Flat Screens for Time and Tests

Do you know what your mind does while you are sleeping? Once mine was for a walk with Mika Häkkinen, hand in hand. However there was a young lady who came and said that she would like to go with Mika. I let my hand free and watched them walking away. I felt very happy for them. That is how things should be, I thought. Haven´t met them ever since. Hope they lived happily ever after.

Sometimes my mind likes to take me back to school. The matriculation examination is approaching. I have passed all exams with flying colours, only the mathematics is left and I haven´t even taken part in the compulsory courses. Now I have to go to the teacher and tell him the terrible truth: No chances, no way. - You can imagine how happy I feel waking up in the middle of my present life that has nothing to do with school or mathematics and where everything looks more or less manageable.

Last night my mind decided to test me. I was asked how the researcher so-and-so defines meaning. I had no idea, because I had not read the book I should have. Anyhow I decided to take the test. My mind has obviously entered the internet age, because the test was given on four parallel screens.

I touched the first screen and saw a series of events on it. "Well there is meaning in that, of course, because everything carries meaning. But this obviously isn´t what that particular researcher means with meaning." Then I touched the second screen. That showed a series of events as well. The difference was that something was taken away from the picture. It was taken away and anyway it now had a meaning. The same occured on the third screen. "All right, I thought. The physical presence of the thing is not needed to give a special meaning. Meaning is something you have once learnt. " My answer was accepted. That particular researcher´s definition for meaning is that you learn them.

It is curious to think how seldom we think of meanings, of how they are given and how we continuously participate in various meaning making processes.

I have a friend who is active in water skiing. Active groups of water skiers in St Petersburg and Tampere have decided to start co-operation. In June they arranged a competition in St Petersburg and during this weekend another one here in Tampere. In addition to Russians and Finns there are participants from Latvia and Lithuania as well. Their goal is to build a competition of international importance.

I find their water skiing activity an exellent example of meaning making. We can choose any idea, in the same way as they have done, and start developing it. Or maybe, it is the other way round, the idea chooses us and we start to work to make it become something more or less concrete. Winnie the Pooh thinks that the originator is the idea: it is not that he would be hungry, they are the honey pots that are sending inviting messages to him. If you want to have a closer look at this discussion, you could read, for instance An Introduction to Social Constructionism by Vivien Burr (ISBN: 0-415-10405-X).

Winnie the Pooh points out an important matter when refering to the inviting honey pots. "/.../det finns tolv honungsburkar i mitt skafferi, och de har ropat på mig i timmar. Jag kunde inte höra dem ordentligt förut, för Kanin bara pratade, men om ingen säger något utom de tolv burkarna, Nasse, så kommer jag att veta, varifrån de ropar." (Hoff, Benjamin: Tao engligt Puh, ISBN: 91-46-15383-7)

Winnie the Pooh´s reasoning brings the ten-people-per-day concept under reconsideration. We need silence to hear the ideas when they are inviting us.

Another modification of ten-people-per-day idea is that talking to a total stranger could count two or three people you know well beforehand. You never know what kind of worlds a total stranger will invite you to.

I met Sergey at the water skiing competition. What he told about his normal life in St Petersburg opened a new world to me. I had no idea about algorithmic training before. Sergey is also an excellent pitcher. He knows how to pitch professionals and for lay people he has a special version of his company´s elevator talk.

I know now that algorithmic training makes it possible to chart the value differences between various stock exchanges at any moment. In a way his company sells time for a good price. Time, especially speed, has become an interesting commodity. "You can show people significant statistics and beautiful diagrams and they drop to sleep. But immediately when you start talking about speed, everybody is fully awake." Sergey said.

It would be very interesting to know how the concept of time will be changed in the becoming years. As regard to speed, does the world become a flat screen instead of being a globe? The Finnish summer night in June has a great potiential of speed. In july it is slowing down as if it took a special time off to smell the strawberries.