I recently had an enlightening conversation with a brilliant friend that will remain nameless until he posts his own version of events. This friend had come across, somewhere on the internet, a page containing a list of “Twitter accounts that will follow you back, guaranteed”. As an experiment, he followed everyone on the list, and, as per the guarantee, they followed him back. Interestingly enough, however, is that he’s still racking up tons of followers, beyond those of the original list. Having more followers means you will get more followers.
Thinking about the ramifications of following what amount to dummy accounts in order to increase his follow rate, this friend pointed out that there’s no reason for him to unfollow the accounts he followed. Many of them don’t post, and those that do can be put into a list, and that list can be silenced. There’s no regulation in the Twitter TOS that says he can’t follow certain accounts (that would be counterproductive), and there’s no social stigma associated with it, as no one is likely to double-check his follow list for bots. To my friend, this seemed to be a fatal flaw in Twitter’s system—it can be easily gamed without consequence. Fortunately, Twitter is not a game. It’s a free-market economy.
In fact, Twitter is a very free economy. Because there are only the barest of regulations and developers can and do develop tools that automate and simplify actions in Twitter, users are left to rational self-interest as their only guide to navigating the economy, that is, their audience. Some, like my friend, do this, escaping from the trappings of social convention to further their clout by whatever means available. But because of this forced freedom, Twitter is a world of bubbles (as in “housing bubble”), where individual importance shifts from day to day, and where there seem to be more “experts” than regular Joes.
Compare this to Facebook—an economy with heavier restrictions, where businesses register differently than celebrities, who register differently than regular people. Where events aren’t just blipped out to the masses, they’re fully scheduled and organized. Where there’s such a thing as “like” and where it takes mutual consent to form a connection. Facebook, by its nature, abhors the expert, and embraces the commoner. Spamming is not only encouraged, but subsidized, and there’s no reason to aspire to any benchmark of social performance, unless you’re a company.
I count myself among what I imagine to be a majority of people, content with the shortcomings of both methods. We doubted the need for another major social media platform, especially after having been jilted by Diaspora. Yet there was the Goog, rolling out what at first blush was poised to be Wave 2.0. Thankfully, it wasn’t—it was an exceptionally simple design that approached the social media economy as a free market, much like Twitter. And, in fact, despite the brilliance that is the Circle system of separating one’s friends, there’s nothing yet baked into G+ that will keep it from becoming Twitter. There’s also nothing that can prevent it from becoming like Facebook. At the same time.
That’s the brilliance of Google+: giving the user the ability to change the rules. Because one can change one’s content stream like the channel on a television, users can make the service into anything they want: a Twitter clone, a Facebook clone (minus some largely unnecessary features), a mix of the two, or something else entirely. The killer app is being able to choose your audience, and thus, your economy.
A lot has been made of G+’s ability to succeed—whether it will be a functional social network on the order of Facebook and Twitter. The numerical evidence seems to indicate that that’s a big yes, but whether it will actually succeed—that is, yield an improvement for direct social media in general? That will depend on whether we, the users, learn to make it work to bridge the gaps in existing social media services. For that to happen, we need to experiment, and we need to share.
There’s a lot of upfront work that goes into building a social network, and in Facebook and Twitter, that setup seemed to be straightforward and repetitive. For Google+ users, the setup phase is ongoing, as we attempt to discover how best to format our circles and use them in a way that makes sense. Experimentation will yield functional formats on an individual level, but then each of us needs to continue to have a usability discussions with any friends willing to share, ensuring that disruptive ideas have a chance to spread through the network. I recommend a circle called “Meta” or “Google+” for that.
That’s really the unexpected joy of Google+: millions of people, working together to make something awesome.
Showing posts with label content economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label content economy. Show all posts
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Writing About Technical Subjects (Pt. I)
So, you're a company intent on empowering people with hardware, software, and/or other new tech. Or you're a non-profit with Big Ideas about digital rights, tech literacy, or another 21st Century cause. Or you're a copywriter, learning to ply your craft in the content economy. Telling compelling stories about complex topics is exciting, but challenging. This fact is your greatest friend and most terrifying enemy:
Take Facebook. The second most-frequently visited place on the web is one of a handful of websites that has spawned its own verb. (When was the last time you said you were "facebooking"?) Behind the scenes, though, it's a complex messaging, image-sharing, networking beast of a site-slash-app, not to mention the developer interface for third-party apps.
