Thanks to the “War on Terror” the topic of torture is much more front and center than it was in the past.  As life mirrors art, I’ve noticed that popular culture has picked up on it.

In movies and television, torture has become an increasingly prevalent piece of plots. Jack Bauer, hero of the long running show, 24, has regularly used it to get answers and even supposed unexpected everyman hero, MIT educated, Sean Walker of The Event has used torture to get answers.

With real life and art showing torture so prevalently…is it any surprise that more than half of all American teens condone torture?

What’s most interesting is that it wasn’t always like that. We didn’t always glorify it or even condone it.

I just finished watching an old Star Trek the Next Generation episode that addressed torture head on and was far from supportive of the practice. In the episode, Captain Picard is captured by an alien race and tortured for answers. He refuses to break down and repeatedly discusses the ethics and effectiveness of torture. In the end, once he’s free, he admits to the ship’s counselor that after the torture not only was he willing to tell them anything they wanted, he thought he *saw* what they told him to see. (The episode is called “Chain of Command” and you can find an awesome article examining the episode on Slate here.)

As art can also mirror life, it’s well worth noting a practice from World War II. At Fort Hunt, high level German prisoners were subjected to chess, ping pong and steak dinners. Shockingly, these prisoners befriended their captors and divulge massive quantities of highly accurate information. Learn more about the incredible story here.

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Our military’s practice of torture is only further enabled by our cultural embrace of its supposed effectiveness. The survey of teens shows that we may be more impressionable than we like to believe. I’m genuinely concerned for the implications of our future where the majority of people embrace practices so contradictory to our founding principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Yes, this is the phone I had up until 5pm today....

So it finally happened. I caved. After holding out a solid 17 months in the startup community, I finally got a smart phone.  It was kind of amusing to see how shocked some people were and frankly, I can see why you might not expect it after I previously debated this and chose iPad + dumb phone.

So here’s what tipped the scales as key things I wanted:

1) Ability to save notes and contacts anytime

I have a horrendous memory and I feel like a total douche when I can’t remember people’s names. So one of the first things I intend to do is  start writing down everyone I meet in my phone each night. I can then also add notes for action items so I don’t have to just say “email me.”

2) Try other Startupers stuff

I have a lot of friends with smart phone apps, and I feel bad I can’t try them.

3) I’m tired of printing out google maps and calling friends when lost

I got lost last week trying to walk to Kabir’s house. I called him and he asked me, “what do you think I am? Google maps?”  He then told me how to get to his place, but there’s a lot of times I mooch off friends to get to the right place because of this.

4) The adoption curve is pushing me to the minority

When I saw where the adoption curve was going with smartphones (projected to surpass 50% in 2011), I realized I can’t be in the techscene and thinking about startups and not have one.

5) 40404 Tweeting gets old. Fast.

I tweeted a lot with 40404, but I can only do one account with my phone number that way which meant it was all Greenhorn.  Also, 3 letters to a key makes even a tweet a lengthy ordeal. Finally, working at a startup focused on twitter and thinking about the huge presence Twitter has in my life, being able to Tweet, is actually pretty important to me.

6) SXSW is coming…fast!

In the interest of not being the next RazrDude (ask Chris Keller about it…) and actually being able to reach people when I need to…this was the real impetus. I’m going down on behalf of oneforty and need to be able to meet up with Janet and Laura, and we’ll be most effective if we’re all free roaming, I think. I’ve also heard foursquare is hugely important and obviously a smartphone comes into play there.  I concluded I couldn’t be maximally effective there without a smart phone.

So there you have it…that’s why I have a Smart phone…finally!

So after much deliberation, I’ve decided I won’t be getting a smart phone after all.  Instead, I’m going to get an iPad. Here’s why:

1) I don’t feel there’s enough missing in my life that a smart phone can do.

Yeah, I want to be one of the cool kids and have a new gadget to show off too, but in the end, after playing around with a few friend’s iphones, I just couldn’t justify it.  I didn’t feel like there were any “killer apps” that would change my life if I had it.

2) The Price

By my calculations, it was going to cost me about $800-$1,200 over the next year to have a smart phone.  Meanwhile, the iPad with 3G for a year would come in at the bottom of that, $800.  And the second year, when I’m not considering the cost of the item in it, it has a significant cost advantage at just $15 for data.

3) The iPad did have the killer apps

After about 15 minutes with the oneforty company iPad, I realized I wanted one.  It has this strange magic ability to fill a gap I didn’t know I had in my life; now I can’t wait to run through a bunch of saved blog posts on instapaper and it feels so much less intrusive to have an iPad in my living room while watching TV with roommates than it did having a full fledged laptop burning my lap.  The giant color screen is also really powerful for displaying everything from websites to simple one to one presentations.

4) The iPad is just an iPhone with a bigger screen

So evaluating things overall, and I see that the iPad can do any of those magical things that the iPhone can do, but with a much bigger screen. I personally cannot imagine using a 3.5 inch screen to read emails or blog posts, so I’m happy to have the advantages of the big screen and none of the stress of needed it to fail at making phone calls.

