I've been quiet for a while because I've been considering some complicated things while juggling fragments of reality. This particular entry was brought on by advocates of a certain technology in education being unable to prove that technology in education has had a positive impact on educational results.

In one line, this could all be read as educational institutions wondering who moved their cheese. I'm just showing my working.

The societal definition of success arguably changes from one generation to the next. If we ignored the previous generations definitions of success, we could say that the definition of success is democratic. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily so since bureaucracy in institutions has a tendency to mitigate change, and the processes of bureaucracy are built upon societal definitions of success - sometimes surviving many generations.

Historically, this is where revolutions take place - not necessarily the violent revolutions but the successful revolutions. The Industrial revolution. The agricultural revolution. And, if we look at the course of the last century, we might find ourselves living at the tail end of a Democratic revolution.

But when is the last time there was an Educational revolution? A true change in the definition of what academic success is?

While at first I thought that technology improving education was putting the cart before the horse these days, I did not acknowledge that technology may be useful in evolving our definition of success in education.

The Alert Retrieval Cache concept constantly reminds me that technology is almost never the problem.

People are.

I've written today that emergency SMS is required beforehand, but I've written that before. And the idea has yet to take off - which at first frustrated me but now only puzzles me.

Today, I had an eureka moment while changing the oil in the pickup.

The problem is that the bureaucracy that was created to manage society - or better, bureaucracies - are resilient. They pointedly resist change. They were made not to change. And the main problem with the sort of technology use I've been advocating is that it seemingly requires so many changes to existing bureaucracies.

Anyone can implement it - but which budget will pay for it? Who will 'own' it such that they get the budget and manage it?

And that's why it's so hard to get some useful technologies to be used. A single person beating a drum loudly isn't enough to change anything. A prominent media lab might be better suited - but then, why is that?

Because the bureaucracy accepts those innovators, but it disdains the others who run around the world in their problem-solving mayhem. Their bureaucracy has an imprint on the greater bureaucracy.

But, remember, bureaucracy is slow to change.

I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't even know that it's true. But I'm wrapping the note around a rock and throwing it into cyberspace.

There will be no ripples.

People act as if they will be judged by one work within a life. But we're judged by our body of works... or should be.

Running can be a form of procrastination. It can also be a form of survival.

Success is accidental. Be prepared.

The only thing that truly protects freedom is the will to have it - and that will can only be negotiated from a position of weakness.

Any place that serves roast beef sandwiches without horseradish does not make sandwiches.

We all live in our own projected sanitariums, some more complicated than others, growing as we age. When the projections become complex, we sometimes simplify so that we can move forward. It's what we miss when we simplify that marks our innocence.

A benign enemy is better than a dangerous friend. But making that choice between the two can make a dangerous enemy out of dangerous friend.

If we follow our history of society, we can see patterns in our advances. If we consider mankind, as a whole, to be a creature instead of a species, we might consider that the need for freedom, as a trait, permits adaptability and generalization - providing a broader chance for the creature to survive. The more freedom we have, the more potential we have to react in a way that permits our survival. More freedoms, more likely to survive.

Bureaucracy protects decision-makers from the results of their decisions. Imagine a non-lethal electrical shock administered to a decision-maker for every poor choice made. I can dream, can't I?

When something goes wrong, some people stick in that moment to find a solution to the problem that they can live with. This can take a very long time.

If I wanted to control the world, the first thing I would do would be to control all the information and decide who gets to see what. Sort of like the present copyright and patent systems do.

I remember when I returned to Trinidad. It was part of a year long negotiation between the old man and myself - on the phone, he would tell me how great things were and that he wished I was down here. After a year of that, any well intentioned son would consider it. And the potential was supposed to be there; Trinidad was supposed to be an internet hub in some of the original plans I had seen in the 90s.

And I wanted to start my own software company. A proprietary software company, back then, doing contract work and competing with the folks in India. It seemed possible over the phone, my father being the bright ray of sunshine that he could be when he believed in something. I'd seen it before. In the 1980s, when he was trying to sell Rain-X down here and no one was buying (and for a while there during this decade, guess what? 20 years later...) When he was starting the advertising magazine from within this same house, the 'Trini Trader' - and when a fellow named Jeeran Singh hosed him on that by doing sales and pocketing the money. 'The Solar Company', where I wrote his business plan and when the bank wouldn't loan him money because of the collateral... it was my issue with the business plan. Someone had to be blamed, I suppose.