Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Time - Frozen in
I have recently discovered my fetish with Time. That of which we all have only a limited amount. In fact, I have two festishes with Time.
Time - the mother of all goods and services?
In the ra-ra of my daily life, I come across many new corporate guru thinking - ranging from value innovation to the 2 second rule of advertising, etc. Since the 60s, these corporate management thinkers have churn and re-churned, combined and mixed new ideas with old, creating whole new school of thinking every other month. Despite all the different axioms and rules that the gurus spout in their little bibles of management and profit-making, I have been thinking that Time is the mother of all goods and services. This is simply because we all have limited lifespans, and that is something which we have little control over. And because we have so little control over it, we seek perpetually to have control over it, through survival and the best use of Time - whatever little we have.
This leads to two key thoughts - extending our Time, and making sure our Time here is of high quality. For example, eating helps us to stay alive, thus allowing us to live one more day. And because we live for one more day, we might as well eat well so that our limited Time here is not spent in vain. I can go on, but I think you get the gist.
Frozen in Time
My second fetish with Time has more to do with what I have been up to recently in terms of artistic exploration. For about a year plus, I have been reflecting on the difference between still images such as paintings and moving images in all its different forms. And I have somewhat come to admire the beauty of still images as they are able to capture the essence in Time, life frozen in time. Of course, moving images are interesting too, they have another dimension, etc, but the beauty of still images is precisely its lack of Time, at a Time when we all have so little Time. We are all simply so busy - juggling our lives between the MSN messenger, the word document, that web page that our friend just sent us, sipping a nice cup of caffeine and trying to make sure that the teacher or our boss is not checking in on us!
The hour is late, and it is time to lay. Good night.
Time - the mother of all goods and services?
In the ra-ra of my daily life, I come across many new corporate guru thinking - ranging from value innovation to the 2 second rule of advertising, etc. Since the 60s, these corporate management thinkers have churn and re-churned, combined and mixed new ideas with old, creating whole new school of thinking every other month. Despite all the different axioms and rules that the gurus spout in their little bibles of management and profit-making, I have been thinking that Time is the mother of all goods and services. This is simply because we all have limited lifespans, and that is something which we have little control over. And because we have so little control over it, we seek perpetually to have control over it, through survival and the best use of Time - whatever little we have.
This leads to two key thoughts - extending our Time, and making sure our Time here is of high quality. For example, eating helps us to stay alive, thus allowing us to live one more day. And because we live for one more day, we might as well eat well so that our limited Time here is not spent in vain. I can go on, but I think you get the gist.
Frozen in Time
My second fetish with Time has more to do with what I have been up to recently in terms of artistic exploration. For about a year plus, I have been reflecting on the difference between still images such as paintings and moving images in all its different forms. And I have somewhat come to admire the beauty of still images as they are able to capture the essence in Time, life frozen in time. Of course, moving images are interesting too, they have another dimension, etc, but the beauty of still images is precisely its lack of Time, at a Time when we all have so little Time. We are all simply so busy - juggling our lives between the MSN messenger, the word document, that web page that our friend just sent us, sipping a nice cup of caffeine and trying to make sure that the teacher or our boss is not checking in on us!
The hour is late, and it is time to lay. Good night.