5) Dumb Phones are still the world’s majority

Want to make a killer app to serve the world? It’s going to be on dumb phones.  Smart phone proliferation is a luxury of the wealthy.  There are billions of people just getting any cellular technology and that will only be on “dumb phones” for some time.  As an entrepreneur, I think you’re at your best when you’re one of your own customers.  Therefore, to keep in mind some of the biggest opportunities, I’m keeping my dumb phone.  I couldn’t find any current statistics I found satisfying to put here, but if I find one that shows the cell phone breakdown of the world, I’ll definitely add it later.

So I doubt there are too many people that are going to be rolling with a LG VX8300 and an iPad, but hey…who doesn’t want to be a trendsetter?

Having finished the last of the books I had stock piled to read, I realized it was time to pick up some new reading material. Since I had a Barnes & Noble gift card sitting around from Christmas, I thought this was a great time to use it. I didn’t want to wait for shipping, so I ventured into the Barnes & Noble at the Prudential Center with the goal of picking up Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think and Jason Freid’s new ReWork. I thought it would be easy enough…go in, find ReWork in the business section and Krug in some type of web development/design section.  Not so much…

So after wandering all the way to the wrong side of the store, I finally found the business shelf…but couldn’t find ReWork. I stumbled across a kiosk, but despite it’s insistence the book was in the middle of the area I was in (note: the kiosk didn’t have the most up to date shelving set up…#fail), I couldn’t find ReWork.  I then figured I’d look for Don’t Make Me Think, but their web development and design sections are a mess of photography how to books and random coding languages jumbled.

I finally grabbed a B&N staff person after about 15 min of feeling like a blind man in a library and they took me to their main station.  Turns out they only give the best treatment to Jason Fried’s new book: ankle level on a special shelf halfway under a table about 2 feet from the help desk…obviously easy to find!  With ReWork in hand we then went searching for Don’t Make Me Think…unfortunately, much thinking was required as we searched the jumbled mess of web and design sections.  But alas…finally we found it.

Then I went to the check out:

Don’t Make Me Think: $40

ReWork: $22

Tax: $3.88

Total: $65.88***

Note: The cashier was kind enough to offer me the opportunity! to pay an additional $25 to become a B&N club member and save 15% on all purchases!!! What a deal! She reminded me, that I’d save $9 on my books today if I got the club membership…ignore that’s still a net extra of $14.

Now: Why Barnes & Noble is going to go out of business and I don’t mind…

If I go to Amazon.com…I can get both of those books with free shipping for: $38.50.  I can also immediately find the books by simply typing in the title or author. I can also see reviews to make sure I really want the books (luckily, both have already come strongly endorsed by my Tweeples).

So let’s see…save over 40% (much more than that awesome B&N membership!), find stuff instantly and deliver it to my doorstep? SOLD.

Sorry B&N…I’m going to use up my gift card $ and not only not come back, but ask my mom for Amazon.com gift cards next year.

In my “New Year’s Resolution” post I promised to write more…that hasn’t really happened as most of my writing time is committed to Greenhorn Connect related content.  However, I’ve just had an inspiration for a post and so I’d like to share it here.

Since I really dove into entrepreneurship a few years ago, I’ve found I have an insatiable thirst for learning anything and everything related to the topic.  All this time though, I’ve been thinking about what that really means, “to learn.”  I think that in life there are many that seek to learn, but often it’s merely to amass knowledge; I know this fact or that statistic. I’m well-read on this subject.  That’s all well and good, but if they’re just facts and merely someone else’s ideas…how much has been gained?

My goal is not to just amass facts. I’m not looking to be an encyclopedia.  I want to understand. I have so many questions about so many things. And yes, studying and reading always helps, but I always consider it in the context of greater understanding. I think this analogy may help:

You have a farm. On this farm all kinds of fruits and vegetables grow.  Those that are merely amassing knowledge would look at what they have and say that they have hundreds of broccoli heads and thousands of ears of corn.  Those building understanding look deeper and understand how they can take the vegetables and make salads and juices and other unique dishes; each item grown on the farm represents an ingredient, not an end result. When they file this knowledge away of the farm and its produce, those with understanding are thinking of it from the perspective of how the different dishes were made from the farm, while those amassing knowledge only see it in the narrow verticals of each fruit or vegetable produced Those with understanding are also more easily able to transport the concepts created from the dishes from the farm into other areas; everything around them is a small piece to a bigger picture…one that is not necessarily completely clear, but is larger and better than before because of what’s been added.

I think that it’s as important what the question you’re asking is as the means to which you’re going about your learning. For example, I’ve recently become very interested in user experience.  The questions I have are related to better understanding people. I want to be able to better step out of what I think (and all the biases and preconceived notions distorting it) and be able to understand others.  My impressions when I come to a website are not the same as someone else’s.  To accomplish this, I could go straight to a bunch of UI/UX web books, but I think it’s important to go broader than that, so I’m going to try to cast a wider net to truly understand people.  Incidentally, as I work towards this goal, I believe I will be able to apply this new understanding to other areas of my life in human interaction.

How thoughtful are you with your learning? Are you amassing knowledge or creating understanding?