A COMMUNICATIONS UTOPIA

I just ran across this on an old unpublished website I had written a few years ago interestingly I still believe strongly in this idea. Hopefully one day it will come to be.

This is just a short note of my view of what the world should be like from a utopian communications viewpoint.

Essentially my belief is that:

1. All communications should be free.

2. When you are born you should be assigned a telephone number which will follow you for the rest of your life.

Imagine this world.

You are born Mark Johnson, your telephone number is 514-416-978-3906. You are given a microphone implant and cochlear implants with this phone number. You essentially have technological telepathy. If it any point you want to be not disturbed, no problem, disconnect and divert to voice messaging or accept only text messaging to your single e-mail account which is linked to this phone number. You can also block unwanted numbers accept calls from people you want to talk to even when you are busy, caller id, whatever, you have the freedom to choose. You can disallow GPS location, or allow it.

Imagine you go off to Malaysia for a business trip, you can talk to your wife all you want for free, even on the airplane if you so wish, she can call you if she needs you. You can talk to your kids when they are at school, anything. Just say the word, "call little johnny", and there he is, talking to you in your head.

It does not make sense that wireless licenses are being sold by governments for exorbitant sums to big business whom in order to make back the money has to fleece the consumer. Government exists to serve the people not big business, the people I believe want free communication, let us use the money for that, or at least not demand it in the first place.

Expertise

I have several major ares of expertise which you can feel free to ask me about through the use of comments on this blog. They are:

• LASIK

• PRK

• Human Facial Attractiveness

• Physical Attractiveness

• Evolutionary Psychology

• Diets to complement overall wellness and fitness particularly "The Zone" and "Paleo Diet"

• Vitamin, Antioxidant and Omega3 Supplements

• Facial Cosmetic and Plastic Surgery and Cosmeceuticals

Of course, you may ask about anything in general that I may be able to help with and who knows I may answer - but if I do not know the answer, believe me I will tell you. Very little I find more irritating than someone who knows it all - the only thing I know with any certainty is that I do not know it all.

Surgery & Complications

Amongst surgeons it is common to say "the only surgeons who do not get complications are those who do not operate". Obviously, just like in any other technical field there are gradations of skill amongst surgeons as there are amongst for example pianists. Excellent surgeons like excellent pianists are far less likely to be off key. However, the human body is also like a piano some are better than others, a finely tuned grand is going to perform better than an out of tune banged up old piano. Some patients because of genetics and environment and underlying medical conditions do not react to surgery as well as another patient might even if the surgery performance was identical. In other words, many surgical complications (intra-operative and post-operative) are just sheer bad luck for the patient and for the surgeon and are not due to surgical error.

I will talk a bit about refractive surgery complications here in this blog as I believe that many misconceptions exist regarding them. By nature I tend to be blunt and very frank, and I will say when a complication is more likely to be surgeon related than just simply bad luck.

In LASIK one common complication post-op is called DLK (diffuse lamellar keratitis) and it is essentially unrelated to the surgical performance or to the surgeon. It essentially is "like an allergy" to the surgery - some patients bodies react to surgery by mounting a stronger immune response than the norm. The immune system orders WBCs (white blood cells) to go to the eye and to the flap of the eye to eliminate the "insult". The only problem is there is no insult beyond the desired surgery and then the WBCs do more harm than good by attacking the flap. If left untreated the DLK response can result in flap scarring or melt and a permanent reduction in visual acuity. Fortunately, if caught immediately it is easy to handle by modulating the immune response using steroids either topically or orally, or both. The WBCs which have already arrived may also be washed out from under the flap speeding up the resolution and minimising the risks of further complications.

Blog Content

A short post regarding the content of this blog and its intent.

My personal mission statement in life follows directly after my first name. Mounir means the one who brings light into your life or the enlightening one. I grew into my name without realizing it when I found myself an Ophthalmologist in 1994 and finally a refractive surgeon (LASIK surgeon) in 1999. To this date I have done over 50,000 refractive procedures mostly LASIK but a few thousand PRK as well. I am not entirely sure but this may be the most of anyone in North America at present. I have been bringing light directly into people's lives 6 days a week for almost 10 years now, by opening their eyes to newfound vision.

Beyond this, however, my goal and the goal of any company or group that I associate myself with is to improve the lifestyle, health and fitness of my clients and /or patients. On a more personal level, I also strive to "awaken" people as much as I can.

Many "conscious" people who look around them in the world realize that most people are walking around in an unconscious fog, living each day relatively joylessly, and for most intents and purposes like sleepwalkers. If I can, I try and wake up these sleepwalkers to all the joy the world has to offer, in the here and now, not in the past or future.

No Original Thoughts

I acknowledge as I start this blog that there are no original thoughts - in all likelihood there are also no truly original expressions of an old thought. Every thought has been expressed in a variety of forms over the centuries, the differences largely as a result of the current language at the time as well as the audience the thought was being directed to at the time.

By current language I mean for example Chaucer's English, Shakespeare's English, or our 21st century American/Canadian/British/Australian English. In other words, language varies with time as well as in nature, French vs. Italian vs. Mandarin vs. Cantonese vs. Hindi vs. Arabic vs. English etc.

So to the current audience varies with time (e.g. a Shakespearean era physician from a current physician) as well as by nature (e.g. the common masses vs. the intellectual minority). Even though all thoughts have likely been presented to all audiences at one period or another in time. Not all thoughts have become realities to all audiences in all times. So re-presenting thoughts in current language to current audiences is I believe the function of those conscious of the thought (and its reality) to those as yet unconscious.

My goal in this blog is to present thoughts in my language to my audience and help them make those thoughts their realities. My goal is for that audience to be the world, hence the use of the "world wide web", let us see how far I get.