Learning is fun!

I spent three hours today at my neighbourhood Borders (bookstore). I would have stayed longer but I forgot to pack water when I left home so I was dying of thirst! Since I've come to Australia, I try not to leave home without a bottle of water. Even the police carry a bottle of water in their belt, along with capsicum spray (pepper spray), handcuffs, flashlight, gun, and spare ammo. Talk about a large belt.

Back to my Borders visit. I love going to libraries as there is so much knowledge that can be obtained, but I prefer bookstores. Bookstores have the newest information and, especially when it comes to business and technology, it is all about the new information. I ended up reading (cover to cover) two Linux magazines, one PC magazine, one computer security magazine (skimmed), and two business magazines. Yes, my head was spinning after all this reading, and I guess it did not help to be dehydrated as well. :-)

I believe that it is important to continuously learn. The world is changing all the time, and we cannot succeed in tomorrow's world with today's knowledge. We need to gain new techniques, new information and new skills all the time. That is why it is so important to have a place to get this new information. We need libraries, bookstores, and above all, a good, high-speed connection to the Internet to continue to learn.

The best example of needing to learn quickly in order to succeed is my current job. My job description is pretty fluid, but could be summed up with "Do anything AND everything to get the job done." That kind of job description ends up covering a lot of different tasks, which I am not expected to know how to do in advance. Luckily, I am willing to learn and able to learn so that is 2 out of 3 factors that are required for success. But, if the books and the Internet were not there, I would have accomplished only a tenth of what I have done so far.

There are people out there who believe that internet is the worst thing that has happened to humanity, because it promotes porn and piracy to a large userbase. Well, every other form of media did the same, from newspapers and magazines, to TV and DVDs. The people who oppose internet on moral grounds fail to realize the great benefits that are enabled by internet. What I think is the greatest benefit of internet (and this can be debated to great lengths) is freeing of knowledge. Knowledge is not sitting in a book or a magazine on a shelf in a library. When this book is taken out of the library or destroyed, the knowledge in the book is withheld from everybody else. Internet is different. Internet is an endless fountain of knowledge.

The internet does not care if one or a thousand people are reading certain content. We all have access to it. We can all learn, do better, grow. We all have access to the same information and can now do and learn that in which we are interested. This may be hard to believe for those that are under the age of 20, but things did not always work like this. In the past, knowledge was held in expensive books, or in organizations like corporations, governments and universities. If you were not part of the club, it was really hard to get the knowledge.

Luckily, things have changed. The only thing stopping your from learning and doing better is YOU! With the help of books and internet, you can overcome even that stumbling block. :-)