Week 1.2

Study Theobald’s question of „mind-quake“, find a real-life example and describe it
Pick one of Handy’s paradoxes, find a good real-life illustrative case and decribe it
Pick one of Castells’ features of network society and write a short analysis

Robert Theobald talks in his study about changes that mean changes for every generation. To look at the former Soviet Union countries they experienced a big mind quake. During that time you didn’t have the freedom to do what you want and there wasn’t even a possibility to dream about it. Most people didn’t know there was any other way. When we accomplished independence big changes came and everybody just couldn’t adjust. They wanted things to stay the way they were before and therefore missed out on their own development and different experiences.

The paradox of aging- inevitable but also at an old age we have the need to do something, a reason to wake up in the morning. From my experience I have seen teacher who still work at a very old age. Most of them are also very good teachers- they have a lot of experience and therefore know how to teach the best way. Unfortunately there is a downside to that, many teaching methods and communication ways for training have changed completely from their studying times but they refuse to modify their skills. They won’t let younger educators to advise them because they think they know better. The outcome of that is that the students are not happy and the teacher is not satisfied with the results.

Week 2.2

Pick a blocking software package and blog your experiences.

I chose the market leader in the US- Cyber Patrol
I have never had experiences with such programs before; when I was a child we were not aware of the threats of the all mighty internet.

I was impressed with the program, everything was clear and easy to handle. It is important that it is logical as all parents might not have many experiences using different programs. In default it had automatically all the dirty words in English set on forbidden. There was also a possibility to add words in any other language that you then could not search for. I think it is something that everybody should use until your child is in a certain age.

Week 1.1

Read Pekka Himanen’s paper "Challenges to the Global Information Society" and write a blog review.

In his paper Himanen points out the global trends of today’s information society. He has selected three aspects based on a geographical position- USA, Europe and Asia. He characterizes the regions and brings out the problems that they already have or will occur in the near future. Unfortunately it was very familiar to hear that Europeans protect only their own interests and envy those who have it better. Himanen also talks about a forth scenario- the almost perfect one.

I believe the last scenario could be doable or at least we should aim that way. Thanks to IT, people get their work done faster and therefore they should be valued more. For an example a good way to show that is to compromise with your employee about working hours on Friday (instead of 18:00 you get off 16:00).

Himanen emphasizes how important it is to leave room for creativity and innovation. I strongly believe in that, even from my own experiences I can say if I have the freedom to use my imagination for some tasks the result is much better. In conclusion I am satisfied with my work and the company is happy. In Estonia the last couple of year’s innovation has been a popular topic and I hope managers have taken it into consideration. Estonia might step closer to the new information society with the perfect values but we still have million steps before the goal.