From the Ancient to the Modern

Recently I've heard a lot of people using the term "naval-gazing" in reference to the blogosphere. As is typical, the majority of people who use the term don't really seem to know exactly what it means.

In order to help them out, I have defined the term and posted my findings on Wikipedia for others to reference as research. (The term for this is "reverse researching," but I will leave it up to one of my readers to post that on Wikipedia.)

As a service to my readers who either have not heard of Wikipedia or who are banned from the site, I have included the entry material below:

Naval-gazing [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval-gazing]

Naval-gazing, as both a term and an activity, originated in Ancient Greece and Rome. The wisest and best-informed person in the Ancient World was a woman named Oracle, and she lived at Delphi. (Needless to say, if Ms. Oracle were around today, she would be blogging.)

From her home in Delphi, the Oracle would issue decrees and directives on the big ideas and issues of her day. Her reputation for this increased to the point that many considered her to be divinely inspired, and she was hailed as a prophet.

Because so many people came to Delphi from around the ancient world to seek Oracle's advice, Delphi came to be known as the naval, or belly-button, of the world. (The scientists of the Ancient World considered the Earth to be in the shape of an orange.)

As travellers would gaze upon this beautiful city and home of the Oracle, "naval-gazing" came to mean "seeking out the answers and solutions to the big ideas and issues of the day."

For an example of a modern form of naval-gazing, please see the popular blog: http://sokratesplace.blogspot.com/.

Scaling Up the Economy of Ideas

Taking a quick scan over the comments to my last post (I have to admit that I typically don't have the time for more than a cursory glance over the comments) two things struck me.

One was that there is an interest in my reading public for my look at the big ideas of the future. Now I don't consider myself to be a Futurist by any rights--I'm not even a big fan of Sci-Fi movies--but I do have some ideas on what the big ideas of the future will be.

Appropriately enough, I will save those ideas for a future blog.

The other thing that struck me is that my readership is truly global. One commenter, Mr. Peng, had this to say:

"Bei shui che xin."

Now I don't know exactly what this says because I don't read Portuguese or really any other foreign languages, but I think I get the gist of it. In addition to Mr. Peng offering his thanks to me for blogging about the big concepts and ideas of today, he is asking me about globalism.

Now globalism is an important idea, and it is intrinsically related to the economy. To make things simple for you, economy is all about "wealth." Wealth is something that a country wants to take in and not give out--much like the wealth that you and I show by having a high credit limit on our credit cards.

So a country wants to import more goods and services than it exports in order to build up wealth.

Now that is where globalism fits in. If there are more countries on the globe with which to trade, then all of the countries can bring more wealth into their own countries.

So when they say "We are living in a global economy," they aren't just sharing a silly aphorism. It's actually true.

And judging by the international readership of this blog, we can also say "We are living in a global blogosphere of big ideas."