The features aren't what Facebook splashes on the sign-up page, though. It says,
There's a simple principle in effect here: you don't sell features, you sell motivations. I've long appreciated market researcher and TED Talker Simon Sinek's verbiage:
Start With "Why"
That's hard and fast for me: successful pitchmen and copywriters have always done this, even if it wasn't worded exactly as above. That doesn't change in the world of software. In fact, in a world of rapid development and widespread innovation, there's even less place for people selling boxes of features.
Recently, Twitter posted a guide to help journalists and other newsy sorts use their service. They didn't have to—heaven knows people have already been using Twitter to do news since the dawn of tweets—but they did it as a help to their userbase. #TfN may not be copy, but it follows another guideline I love:
Solve a Problem
When possible, I present services as solutions to problems that people face. (As an aside, I think the use of "solution" as a buzzwordy substitute for "service", "application", or "product" dilutes the semantic power of that word.) Some companies don't use much text to show that they solve a problem—apps like Turntable.fm solve a problem (or perhaps "grants a wish") in an obvious way, and sell themselves on word of mouth alone. For everyone else, there's copy.
Trouble is, you have to explain a complicated problem like "T1 connections used to be state of the art, but nowadays you get more bandwidth if you sign up with a Wireless ISP" to someone who may not understand "T1", "bandwidth", or "Wireless ISP". If you're a Wireless ISP, that's going to cause problems.
The writer, then, has to make the problem and its solution simple enough to be clear to the reader. "Telling your story" has become a popular phrase in the marketing industry, and one of the tricks of the trade is just that: making copy into a story, with a conflict, a resolution, a hero, and—if necessary—a villain.
Tell a Story
Of course, you don't want to take storytelling to the extreme, either, or your reader will think you don't respect them. Leave some complex concepts in the narrative, and explain what must be explained.
Don't Condescend
Here's a bit of copy I wrote for a client that I think exemplifies these ideas:
For years, network service was fastest when it was delivered by physical cables and circuits, the “T1” being the most popular with businesses. The T1 was a workhorse, but, as content on the web has become more complex, it’s clear that T1 just can’t keep up. Fortunately, wireless technology has kept pace with increasing bandwidth needs—OneAxis.net wireless can offer speeds comparable to those of cable internet[...]
So, there you have it, an overview of copywriting on complex topics. Next up: News writing.
We now live in a world where the "simple facts" are not so simple.
Take Facebook. The second most-frequently visited place on the web is one of a handful of websites that has spawned its own verb. (When was the last time you said you were "facebooking"?) Behind the scenes, though, it's a complex messaging, image-sharing, networking beast of a site-slash-app, not to mention the developer interface for third-party apps.
The features aren't what Facebook splashes on the sign-up page, though. It says,
Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.
There's a simple principle in effect here: you don't sell features, you sell motivations. I've long appreciated market researcher and TED Talker Simon Sinek's verbiage:
Start With "Why"
That's hard and fast for me: successful pitchmen and copywriters have always done this, even if it wasn't worded exactly as above. That doesn't change in the world of software. In fact, in a world of rapid development and widespread innovation, there's even less place for people selling boxes of features.
Recently, Twitter posted a guide to help journalists and other newsy sorts use their service. They didn't have to—heaven knows people have already been using Twitter to do news since the dawn of tweets—but they did it as a help to their userbase. #TfN may not be copy, but it follows another guideline I love:
Solve a Problem
When possible, I present services as solutions to problems that people face. (As an aside, I think the use of "solution" as a buzzwordy substitute for "service", "application", or "product" dilutes the semantic power of that word.) Some companies don't use much text to show that they solve a problem—apps like Turntable.fm solve a problem (or perhaps "grants a wish") in an obvious way, and sell themselves on word of mouth alone. For everyone else, there's copy.
Trouble is, you have to explain a complicated problem like "T1 connections used to be state of the art, but nowadays you get more bandwidth if you sign up with a Wireless ISP" to someone who may not understand "T1", "bandwidth", or "Wireless ISP". If you're a Wireless ISP, that's going to cause problems.
The writer, then, has to make the problem and its solution simple enough to be clear to the reader. "Telling your story" has become a popular phrase in the marketing industry, and one of the tricks of the trade is just that: making copy into a story, with a conflict, a resolution, a hero, and—if necessary—a villain.
Tell a Story
Of course, you don't want to take storytelling to the extreme, either, or your reader will think you don't respect them. Leave some complex concepts in the narrative, and explain what must be explained.
