre plays. His journey is to India and no its not amazing because he went to India. The show is not your routine sight-seeing travel guide. Its a very personal journey that Jeremey lives out in his own style. He walks the streets of Delhi and Bombay, does yoga in Kerala, Himalayas and Hrishikesh; drives a Kinetic Honda moped in Southern India, rides a cycle rickshaw in Paharganj, Delhi and glides on a smooth water boat on the backwaters in Kerala. He enjoys his time at an orphanage in Mumbai, is consummed with appreciation for the Kathakali dancers who put peppers in their eyes to maintain red eyes matching their face colors during the dance performance and is agog with anxiety as he watches the wild monkeys at Lakshman Jhula in northern India. He found his personal connection in the form of an old Jewish lady who enjoys her small Jewish community in Kerala, the Kathakali dancer who had shared the same teacher as Jeremy at some NY acting school and a Sadhvi (holy woman/priest) of American origin who came to India 12 years back as a visitor and found her calling as a priest in India. The real deal were the pearls of wisdom Jeremy gleaned from a swamiji in Hrishikesh:
- Look at people around you, every one is trying to get their life back together, its all scattered in pieces......Look for peace inside you...you want peace in your life, not pieces!
- I as its written in English is a vertical bar, a a symbol of ego and the idea of self and selfishness. If you think as I you will always be unhappy...Try to bend your I from a vertical bar to a horizontal bar. Its akin to bending forwards and giving in to people and life. Thats where lies happinness: in bending, not in holding yourself straight up.

More learning about real life continues in the next blogging streak...