Who Owns Your Mind
Who Owns Your MindWe seem to lately be inundated by rants and tirades about the InternationalOutsourcing of InformationTechnology work to foreign markets. It seems to be summarized something as follows: We had this high-paying job, working for this company which had made high-sounding pronouncements and claims that in the future they would produce this NextBigThing. But many of these companies now don't exist, and where they do, they seem to be able to deliver some hoped for value which is based more in the low wages and large quantities of workers in economically depressed areas of the globe, for work management has decided needs to be done.
What went wrong? Why are many highly skilled and productive workers now unemployed? Is it because they were being paid to much, or is it because they didn't deliver the work management had decided needed to be done in an appropriate time frame?
What is it with the actions and abilities of people half-a-world away. Are they being employed because they are smarter, more productive, able to produce on a shorter timetable, or what?
Many have claimed that the reason has to do with the message being broadcast from those lands "We work cheap". I would suggest it is not for this reason alone. There are a couple of other reasons which can be summed up as follows: "We will conform", and "Anything you ask, We will do". This is a message management loves to hear, and rarely hears from domestic workers. It may not in time prove out to be true, as some firms are beginning to learn from real results.
What underlies this shift has to do with "ownership" of mental assets. We in the west believe that a man's mind is a personal possession and that the fruits of the mind and the work that goes with that mental activity is in the control of the one possessing the mind.
It may not be so in some parts of the world. Places where individuality and control of one's destiny are not within the realm of possibility for many in the population.
It brings to my mind the question: WhoOwnsYourMind? Do your thoughts and ideas belong to you? Are you in control of your mind? Or do you surrender some of your control willingly in that others are able to do as they may will? Who ultimately decides how you will think? Who ultimately decides how you will act? Who is responsible for your thinking and your actions?
When you produce something of commercial value, should you have any interest in the proceeds from your work beyond the salary and/or hourly pay? If some sort of royalty or proceeds from work produced (similar to a salesman's commission, an entertainer's royalties, or the ongoing income insurance agents receive from sales of insurance). The industry says no. It says that the product of the mind or of collective minds belongs to the company and its shareholders.
I would suggest that there is underway a great change in the way people think, act, and the approach people are taking to the notion which has held that a person is responsible for what they are and do. Destiny is thought to be in the hands of others, control has been wrested from us. Some are coming to believe we can no longer act as individuals, we can no longer believe that what we do and what we think has any real effect on our own condition. We are said to be victims of some "grand, overriding conspiracy". They control us, They tell us how to think and act. They are in control. They Own our Minds.
Perhaps it is time for many who feel confined and restricted, controlled and manipulated, to issue a "Declaration of Independence" which is meant to define a time and a resolve to be in a new state, a state of mind where our freedom to think our own thoughts, and to act as if our thinking can control our actions and hence our own destiny.
-- DonaldNoyes
Second, where does choice come from? Choice implies options must be present, and who provides the options? It is easy to sit in judgment on another's actions from outside the situation and say that he made a poor choice, but the picture becomes more cloudy when one is in the situation and has a limited set of options to choose among.
We are all a product of our environments, and in this sense, yes, "they" tell us how to think. The "they," however, is not some organized conspiracy but a somewhat random series of encounters restricted by environment.
To think one's own thoughts, one must, paradoxically, seek out and embrace the thoughts of others. To stop being influenced by others in the future, one must freeze one thoughts, and be limited to prior influences. Choose growth and allow others to continue to influence one's thoughts.
-- WayneMack
An important key to growth and independence is the preservation of a power to choose. The "random series of encounters restricted by environment" are related to and influenced by the powers that shape your environment. Playing no small part in this an active and methodical shaping of the political, cultural, and sociological climate, in this region as well as in other regions of the world. There are significant changes in environment which can not be individually controlled. Those who unite to do so, or are positions of power to do so, do not fail to make concerted efforts to promote their agendas and extend their influences on society to make it significantly different from what it was in the near past. The environment is in danger of extending its influences in subtle ways by those who are not always friendly to individuality and singular concerns. -- DonaldNoyes
What went wrong? Why are many highly skilled and productive workers now unemployed?