Don't Condescend
Here's a bit of copy I wrote for a client that I think exemplifies these ideas:
For years, network service was fastest when it was delivered by physical cables and circuits, the “T1” being the most popular with businesses. The T1 was a workhorse, but, as content on the web has become more complex, it’s clear that T1 just can’t keep up. Fortunately, wireless technology has kept pace with increasing bandwidth needs—OneAxis.net wireless can offer speeds comparable to those of cable internet[...]
So, there you have it, an overview of copywriting on complex topics. Next up: News writing.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Watch Your Hed
Headlines and ledes grab attention, and are often lies.
This is, of course, a follow-up to the "Update" segment of my previous post, in which I note that Fox News changed a headline from an inflammatory one to a less inflammatory one. Today's post is about why that sort of behavior is too little, too late.
A couple of posts ago, I talked about the "Information Problem", or how the surplus of content affects the way humanity makes decisions. I divided print and web material into three categories: content (less relevant, truth value unassignable), information (more relevant, but pre-interpreted) and data (most relevant, but difficult to understand without interpretation). News reporting, in general, should fit squarely into the "information" category; it should be pre-interpreted data reported from primary sources, and in general, should be unimpeachably true.
Now, that isn't always the case, and there are ways to report things that makes it appears as though the universe, not the medium, has a bias for or against a certain position. And I've written about that too. That needs to be taken care of, but in the end, each news user is going to have to strip bias from news. What's more devious, though, is the headline.
In a content economy, attention is currency. You can never make quick money by printing just the facts, reliably, and within a reasonable timeframe, even though that might be the most sustainable position. You're generally going to want to print news biased toward an audience, report on events that interest that audience, ignore things that don't interest the audience, and try to scoop everyone else all the time, even if you have unreliable or incomplete facts.
Even if you follow that formula, though, you still need to advertise. And the only advertisement that works on a news aggregator is the headline (and the lede, on occasion). So you have to make it count. In the end, if you make a statement that's shocking, you're more likely to get hits. It has been like this from the beginning of printed news. What's different in the aggregated news / 24-hour cable news ticker world is that far more headlines are read than articles, streaming at us as they do.
Unfortunately, shocking headlines are often a little bit misleading (or more than a little bit). This wasn't so much a problem before the Information Age, but now, each headline could easily be perceived as a tiny, unimpeachable fact. Which, of course, is inaccurate, and leads to misconstructed worldviews. Which messes with systems based on preferences and beliefs.
So, save the economy just a little bit, and try not to lie in your headline, even if you fix it in the article, or retract it later.
This is, of course, a follow-up to the "Update" segment of my previous post, in which I note that Fox News changed a headline from an inflammatory one to a less inflammatory one. Today's post is about why that sort of behavior is too little, too late.
A couple of posts ago, I talked about the "Information Problem", or how the surplus of content affects the way humanity makes decisions. I divided print and web material into three categories: content (less relevant, truth value unassignable), information (more relevant, but pre-interpreted) and data (most relevant, but difficult to understand without interpretation). News reporting, in general, should fit squarely into the "information" category; it should be pre-interpreted data reported from primary sources, and in general, should be unimpeachably true.
Now, that isn't always the case, and there are ways to report things that makes it appears as though the universe, not the medium, has a bias for or against a certain position. And I've written about that too. That needs to be taken care of, but in the end, each news user is going to have to strip bias from news. What's more devious, though, is the headline.
In a content economy, attention is currency. You can never make quick money by printing just the facts, reliably, and within a reasonable timeframe, even though that might be the most sustainable position. You're generally going to want to print news biased toward an audience, report on events that interest that audience, ignore things that don't interest the audience, and try to scoop everyone else all the time, even if you have unreliable or incomplete facts.
Even if you follow that formula, though, you still need to advertise. And the only advertisement that works on a news aggregator is the headline (and the lede, on occasion). So you have to make it count. In the end, if you make a statement that's shocking, you're more likely to get hits. It has been like this from the beginning of printed news. What's different in the aggregated news / 24-hour cable news ticker world is that far more headlines are read than articles, streaming at us as they do.
Unfortunately, shocking headlines are often a little bit misleading (or more than a little bit). This wasn't so much a problem before the Information Age, but now, each headline could easily be perceived as a tiny, unimpeachable fact. Which, of course, is inaccurate, and leads to misconstructed worldviews. Which messes with systems based on preferences and beliefs.
So, save the economy just a little bit, and try not to lie in your headline, even if you fix it in the article, or retract it later.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The Information Problem
We have too much content, not enough information, and surprisingly little data.
