Kamiel Choi

You think fingers!

When I was a boy, I took violin lessons. I remember playing Vivaldi in a room with a blue carpet and high windows. The teacher listened and made remarks, most of which to the benefit of my musical development. One time however, the teacher, a woman who must have been in her early thirties, noticed ...

6 February, 2015

Kamiel Choi

fingers, violin

The good life

A Digital Genius

We live with a digital genius of 011001 months old. When any object with keys or buttons is within her reach, it's hers and all the buttons get pressed in an order that to me, her father still with one foot in the analog age, appears as random. Her fingers fly over the keypads from ...

28 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

apathy, Behavioural sciences, digital age, distraction, Miru, pedagogics, smartphone, toddler, toys

Miru

The Experience Economy

Years ago, our century had just begun, progressive voices heralded the transition from a product economy to an experience economy. Instead of selling cars, car companies told us in their advertisements that they were selling a "driving experience". Of course, we realized, the experience is everything. We go to restaurants in order to have a ...

25 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

economy, experience

Essays

Monetizing Facebook the Civilized Way

It took me a few weeks after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the public outcry for theoretical "freedom of speech", but today I arrived at a fresh idea. It pertains to this world's largest virtual territory, with more than a billion inhabitants - Facebook. Today, Facebook is a multi-billion dollar marketing machine. The money ...

25 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

conversation, developing world, facebook, monetization, social media

Essays, Resistance

Dialectical Hypocrisy

1. It's Sunday so I would like to describe the history of our civilization as the dialectical process of overcoming hypocrisy. I don't believe in interpreting historical development in a Hegelian way as the embodiment of a purely logical principle, and to be honest I lack the intellectual vigor to pursue such an endeavour. But ...

25 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

civilization, dialectic, hypocricy, Hypocrisy, Sociology

Essays, philosophy

Consolation

This is me eventually There is comfort in the thought The slope I climbed is not a slope It is a boundless space flat without horizons Directionless, unencumbered I am here Writing old comfort on new pages

18 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

Poetry

Do you have that too, dad?

Recently, I purchased a used Konica Hexanon prime lens with an aperture of 1/1.4 and I am enjoying the amount of light that it can take in. With such apertures, the field of focus becomes very thin, and objects really stand out. Because the camera takes over some of the routine work of our eye, ...

16 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

happiness

Miru

A Digital Class Divide?

I am an enthusiast of the digital age. I think its article for this discussion.[/ref], which turns into astronomical wealth. I leave the question of fairness alone. Whether it is sheer luck, access to capital, celebrity status, risk taking, or smartness that makes for the incredible success of the few, the status quo is that ...

6 January, 2015

Kamiel Choi

abundance, capital, digital class, inequality, net

Essays

Reading of Jeremy Rifkin: The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism

When a very experienced author like Rifkin presents his ideas on how the Internet of Things changes everything, we can expect an abundance of beautifully crafted sentences. Since the mind of a budding reviewer might suffer from scarcity thereof, I have decided to quote a lot from the book. Explorations of the topic of abundance ...

29 December, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Adam Smith, communications internet, Economic growth, Economic ideologies, Empathic Society, Jeremy Rifkin, peer-to-peer, The Empathic Civilization

philosophy, Reviews

New Year’s Resolution for this Blog

I haven't written on this place for too long. The reason seems to an unhealthy kind of perfectionism that has crept into my mind. The language, my own ramshackle version of English I am stuck with (because otherwise my audience would be decimated) - I fail to romanticize it anymore, I think it looks bleak ...

27 December, 2014

Kamiel Choi

bullshit, exclusivity, new year's resolutions, Philosophy, writer

The good life, writing

Drawing cows for Miru

Miru loves cows. When she sees a cow, or any animal that looks like a cow, she touts her lips and utters a long "mooo!" I don't know where her little obsession came from, but cows are the largest animals she knows thus far, and her first bovine encounter had been overwhelming. She fled into ...

8 November, 2014

Kamiel Choi

cows, cowspiracy, drawing, imagination

Essays, Miru

Collaborative Anti-Consumerism

The word "consumerism" seems to imply that the act of consuming is the essence of our being, something more profound than what existentialism or Freudianism were hinting at. I understand that pushing a shopping cart and loading it with things that we decide all by ourselves to pick from the shelves can occasionally give us ...

