The Snow Cone Diaries
A Philosopher's Guide to the Information Age
by
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He was on this monstrous bridge. It didn’t connect one place to another place though, as bridges normally do. It just existed in space. In this magnificent, neverending sky. A sky that surrounds the bridge. A sky that surrounded everything. Charlie started at one point on the bridge, and he was compelled to traverse it. To cross it somehow. To get to the other side. But he couldn’t just cross the bridge. It wasn’t that easy. Yet at the same time it was. The only truth that exists in this Bridge place is that one must cross it. One must find a way. And so Charlie began his journey. Or had he always been travelling along this bridge? Crossing it eternally? The answer to this question was unclear to Charlie. In this dream state his conscious, thinking mind was muddy. He was just compelled to move forward. That’s all he knew. As he moved forward, he became aware that the bridge was far from finished. It was still being constructed. The traffic moves along though, people traveling along the bridge in one way or another. Charlie is not alone on the bridge in the immense sky. There are many lost souls traversing the Bridge. Some falling into the depths of the sky as they made their attempts forward. Some scrambling to and fro, struggling to keep their balance on the as yet unfinished wooden beams. At a certain point on the bridge thought, it becomes impossible to go any further. All the people stopped. All remain stagnant, awaiting the bridge to be finished. But Charlie went on, this unknown force propelling him forward. Propelling him forward to sure death. And yet he was not afraid. He was calm, and peaceful. And so he proceeded. There were a few that went before him, that were in front of him. He could sense that. He could make them out vaguely in the fog that enveloped them. But he tried to follow their footsteps, to keep his eyes on the seemingly distant figures while at the same time watching his footsteps carefully so as to avoid stumbling. Stumbling would not be good, clearly. For a moment his rational mind kicks in. Charlie doesn’t know why he’d be foolish enough to go forward, to go where there is no foundation, to step into a world of unbalanced and unfinished planks and boards, surrounded by this deep, endless sky of blue and clouds. But he presses on regardless, impelled by some unknown force. He just knew he had to move forward. The path started to become treacherous. The once sound concrete became instable wooden planks under his feet. It was no longer possible to see the ground below. The sky around him was a bottomless pit. But he must carry on. He must push forward and find a way across. “Across to what?”, he thought to himself. The boards and planks are temporary structures, that much is certain. The masses were not meant to come this way. But there are a few people making the same journey as Charlie, scampering around, trying to keep their balance amongst the sea of fear and uncertainty - the deep blue sky.
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About the Book
The content in this work is fiction, fiction in the sense that the main character through which the eyes of this metaphysical and philosophical journey is viewed, Charlie, is not a real character, nor are his counterparts and foils through which he explores various topics such as love, the meaning of existence or the origins of the cosmos and how our understanding of these abstract ideas have evolved since the dawn of civilization. But like any work of fiction, the characters do have some basis in real experience, from which of course nothing can be created. The intent of the work is to explore the foundations and evolution of knowledge and the boundaries between reason and faith, boundaries which from the author’s perspective are not quite as clear as some might have us believe. And the point of going through the exercise, the purpose as it were, is not only for the author to come to a better understanding of how all our modern branches of science hang together, how they have come to be given their socio-political and historical context, but also for others to share in his journey and perhaps learn something along the way. Since the birth of language and thought even, going back thousands of years and even prior to the dawn of civilization itself, mankind has attempted to answer two fundamental questions, questions that have spurred countless creative forces and branches of thought over the centuries; namely who we are and from whence we came. The answers to these questions, no matter what race, religion or creed the seeker might be, or what philosophy or religion they might adhere to, are inextricably linked to each other. This journey of trying to understand our place in the world, and the origins of the universe itself, is an ageless quest that in many respects distinguishes mankind from the rest of the creatures on the planet. Furthermore, this very same quest to answer the same questions fuels not only scientific development but also is the basis for theology and religion, both approaching the same set of questions with a different set of tools and with a different mindset but both trying to answer the same set of basic questions as to who we are and how we got here. From the author’s perspective, in order to answer these questions effectively in the Information Age, we should have at least some understanding of the history of our answers to these questions as they have evolved over time. For we all build our collective knowledge on those that have come before us, whether we recognize this or not. And in turn, that in building this bridge, a common metaphor used throughout the work, we must leverage the tool of metaphysics, a term originally coined by Aristotle but in the context of this work implies a level of abstraction that sits above physics as we understand it in today’s world but also provides a conceptual underpinning to all of the branches of knowledge that collectively make up our “understanding” of the world and out place in it. In doing so, it is the author’s hope that we can not only come to a more complete and fuller understanding of the answers to these basic human questions that have plagued mankind since time immemorial, but also at the same time perhaps develop a deeper understanding of the problems of life in the Information Age and how we might best approach them, or cope with them, in way that not only benefits ourselves as individuals but to society as a whole, to which our individual well-being depends upon whether or not we recognize it or not.
About the Author
The author was born and raised in New York City, the city that never sleeps and the Financial, and perhaps materialistic and capitalistic capital of the world. He got his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1993 in Business Economics and Ancient Studies, and after his undergraduate career spent two years on the professional tennis circuit trying to make it on the professional tennis tour, spending much of his time honing his craft (read getting his ass kicked) in Europe, which in today’s world is the epicenter of world class tennis. After what can only be categorized as an unsuccessful endeavor in making a living as a professional tennis player, he (re) entered the professional world, proceeded to pursue and ultimate acquire a Masters in Computer Science from New York University and has spent the bulk of the last 15 years or so in career in Software, starting initially as a software engineer and systems developer and working his way up the management ranks, contributing to the creation and growth of some of the world’s leading enterprise software and systems organizations, two of which were subsequently purchased by Oracle Software and continue to serve the Human Capital Management and Billing and Revenue requirements of some of the largest companies in the world. In the last few years, he has spent a good deal of time in the Insurance and Benefits business, working with a team of dedicated and brilliant insurance executives to develop and implement some of the most innovative and flexible benefit solutions for some of the largest companies in the world, developing significant expertise in Information Security and Compliance to complement his background in Software Development along the way, fields which incidentally have required him to become intimately familiar with the myriad of State, Federal and International legislation which governs the Insurance and Financial Services industry and Information Security in general, leaving him with considerable expertise in the field of Law, an unintended consequence of the evolution of his professional career in many respects but one that has left him with a deep respect, as well as perhaps an extraordinary cynicism, for our what can only be termed as our deep faith and reliance on the Law as the one and only solution to all conflict and dispute, leaving us here in the West with a legacy of litigiousness that is unparalleled in human history.