The great futurist Alvin Toffler predicted a world with relevant data so profuse that information overload would be the inevitable result. He was wrong. The 21st Century does not have a problem with information overload. It has a problem with Content Overload.
You might think that I'm splitting semantic hairs in order to make a polarizing statement, but perhaps it would help my case to point out that the surfeit of content on the internet is of varying informational value. Quite a bit of it is opinion, and much of the stuff that is purportedly informational is of questionable truth value.
It's important to make a distinction between content, information, and data. While I'm not suggesting that there's anything inherent in each of these words that usefully distinguishes them, it is clear there are definitely three different phenomena which can be distinguished, regarding the stuff we take into our brains.
Content is what I'll call all print and digital "stuff" in general. This definition of content would include movie reviews, lolcats, sports scores, et cetera. Information is content which can be assigned a truth value. That gets tricky, because an opinion piece is clearly not information in and of itself, but may contain information (or misinformation). Data is a special kind of information, that appears in tabular or numeric form. The universe of Content and Data can be seen as a scale that runs from the lowest density of fact to the highest.
Data is not always foolproof, as Charles Seife identifies in his data-in-journalism analysis, Proofiness. A lot of figures are either half-right, made to appear to support erroneous conclusions, or just plain made up. Of course, that makes any informational statements based on these data unsupported, and opinions formed around this information, misinformed. To hear Seife tell it, there are a lot more errant conclusions out there than accurate ones--which leads me to believe the following:
Nearly everyone is wrong most of the time.
The most logical solution to being wrong is to check facts to make sure they are accurate before basing opinions and decisions on them. If this were possible, it would certainly make for a much better world. Unfortunately, verifiable fact is hard to come by. In many cases, scientific studies have not been done (or cannot be done). Worse, sometimes results of different studies conflict. Exercise science and nutrition seem especially prone to this: one month, authorities say it's essential to focus mostly on cardio, the next, weights are the thing. Fat used to be the killer, now carbs are. Any attempt to be consistently right, even most of the time, is probably doomed to failure.
Unfortunately for us, the number of decisions we have to make every day appears to be increasing. From financial choices, like bank selection and the use of credit cards, to consumer choices about everything from insurance to running shoes. Further, it seems as though the options we have are also increasing, adding even more difficulty to the task of human decision-making, and making the human life experience a multi-decade pratfall.
As a shortcut to making decisions, we tend to lump like decisions together, as a pattern. We may then seek to explain these patterns with a narrative. For example, my wife loves to shop with coupons. Her decision-making pattern is that if we don't absolutely need a product right away, she doesn't buy it at full price, or even close, ever. The narrative behind this pattern is the idea that companies engage in promotional deals to catch unwary shoppers off their guard, but that by putting in a little extra effort, you can subvert these deals to make your shopping exceptionally cheap.
The progression in my wife's example is from individual decisions, to patterns, to explanatory narratives. This is a practical approach to decision making. The reverse is the ideological approach: to take the narrative and impose it on practices and individual decisions. There is nothing wrong with the ideological approach if you use it to govern decisions made without a thought for immediate outcomes. Ethical decisions, for example. One deals honestly because the narrative of "Honesty is the best policy" embodies a state which the decision-maker wishes to attain, not because it yields a direct benefit. When you use the ideological approach and expect a specific result to a specific decision, things get crazy.
This is because narratives are based on, again, patterns made from lots of little decisions, which the narratives then explain. When the method by which the narrative was built is unknown, the truth value of the narrative is obscured. Using content in the place of information or data in order to make decisions is terribly dangerous. Using unverified information as if it were verified is terribly dangerous. Analyzing data incorrectly is terribly dangerous. And yet, this is what is happening in decision-making all over the world, from households to governments and beyond.
Data in and of itself is incredibly powerful. Bringing up Seife and Proofiness again, it's clear that attaching a number to a fact is a shortcut to credibility. But humans are notorious for misreading and abusing data, and creating narratives based on these tortured numbers. Here's an example debunking a mostly harmless myth about pet ownership.
What I'm driving at is this: humanity might make better decisions if we would take what's reported as news and science, et cetera, with a grain of salt. This proves exceptionally difficult, because in reacting to one incorrect or incomplete narrative, we often create an opposing narrative that is just as incorrect or incomplete. There may not be a solution to the "Information Problem", but I propose that you, Dear Reader, go conduct your own studies to verify my narrative, and live by holding out judgment until proof is overwhelming.
