Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Spider Web: Internet's 'Pipes,' Meditation, Restraint

The Internet's 'backbone' is a number of major pipelines between continents on the ocean floor.

Rodica Buzescu characterizes this here, with a helpful map:

morphingthrough.blogspot.com/2009/02/internet-is-series-of-tubes.html


In the future, I hope these 'pipes' will include much greater data transfer through satellite, radio and other frequencies, and via nodes like ships, towers, islands, airplanes, etc., and become much more distributed, too, just as the Internet is a distributed system of nodes.

I wonder whether bandwidth demand will continue to concentrate data-transfer in key mega-pipes, which will, in turn, continue to make the Internet vulnerable, because these tubes aren't distributed enough?

I suspect we need many more, distributed 'pipelines' for data transfer, compared with what we have now to meet, for example, video streaming bandwidth 'needs' in the future, especially for the developing world. (I'm looking for a web site that summarizes this).


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The 'relaxation response' ~ relaxationresponse.org/steps ~ which I enjoy eliciting, characterized secularly, emerged out of Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson MD's research on meditation.

I wonder how meditation, or the relaxation response, works, and why it has the effects it may have socially. A little wary of the word 'meditation,' because of its 'other worldly' connotations, its association with 'cults,' {we're all invovled with group ideas, however}, etc., I've nevertheless found meditating - eliciting the relaxation response - to have benefits, in creating contentment and ease. It can be one of the best, and most enjoyable, experiences in life.

What other effects does it have?


**

Restraint is an interesting concept and practice. Sometimes I think that 'restraint,' which carries restrictive connotations for me, and thus somehow goes against my freedom-minded orientation, and thus also has negative connotations for me, can give rise to great benefits. How would, or does, this work? Simply holding back a little can open new possibilities that we might not have found had we 'engaged' ~ acted, spoken, interacted, etc. ~ earlier. These can somehow be beneficial.

And especially vis-a-vis eliciting 'loving bliss,' for example?

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