I’m beginning to think maybe the Peking Noodle Co. needs to hire some new writers for their fortune cookies. Tonight we dined at a local favorite: Peony. The spicy scallops were very good, and Buddha’s Feast (veggies and tofu) was so-so.

But the fortune cookie… Another one of those innocuous fortune predicting happiness. Bring it on!

The lack of a purpose is precisely the point. Of course I’m talking about this blog, but I could be talking about any of a million others, too.

So much of the time we live as driven individuals — focused, goal-oriented, overachieving — as if every moment must be fulfilling some ultimate purpose. When do we decompress and simply let our thoughts ramble? When do we play, without the pressure of fitness or winning? Where do we go when we don’t have any place in particular in mind?

Blogs. Isn’t that why you’re here?

I won’t speak for you, but I need a little bit of time for ramblin’ — and this little digital island provides the perfect, purpose-free zone of enlightenment. No, I don’t care if I please you, thank-you-very-much. Not that I’m rude; I just don’t have the time to fuss about pleasing you, at least not here in this zone.

So if you give a damn, leave a comment. And if you don’t, no one will notice, nor shed a tear.

Does this really qualify as a fortune? It seems more like one of those truisms that everyone would like to believe about themselves. Who doesn’t want to think that they have a “fine capacity for the enjoyment of life.” It doesn’t mean that you are enjoying life, or that life is good, or even that it ever will be good. It simply implies that you could enjoy life.

You might argue that there are some people that do not have a capacity for the enjoyment of life. Maybe they are physically or emotionally broken; unable to appreciate even the simplest of pleasures — like a fortune cookie.

But if you agree that we possess this “fine capacity,” do we exercise it? Are we living, or merely existing? Am I?

I’m working on it. For what it’s worth, I did enjoy the Kung Pao Scallops.

The press here in the US has been gaga over the outsourcing of tech jobs to countries like India where the labor rates are often 1/10th the cost or less. It’s a politically charged issue in an election year, particularly in the midst of the so-called jobless economic recovery.

I’ve remained ambivalent about the issue. We’ve been through this before, as we moved from an industrial to a knowledge-based society. Factory jobs moved overseas, and displaced blue-collar workers retrained for more technical work.

In theory, as the global economy expands, the standard of living in developing will grow, eventually normalizing salaries and costs. This is theoretical, and assumes a level playing field; something we probably won’t ever really have in reality.

Still, there are already signs that wages are already inching upward in India’s tech sector, sending firms searching for new, less developed areas with even lower labor rates.

Personally, this doesn’t alarm me, or hasn’t yet. The reality is, the total number of jobs sent overseas is still a drop in the bucket compared to the overall job market. Many companies have scaled back their overseas outsourcing after finding their cost savings eaten away by increased coordination and communication costs. And frankly, it’s always been easy to outstource something that can be easily codified into a step-by-step process, but much more difficult to outsource innovation and creativity.

Daniel Pink visited several tech centers in India while researching his article, “The New Face of the Silicon Valley” (Wired 12.02), and observed:

As I meet programmers and executives, I hear lots of talk about quality and focus and ISO and CMM certifications and getting the details right. But never – not once – does anybody mention innovation, creativity, or changing the world. Again, it reminds me of Japan in the ’80s – dedicated to continuous improvement but often at the expense of bolder leaps of possibility.

And therein lies the opportunity for Americans. It’s inevitable that certain things – fabrication, maintenance, testing, upgrades, and other routine knowledge work – will be done overseas. But that leaves plenty for us to do. After all, before these Indian programmers have something to fabricate, maintain, test, or upgrade, that something first must be imagined and invented. And these creations must be explained to customers and marketed to suppliers and entered into the swirl of commerce in a fashion that people notice, all of which require aptitudes that are more difficult to outsource – imagination, empathy, and the ability to forge relationships. After a week in India, it seems clear that the white-collar jobs with any lasting potential in the US won’t be classically high tech. Instead, they’ll be high concept and high touch.

Exactly the areas that I prefer to work.

From a business, political and ethical standpoint, I don’t have a problem with outsourcing. However, some interesting commentary I’ve read recently is causing me to rethink my ambivalence on the issue.

First, David Lazarus writes in the San Francisco Chronicle about how medical records were illegally outsourced to India — an egregious breach of privacy laws. It’s doubly interesting to me, because the case involved UCSF Medical Center contracting medical transcription to a contractor in Florida, who subcontracted the work out to another person in Florida (or possibly Texas, the details are fuzzy), who sub-subcontracted the work out to a tech worker in India via AOL Instant Messenger. Not even an email address involved in the final links of the food chain.

The second case is hypothetical but even more chilling.

Fellow blogger Daniel Gray speculates: “It’s heart-warming to know that outsourced call center and outsourced IT workers in third-world countries can now work in cubicles and get paid acceptable wages from American corporations, at the cost of American jobs… But what happens when terrorist organizations infiltrate the overseas outsourcing companies? Are there checks and measures in place to prevent unscrupulous individuals and organizations from misdirecting personal data from the call centers and sabotaging code in the IT shops? What heinous leaks will we find out (or not find out) about months or years from now? Who’s to say that it hasn’t happened already?”

Technology has made our lives at home and work more efficient. It has allowed us to expand our private and business reach across the globe. But the same technology that helps, can be used to harm. Those of us with the power to make a difference in business need to proceed cautiously, making sure that in our rush to save money, we don’t give away something irretrievable.

While taking my son back to college a few weeks ago, I took some time to visit Montaña de Oro State Park. It’s a rugged strip of relatively unspoiled California coastline about 10 miles west of San Luis Obispo.

The day I went, the fog cast a gloom on the otherwise beautiful scenery. The land was formerly used for grazing sheep, and hasn’t changed much in the past hundred years. Except for the warning signs, that is.

Apparently Montaña de Oro is just over the hill from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. I’m no Luddite, but seeing signs instructing me on “what to do in case of nuclear meltdown” were a bit unnerving. In case of a real emergency, would it really matter? It was one of those moments where I thought that perhaps ignorance was bliss.

I used to commute with a nuclear engineer who was a big advocate for the technology. Back before the first George Bush war against Iraq in the early 1990’s, my nuclear friend was recommending high-altitude nuclear warfare. His contention was that the resulting EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) would disable all electronic and communication devices, but there would be no radiation fallout. Apparently he wasn’t just smoking crack; others agree.

Still, I don’t want to experiment with Mother Earth, nor her inhabitants, regardless of their political or religious persuasion. The consequences, as with Chernobyl some twenty years ago, could be dire.

Which brings me to an interesting point. What is happening at Chernobyl now, twenty years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later? What if you could hop on a fast motorcycle and zip through the ghostly, deserted countryside surrounding the radioactive sarcophagus, taking photos to document your solitary journey? Would you?

This girl did. An extreme ride, and not one that I’m in a hurry to take. But most haunting are the pictures — the deserted roads, buildings and artifacts left hurriedly behind — grim reminders of our responsibility to our planet, to each other, and our future.