The great futurist Alvin Toffler predicted a world with relevant data so profuse that information overload would be the inevitable result. He was wrong. The 21st Century does not have a problem with information overload. It has a problem with Content Overload.
You might think that I'm splitting semantic hairs in order to make a polarizing statement, but perhaps it would help my case to point out that the surfeit of content on the internet is of varying informational value. Quite a bit of it is opinion, and much of the stuff that is purportedly informational is of questionable truth value.
It's important to make a distinction between content, information, and data. While I'm not suggesting that there's anything inherent in each of these words that usefully distinguishes them, it is clear there are definitely three different phenomena which can be distinguished, regarding the stuff we take into our brains.
Content is what I'll call all print and digital "stuff" in general. This definition of content would include movie reviews, lolcats, sports scores, et cetera. Information is content which can be assigned a truth value. That gets tricky, because an opinion piece is clearly not information in and of itself, but may contain information (or misinformation). Data is a special kind of information, that appears in tabular or numeric form. The universe of Content and Data can be seen as a scale that runs from the lowest density of fact to the highest.
Data is not always foolproof, as Charles Seife identifies in his data-in-journalism analysis, Proofiness. A lot of figures are either half-right, made to appear to support erroneous conclusions, or just plain made up. Of course, that makes any informational statements based on these data unsupported, and opinions formed around this information, misinformed. To hear Seife tell it, there are a lot more errant conclusions out there than accurate ones--which leads me to believe the following:
Nearly everyone is wrong most of the time.
The most logical solution to being wrong is to check facts to make sure they are accurate before basing opinions and decisions on them. If this were possible, it would certainly make for a much better world. Unfortunately, verifiable fact is hard to come by. In many cases, scientific studies have not been done (or cannot be done). Worse, sometimes results of different studies conflict. Exercise science and nutrition seem especially prone to this: one month, authorities say it's essential to focus mostly on cardio, the next, weights are the thing. Fat used to be the killer, now carbs are. Any attempt to be consistently right, even most of the time, is probably doomed to failure.
Unfortunately for us, the number of decisions we have to make every day appears to be increasing. From financial choices, like bank selection and the use of credit cards, to consumer choices about everything from insurance to running shoes. Further, it seems as though the options we have are also increasing, adding even more difficulty to the task of human decision-making, and making the human life experience a multi-decade pratfall.
As a shortcut to making decisions, we tend to lump like decisions together, as a pattern. We may then seek to explain these patterns with a narrative. For example, my wife loves to shop with coupons. Her decision-making pattern is that if we don't absolutely need a product right away, she doesn't buy it at full price, or even close, ever. The narrative behind this pattern is the idea that companies engage in promotional deals to catch unwary shoppers off their guard, but that by putting in a little extra effort, you can subvert these deals to make your shopping exceptionally cheap.
The progression in my wife's example is from individual decisions, to patterns, to explanatory narratives. This is a practical approach to decision making. The reverse is the ideological approach: to take the narrative and impose it on practices and individual decisions. There is nothing wrong with the ideological approach if you use it to govern decisions made without a thought for immediate outcomes. Ethical decisions, for example. One deals honestly because the narrative of "Honesty is the best policy" embodies a state which the decision-maker wishes to attain, not because it yields a direct benefit. When you use the ideological approach and expect a specific result to a specific decision, things get crazy.
This is because narratives are based on, again, patterns made from lots of little decisions, which the narratives then explain. When the method by which the narrative was built is unknown, the truth value of the narrative is obscured. Using content in the place of information or data in order to make decisions is terribly dangerous. Using unverified information as if it were verified is terribly dangerous. Analyzing data incorrectly is terribly dangerous. And yet, this is what is happening in decision-making all over the world, from households to governments and beyond.
Data in and of itself is incredibly powerful. Bringing up Seife and Proofiness again, it's clear that attaching a number to a fact is a shortcut to credibility. But humans are notorious for misreading and abusing data, and creating narratives based on these tortured numbers. Here's an example debunking a mostly harmless myth about pet ownership.
What I'm driving at is this: humanity might make better decisions if we would take what's reported as news and science, et cetera, with a grain of salt. This proves exceptionally difficult, because in reacting to one incorrect or incomplete narrative, we often create an opposing narrative that is just as incorrect or incomplete. There may not be a solution to the "Information Problem", but I propose that you, Dear Reader, go conduct your own studies to verify my narrative, and live by holding out judgment until proof is overwhelming.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Conflictinator Alert - Veterans Day 2010
al-Google Veterans Day
So, here's a tempest in a teapot: Associated Content post about Google's Veterans Day logo that claims that the 'e' is actually a crescent of Islam. I'm not sure exactly where this ends, but it's possible the author actually believes the letter 'e' is a secret Muslim. Just to be safe, let's add everyone with an 'e' in their names to the No-Fly List.