Several things went wrong. The biggest factor was the tech bubble pop of the late 1990s. Investment banks hyped telecom and internet IPOs through paid analysts, sold themselves and their favorite investors cheap opening day stock, then flipped it to regular folks and retirement accounts. Their goal was to take money from average investors (which succeeded) but the side effect was to convince a lot of people that there was a huge job demand in the tech industry. Once the bubble popped the job demand fell to a more reasonable level and a lot of tech workers had no place to go. Outsourcing is another factor, along with economic decline largely triggered by the collapse of the energy trading sector. Employers have owned the product of employee minds for at least 100 years. Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb. He hired folks to research filaments. He invented the modern research and development lab. He convinced people to fund it. If you want to own your ideas (and even those of others) become an employer instead of an employee. The risk is higher, and so is the reward. -- EricHodges
It depends on if you signed:
It also depends on if:
It also depends on:
Philosophical Vein
First in a more philosophical vein, where do one's thoughts and ideas come from? Do they just spring up out of nothingness or are they a mixture of the thoughts and ideas expressed by others? If the latter, one's thoughts and ideas are controlled (in the meaning of restricted) to the range of thoughts and ideas expressed by others.
[People who are creative types, not too busy, can find inspiration in nature; this is rare, valuable, and the source of many, many good innovations, and perhaps all original thoughts. -- ChrisCapel?]
If an idea is inspired by the shape of a passing cloud, it is not from another person, nor is it literally "out of nothingness".
If an idea arises from the "shape" of a passing cloud and nothing else, it must be based upon either the knowledge of shapes learned from others or arise from nothing. One can also observe that the most "creative" people tend to be the highest consumers of the knowledge of others. Are new ideas truly being created, or are we seeing new combinations and distillations of old ideas?
Random influences illustrated:
Taking a walk (http://www.may.ie/service/communications/press/071002.htm)
Consider the stars (http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_4_88/ai_61755627)
Consider the ant (http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~sipper/aco/introduc.htm)
Ideas from nature (http://natzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/1999/4/designsfromlife.cfm)
WhoOwnsYourMind? Don't you know that AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs?
Not unless the mind has been influenced by VideoGameBuzzwords?, or BuzzwordsOfAnyKind?
"There is nothing wrong with your Perception/Cognition. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity"
Those who would be free and who wish to control their own minds, know that what they allow in will affect their mindset and behavior. They know that as individuals they must use selection and discrimination, the channel selector and the on-off switch so they can and will ensure an ability to own up to the responsibility for the use of their own mind and the personal control of their own behaviors.
<Individuals, however, have limited control over what information their environments provide. An individual cannot force exposure to that of which he is not aware. Early exposure is often key and once one has learned one pattern of thinking, it is very difficult to reprogram the mind to a different pattern. The conundrum is that those with the most adaptable mindset are those that have the least amount of information on which to base a decision. Those with a great deal of experience will have the greatest difficulty in reversing prior beliefs.>
For all intents and purposes your employer owns your mind for 3/4 of the day. Don't believe it? - Try thinking of anything else beside work for much of the day, for a few days straight, when not on vacation.
Could the author clarify his intent in the above statement? I am unable to discern the point. Is it that the employer will criticize someone who thinks of something else while on the job? Is it that the employee will naturally think about work when off the job? Is the intent something else?
The intent is to express the realities of what we think about. There is a difference in what is on your mind when your mind is being used to produce income, and that income is dependent upon how you influence corporate income and a condition at a another period of time when what is on your mind is non-productive to some bottom-line. As an example, when one becomes retired, there is a great difference in what is on the mind. Much more of mind use is involved in recreative thought. When what one thinks about and occupies oneself in may affect the ability to make a living, thoughts are more frequently shaped by this condition.
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