High Existence - An outlet for the Intellectual

The Internet is saturated.

Saturated with what?

Insert anything here.

High Existence is an online community of relatively like-minded people who seem to actually function as a community.  Not a forum that has a topic followed by the standard Internet posts of constant negativity and belittlement.  I am so used to this that I usually don’t involve myself in forums; but at High Existence (HE), I haven’t found any of this.  Actually, to bring it a step further, I’m finding people using words that are rare to forums. (i.e. please)  These ‘6907 HEthens strong’ are exploring articles and topics all relative to self-enlightenment.  Not in a religious sense, but at a human condition level.  Call it the mind or the soul, but these people (myself included) are not trying to focus on what’s wrong.  They are focusing on how to make things/themselves better.

Aside from the discussions, there is a main blog that posts articles of the same sort.  The articles aim at making the reader think on their own life and reflect.  A very interesting article was titled “Life Experiment: An Alien on Your Own Planet”, in which it suggests readers to observe the world from the point of view of an alien that just landed on Earth.  These simple sounding activities make it easy for hours of thinking that stays with the reader long after they have read it.

Jordan Lejuwaan is the creator of High Existence.  He outlines here why he started HE and his story leading up to the epiphany.  He was in his freshman year of college where, after a little over a semester, he realized he wasn’t benefitting from school as he thought he should.  He started this site to help fund his traveling.  He believes that you can learn far more traveling the world, experiencing different culture and people, than you can in a business class for four years. Jordan was actually nice enough to respond to a message I sent him asking why he started the site.  He pointed out that even though there are plenty of articles, books, etc. to gain this wisdom from, there wasn't really a good place to compile all of this.  So Jordan made one.  It is evident he made a great choice and that there are thousands of others who feel the same way.

All in all, this site is great.  Whether you wish to join the cause and involve yourself in discussions or just read an article here and there, you’ll more than likely learn something about yourself.  

Netflix: Am I the only one who thought Qwickster was a good idea?

       Over the past few years, Netflix has exponentially grown.  It has killed most of the market when it comes to renting movies.  Blockbuster is only now trying to make a comeback.  But in early September, Netflix tried a new business plan.  They proposed having Netflix handle online streaming while setting up a new company, Qwikster, to handle by-mail DVDs, Blu-rays, and video games.  For some reason the public became outraged at this, and Netflix’s small price increase, which resulted in 800,000 members canceling their service.  Shortly after, Netflix announced they would stay as one company and ditch the Qwikster idea.  My question is why this was such a bad idea in the first place?

            The future of media clearly points to subscription based, online services like Netflix.  Most people who are reading this have seen the demise of VHS to DVD and now DVD is moving to Blu-ray (remember HD-DVD briefly?).  As this migration happens, the online channels, such as iTunes and Netflix, now provide a pretty high quality product at the ease of the public.  What I think Netflix did was notice this shit and decided to consolidate their forces.  To have one company, Netflix, focused on streaming alone it allows for them to stay ahead and refine their service.  This also would work great from their new company, Qwikster, to focus on the tangible renting market; noting that they planned on adding video games, a service Netflix has yet to offer. 

Now I saw this as an advantage to both the company and their customers.  If Netflix stuck exclusively to streaming, then they would have had to add movies to their library.  They may have even made the majority of all their movies available for instant streaming for their same $8 monthly price.  That would be extremely attractive to new customers.  Since they decided to keep it one company though, now they can keep many popular titles to dvd only.  And what will this mean for the video games?  The company can have the advantage of having two companies.  Years from now, when media is predominantly online, Netflix would have the comfort of already having a company just for online.  They can make the switch now and just hold Qwikster as an expendable company.  The way they were designing it wasn’t even going to follow the same brand scheme as Netflix.    Qwikster could have been dropped or re-absorbed when physical copies become more obsolete.

            Instead, the public freaked out.  Now Netflix will remain one company.  Blockbuster is now on the rise again as well, providing streaming, rentals, and video games….they may still even have a store or two open.  I’m interested to see how this all plays out.