Problems of Digital Technology

Personal Privacy:
Since our personal data are continuously being collected for commercial and governmental purposes, our privacy is diminishing.  Once our personal information is on the web, it remains there forever.
Surveillance Technology:
Tiny cameras, microphones, and web tracking and recording where our cell phones are...all these continue to improve with exponentially decreasing cost of storage and processing.  Our lives are being recorded digitally with or without our knowing it.
Security:
We must be aware of potential cyber-attack and cyber-warfare at all levels, individuals, corporations, and governments.
Copyright:
It is now possible to make unlimited copies of digital material and distributed them throughout the world at no cost.  Copyright and fair use are being replaced by licensing, and digital rights management
Patents:
With more and more computer devices controlled by software, how to protect the legitimate interests of innovators and researched patents?
Resource Allocation:
Those who already have the allocation (big telecom companies) have a great advantage.
Jurisdiction:
With information traveling everywhere, business and social practices may be legal in one jurisdiction but illegal in others.
Control:
Individuals want to limit the control from governments and companies; but the playing fields are far from levels.

Source:

Brian W. Kernighan.  D  Is for Digital –What a Well-Informed Person Should Know About Computers and Communications.  Published by DisforDigital.net; 2011.  ISBN-13: 978-1463733896

ISBN-10: 1463733895

Meditation, Self Examination and Self Reflection

Mind training and meditation are fundamentally self examination and self reflection.  Indeed, they aim at improving oneself spiritually in order to develop wisdom. 

In Buddhist contemplation, the practitioner observes minute changes in his/her body, feelings (sensations), thoughts, and all phenomena (internal and external) from second to second as long as s/he is awake.  This observation practice helps to develop a detachment attitude necessary to investigate all phenomena, and to cultivate an awareness of the unstable, hence empty, nature of reality.  Gradually, after years of mind training and observation, the practitioner's view of all phenomena will be fundamentally transformed.  S/he will see things as they really are.  S/he is no longer trapped in the clouds (veils) of wrong views so common among human beings.

In Buddhism the cultivation of the right view is the first and foremost condition for spiritual development.  It is certainly difficult to develop a view against that of  the multitude.  That's why genuine Buddhists are actually those who go against the flow.  They see things quite differently from others, because they see the true nature of reality.

Searching

In the vast blue sky
You and I, two lone lost birds
Searching for each other.