Of course, when you bait the conflictinator trolls, they inevitably bite. HuffPo's response, of course, is to run with the AC author and claim that there's a widespread backlash about the logo. In their crazy, polarized view of the universe (perhaps fostered by spending too much time on the internet), the extreme right is one step away from besieging Mountain View with assault rifles, and maybe swastikas.
Way to contribute, guys.
All the President's Tax Cuts
Speaking of HuffPo, here's the title: White House Gives In On Tax Cuts. Here's the article (warning: contains serious hedging and low semantic density). Finding David Axelrod's statement that the president actually favors the extension of the tax cuts is hard, but finding anything that sounds like actually "giving in" is like playing Where's Waldo—with a Jackson Pollock painting.
Of course the Atlantic and a few other outlets took this, and ran with a "Obama gives in" type story.
So, here's a tempest in a teapot: Associated Content post about Google's Veterans Day logo that claims that the 'e' is actually a crescent of Islam. I'm not sure exactly where this ends, but it's possible the author actually believes the letter 'e' is a secret Muslim. Just to be safe, let's add everyone with an 'e' in their names to the No-Fly List.
Of course, when you bait the conflictinator trolls, they inevitably bite. HuffPo's response, of course, is to run with the AC author and claim that there's a widespread backlash about the logo. In their crazy, polarized view of the universe (perhaps fostered by spending too much time on the internet), the extreme right is one step away from besieging Mountain View with assault rifles, and maybe swastikas.
Way to contribute, guys.
All the President's Tax Cuts
Speaking of HuffPo, here's the title: White House Gives In On Tax Cuts. Here's the article (warning: contains serious hedging and low semantic density). Finding David Axelrod's statement that the president actually favors the extension of the tax cuts is hard, but finding anything that sounds like actually "giving in" is like playing Where's Waldo—with a Jackson Pollock painting.
Of course the Atlantic and a few other outlets took this, and ran with a "Obama gives in" type story.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Intentionalism, Limbic Advertising, and the New Workplace
This post includes: four (4) book recommendations, including one I haven't even read yet, two (2) embedded videos, and three (3) interrelated topics. Set aside something like half an hour if you want to absorb all of this content at once.
I'm not even sure where to start, so I guess I'm going to start with: why. Simon Sinek, last year at a TED conference, gave the following talk, entitled "How great leaders inspire action". You can watch it now, or just read my discussion of it below the embed.
His big premise is this, which he repeats several times: People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The major scientific underpinning of this idea is that people make decisions in their limbic brain, which is not in any way responsible for the production of language. The emotional core is best accessed by appealing to that emotion, by explaining why you are doing what you're doing and selling to your kindred spirits.
For a more in-depth exploration of this idea, go read William Gibson's Bigend novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. I recently described these books as, "like sci-fi, only take out the hyperdrive and put in viral marketing." There's really no other way I can put it. From Pattern Recognition, mischievous bazillionaire genius Hubertus Bigend, on "knowing something in your heart":
You “know” in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.
Back to Sinek, whose conclusion is that to have thriving organization, we must have a purpose, and make that purpose the primary talking point. We can't just produce something that no one else produces, we must be something that no one else is.
Which brings me to Rework. The short text by the founders of 37signals, creators of web-based business efficiency software, turns the traditional model of American business on its head, proclaiming that the customer is not always necessarily right, meetings are a necessary evil at best (just plain old evil at worst), demanding work ASAP is poisonous, and working long hours is actually detrimental to one's output. The phrase "highly recommended" does not cover even a small part of how I feel about this book. I have a copy. I'll mail it to you, if you promise to return it. Jason Fried, one of the authors, about meetings: (link here but click around the site and listen to more of his stuff).
The 37signals crew is buying into intentionalism wholeheartedly, preaching that you don't sell things that you believe in, that you do things you believe in, and then you can sell what results from that. With a big enough world, with varied enough tastes, there's probably a market for whatever you are obsessed with.
Which brings me to this blog. I'm pretty obsessed with new ideas, and the way the world is changing. I believe in making the best new ideas accessible to people who wouldn't normally come in contact with them. I can't do it alone, really, especially with the micro-audience this blog has. Um, who wants to write with me? Seriously, email or comments section.
