Welcome to this page, and posting number one. Honestly I don't know where this blog will end up or what it will eventually contain, so I'm not going to try to build you up on what you're going to see here.
Simply put.. why am I writing this blog.. and why did I call it Unintelligent Questions? Simply answered, I am a person that likes to ask unintelligent questions. In fact, a large part of my career so far (in the land of high-tech) has been made possible by questioning conventional wisdom. What happens when you challenge the so-called "conventional wisdom"? You end up looking like you're asking dumb questions that everybody supposedly knows the "correct" answer to. This is what I have done for the past ten years.
If you're still reading this (that's a huge assumption on my part), let me explain what you may see here. Essentially, I wanted a space where I could openly ask my so-called "unintelligent questions" to an open (and maybe nonexistent) audience. What is an unintelligent question? Here are some examples:
Question: Is is possible that people will play MP3's on their cellphones one day?
Rationale: Cell phones are increasingly being built with just as much processing power as portable music players, and people carry the two around with them.. so wouldn't it make sense?
Asked: Sometime around 2003
Answer: That's crazy!
Question: In an increasingly knowledge-based economy, is a university education for high school grads really necessary, at a time when they do not have the financial means to do so?
Rationale: In a modern society where the overall importance of status (achieved or ascribed) is increasingly eroding, and new technology industries are being created that did not exist even 20 years ago, can the free market really place a lot of value on an indirect qualification (ie. a business or engineering degree) when directly skilled people without these qualifications are able to create value for companies immediately on their first day at work?
Asked: Sometime around 2000
Answer: That's crazy! Everybody is getting a degree now so you need to compete with that!
Hopefully the above examples will give you an idea on what types of ideas I am hoping to share here. These are past examples, however my real goal is to ask today's unintelligent questions, or in other words, the questions that really do seem to be unfounded and out of line with conventional wisdom (as least on the surface).
As per my second example above, there is an interesting YouTube video (by John Stossel) which examines the exact issue of where the value is in high school graduates immediately pursuing post-secondary education (even when they have no idea what they want to do for a career). I encourage you to take a look:
John Stossel: Is College Worth It?
That's a wrap for this one.. until next time!
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