26 June, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Essays, Resistance

And (what if) I say, that it is this culture of excessive individualism that has created the constellation where "community" is perceived as some kind of higher purpose, and our "ego" as something low, something we need to be ashamed of. If community is our true value, the individual would be celebrated as the valuable ...

Pfffrt.

[series-miru] Pfffrt. Miru is now sixteen months, and she's adorable. I think I can't find the words for it, which is a wonderful irony because she is getting more expressive every day. I've been meaning to write this for a long time, and I have the feeling it might already be outdated because Miru is ...

24 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

memory, pleasure, slide, toddler

Essays, Miru, The good life

Aging with you

I want to see my hair turn grey while you are smiling at me I want to sit next to the sea with you, and kiss your temples every day I want to sense the slow decay of time, behind the windows of our place I want to drink the smiles from your face and ...

20 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

aging, old age

Essays, Poetry

Let’s call it a day

Suppose a respected scientific magazine would have written in October 1962 during the Cuba missile crisis, that a blow-up was inevitable, or even that the rockets were already in the air. Would the public just shrug it off and go about their business? But this is not the 1960s. In our "information" age, the intensity ...

20 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

doom, time capsule

Essays, Resistance

The Enemy we Need?

Starring: Corporations (or rather any constellation that has so much capital at its disposal as to develop the emergent quality of being able to ignore the disastrous "externalities" they cause - of not giving a shit about reality) We are entering a new phase of schizophrenia. In today's globalized world the military powers might still ...

8 May, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Business law, Coca Cola, Corporation, International relations

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

Oath of Hypocrisy

In medicine, doctors swear the Hippocratic Oath, promising that they'll use their abilities in the best interest of their patients. Whether or not that includes euthanasia doesn't matter here. The Oath is close to sacred and medical commissions can respond to its violation with severe punishment. When it comes to affairs of the mind, a ...

19 April, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Hippocrates, Hypocrisy, intellectual history, oath

Essays, philosophy

Countdown from Peak Child

I watched an entertaining and instructive talk by Swedish professor Hans Rosling the other day, because YouTube recommended this video. Mr. Rosling introduced himself as a dry statistics professor but did everything humanly possible to maximize the probability of laughter he induced among his mixed audience. Watch the first few minutes of his presentation and ...

3 April, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Ehrlich, gapminder, peak child, population growth, Rosling, Weisman

Essays, philosophy, Resistance

The Aura of Money

A little anecdote that showed me recently what is wrong with our money: We were eating out in an Indian restaurant, where they serve excellent vegetarian dishes, fresh naan-bread and aromatic rice. The portions were quite large, and we were enjoying the many flavours, while feeding some of the salat cucumbers to our one-year old. ...

28 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

homeless newspaper, Indian restaurant, Money

Essays, philosophy, Resistance, The good life

Loss

I've been dreaming about loss, why? Loss of material objects that were in my possession a decade ago (such as computer disks or books), or still having to finish some exams to earn my college degree or even my high school diploma (a recurring dream I have that I'd love to look up in the ...

20 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

loss

Essays, The good life, writing

The Virtue of Giving Up

In our culture people who "give up" anything but drugs, are considered losers. Why is that? The logic is as follows: [1] You conscientiously choose a task, and because we consider you a rational being, the task is to achieve a certain purpose; [2] You work hard on the task, and it goes more or ...

7 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

ethics, give up, purpose, value, Virtue

Essays, philosophy

To respect us, is to respect this land

So today I can't write a hymn that flows well, but I want one for all the good people trying to live a life of respect for Mother Earth. Would you help me make the lyrics below sound better, express better what we aim for? Don't worry about hurting the "author's" feelings because there should ...

6 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Essays, Poetry, Resistance

“But you need money”

Money. I've always had enough of it because of my natural thriftiness. So I can't really speak for those who have experienced real poverty (the UN's $1.25 a day kind of poverty), and for whom an empty wallet means an empty stomach. I know the predicament of all too many people: They simply need money ...

5 March, 2014

Kamiel Choi

Charles Eisenstein, Economic growth, Mark Boyle, Money, moneyless, poverty, USD, Washington Post

Essays, philosophy, Resistance