Monday 12 August 2013

I'm not bored. I'm creative.

I recently came across two quite similar and interesting articles, one of them being a summary of Arianna Huffington’s speech at an event held at London’s Bafta on the 30th of July. Although different in context and audience, the underlying message of both pieces was simple: to embrace boredom. Yes indeed, be bored once in a while.

Rumour has it that Steve Jobs developed his amazing ideas for apple while Zen meditating. The article by Simon Attwater implies that dozing under apple trees gave us theories of gravity. My personal example? I have had some of my best and most creative ideas while out on a run – the epitome of boredom, if you think about it… It’s simply a long stretch of pavement pounding, perhaps spruced up a little by a ‘motivational’ playlist.

Although Huffington’s line of thought had a different motivation, it delivered a similar message: today we are so over- or ‘hyper-connected’ and always ‘digitally multi-tasking’ that we’re overstressed and suffering from burnouts. There’s simply no room for creativity or inspiration! She too mentioned Jobs, by suggesting that he certainly didn’t have his amazing ideas while ‘clearing out his inbox’.

I’m afraid to say that I do see some truth behind these ideas. In the past (wow I feel old) when had to get the school bus (1 hour each way, it was painful) and no one was there to keep me company or entertain me with school related anecdotes, I would put in my headphones and daydream. Now if I’m bored on the bus, train or tube it’s a different story. In my defence I must say that I do make an effort. I’ll read a book, newspaper or magazine if I can but often I end up playing on my iPhone. While I may not go as far as checking my emails, I’ll still be aimlessly fiddling around on some other app or messaging platform.


But now that I’ve read and digested these two articles I may just change my ways. I may just sit there and stare into space. Waiting for inspiration to come.

Thursday 1 August 2013

Sexism at the airport

On mashable today I stumbled across this article. It outlines a new idea put forward by Heathrow Airport that passengers in the terminals will be 'trackable' as "passengers who are running late for flights can cause delays." 

The idea is as follows: "To address this problem, Heathrow Airport has pioneered a new technology through its boarding card system that is designed to track the locations of passengers in the airport as well as direct the passengers where to go or what to do to catch their flight on time. With the new system, which the airport is calling "positive boarding," passengers simply present their boarding cards at an automated gate where the boarding card barcodes are scanned. The gate's computer cross-references information from the barcode with flight details and, once verified, the passengers may enter the departure area. Information about their flights also pop up on a screen, so passengers will know if they are in the right terminal or if they have to go somewhere else."


I didn't really have any strong feelings on the matter, positive or negative. When I carried on reading however, what did jump out at me was the following:

"If a passenger arrives at the gate less than 30 minutes before the plane is set to depart, she will not receive access to the terminal and will need to visit the check-in counter for more information."

Sorry what? she will not receive access to the terminal? Is the suggestion here that the women cause the delays due to their excessive duty free shopping? I'm hoping that a simple / was missed out here (which would make it a far more acceptable s/he).