I'm not even sure where to start, so I guess I'm going to start with: why. Simon Sinek, last year at a TED conference, gave the following talk, entitled "How great leaders inspire action". You can watch it now, or just read my discussion of it below the embed.
His big premise is this, which he repeats several times: People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The major scientific underpinning of this idea is that people make decisions in their limbic brain, which is not in any way responsible for the production of language. The emotional core is best accessed by appealing to that emotion, by explaining why you are doing what you're doing and selling to your kindred spirits.
For a more in-depth exploration of this idea, go read William Gibson's Bigend novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. I recently described these books as, "like sci-fi, only take out the hyperdrive and put in viral marketing." There's really no other way I can put it. From Pattern Recognition, mischievous bazillionaire genius Hubertus Bigend, on "knowing something in your heart":
You “know” in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.
Back to Sinek, whose conclusion is that to have thriving organization, we must have a purpose, and make that purpose the primary talking point. We can't just produce something that no one else produces, we must be something that no one else is.
Which brings me to Rework. The short text by the founders of 37signals, creators of web-based business efficiency software, turns the traditional model of American business on its head, proclaiming that the customer is not always necessarily right, meetings are a necessary evil at best (just plain old evil at worst), demanding work ASAP is poisonous, and working long hours is actually detrimental to one's output. The phrase "highly recommended" does not cover even a small part of how I feel about this book. I have a copy. I'll mail it to you, if you promise to return it. Jason Fried, one of the authors, about meetings: (link here but click around the site and listen to more of his stuff).
The 37signals crew is buying into intentionalism wholeheartedly, preaching that you don't sell things that you believe in, that you do things you believe in, and then you can sell what results from that. With a big enough world, with varied enough tastes, there's probably a market for whatever you are obsessed with.
Which brings me to this blog. I'm pretty obsessed with new ideas, and the way the world is changing. I believe in making the best new ideas accessible to people who wouldn't normally come in contact with them. I can't do it alone, really, especially with the micro-audience this blog has. Um, who wants to write with me? Seriously, email or comments section.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Invormavore Diet
A Balanced Plan of Internet Consumption for the Mental Health-Conscious
Editor's Note: This is an old post from my previous blog. I'm on vacation this week, so this is what you're getting. Next week, probably something about "Comical Ali" or maybe Facebook.
I'm taking as a source this article from Edge regarding human behavior in the Information Age. In it, our information consumption is compared with food consumption, and later, the survival of ideas is related to the survival of species via natural selection. Combining these two ideas, we arrive at the concept that information must be consumed in order to propagate, making ideas not like animal meat, but like vegetable matter. Vegetables and fruits that grow quickly, yield a lot of nutritive value, and taste good are more likely than their competitors to thrive in the world of herbivores, as their seeds are more likely to be spread, and they are more likely to be cultivated. Unfortunately, the web is like a field of jellybean plants--magical, yes, but unfulfilling and likely to give you a stomachache.
We need to "eat" better content because it makes us feel better, and is good for our development.
It's very clear that when we surf the web, we use energy. In order to look, read, learn, link, tweet, embed, and digg, we make our little cells do something, which depletes our store in some way or another, and uses our time--eating information, like any other consumer activity, comes at a cost. Massive cognitive load can cause errors in our learning, and there are other, more nebulous results of our purposeful information overload. Particularly relevant is this man's experience, echoed by millions of users of the blogotubes, but there is also research that implicates the very nature of the web in dangerous behavior.
Of course, there are benefits from our newfound infobounty. One study shows that googling may make you smarter, in some ways. Less esoteric is the benefit of simply having access to people and information that otherwise were forever out of reach. We can be more informed voters, wiser parents, better employees and students, and generally more knowlegeable people.
Unfortunately, when given this phenomenal power, we use it to further our own inanity, as we have every other medium. In this there is no great harm--a little pointless timewasting never hurt anyone. But, whether it's its novelty or some heretofore unknown power inherent in information, the internet is as interesting, or more, than television. Thankfully, it is also more modular, with content in smaller pieces, and so more decision-making is involved in our consumption. We can choose to discern the crap from the useful information, or we can choose to consume without thought, eating information like we eat food--inverting the pyramid and indulging in candy while dabbling in wholesome content.
That being said, it's not wrong to eat candy. It's not wrong to haz your occasional cheezburger. All content--except some particularly repulsive stuff, which happens to inhabit a large percentage of the extant web--has its place, but if cartoons were more occasional, and important information were more frequent, progress' clip would increase.
It is essential to note that I will say nothing of what is or is not Important Content. That is for each of us to decide. It must be intentionally sought, even if the seeds of this interest were randomly sown.
We need to "eat" better content because it spurs the creation of more quality content.
Further, in this world of meta-searching, self-analyzing, and ad-targeting, the viewer is, in fact king. It would be wise not to underestimate one's power in this world, as the link, the digg, the tweet, etc, are ways to propagate approval quickly and efficiently. The internet has built itself a very efficient feedback system.
Spread links to interesting information. Post interesting content. Eat right, and the whole world will be a better place.
Crappy Umpire Romance Stories
On August 16th, ESPN posted an article that appeared to show a systemic flaw in the umpiring of Major League Baseball games. One in every five close calls, it says, are blown by the league's chosen arbiters. The only problem with the story? It had more spin than a Stephen Strasburg curveball.
At least, Nate Silver, baseball statistics guy turned political statistics guy turned New York Times blogger guy, seemed to think so. By looking at the whole story, Nate proclaims, you'll find not only that the definition of "close call" makes this ostensible mountain a molehill, but it shows that baseball has some of the best playcalling in American sport.
The intersection of data and narrative here brings up a number of really interesting questions. Of course, the first, which has a pretty easy answer, is why did ESPN sum up its data in the way that it did? It seems clear that if a content producer like that performs a study, they're going to want to post the results in a way that will attract people to reading it. Otherwise, there's really no return on the investment of doing the study in the first place. It's not necessarily wrong, it's just good business.
The better question is, what's Nate's motivation in refuting the validity of ESPN's statement? For a better look, let's examine another recent controversy.
Wired's cover story for September 2010 is entitled "The Web is Dead". The story is primarily about the decreasing internet market share of World Wide Web content. Web content is defined fairly loosely, but it appears that the article is focused on whatever is delivered only via browser. Oceans of data had been gathered that corroborated this claim, which had then been made into a handsome infographic.
Nathan Yau of Flowing Data takes a completely different tack than Mr. Silver's takedown of ESPN: he posts a link and a shot of the graphic essentially as a conversation opener, knowing that people will post their comments, and a discussion will evolve. This discussion will, of course, draw more people in, and Yau's post presumably drove traffic (and more importantly, built community) based on the strength of the topic alone.
TechCrunch was far less forgiving. Of the many rebuttals they posted, this is the best.
The operative comment is this one, from user "Speed":
The idea really boils down to this: If someone's brewing a tempest in a teapot, you'd be an idiot not to break out the crumpets. So, yes, while some people are greedier, and some more altruistic, every blogger trying to make a buck is desperately looking for as many hits as possible. Don't get me wrong. I still believe that The Nates are the good guys here, exposing the big guys for their tricky expositions that may not be 100% spin-free, but honestly, if no one built controversy where it didn't have to exist, a lot of the little guys would be out of a job.
Now where are my crumpets?
At least, Nate Silver, baseball statistics guy turned political statistics guy turned New York Times blogger guy, seemed to think so. By looking at the whole story, Nate proclaims, you'll find not only that the definition of "close call" makes this ostensible mountain a molehill, but it shows that baseball has some of the best playcalling in American sport.
The intersection of data and narrative here brings up a number of really interesting questions. Of course, the first, which has a pretty easy answer, is why did ESPN sum up its data in the way that it did? It seems clear that if a content producer like that performs a study, they're going to want to post the results in a way that will attract people to reading it. Otherwise, there's really no return on the investment of doing the study in the first place. It's not necessarily wrong, it's just good business.
The better question is, what's Nate's motivation in refuting the validity of ESPN's statement? For a better look, let's examine another recent controversy.
Wired's cover story for September 2010 is entitled "The Web is Dead". The story is primarily about the decreasing internet market share of World Wide Web content. Web content is defined fairly loosely, but it appears that the article is focused on whatever is delivered only via browser. Oceans of data had been gathered that corroborated this claim, which had then been made into a handsome infographic.
Nathan Yau of Flowing Data takes a completely different tack than Mr. Silver's takedown of ESPN: he posts a link and a shot of the graphic essentially as a conversation opener, knowing that people will post their comments, and a discussion will evolve. This discussion will, of course, draw more people in, and Yau's post presumably drove traffic (and more importantly, built community) based on the strength of the topic alone.
TechCrunch was far less forgiving. Of the many rebuttals they posted, this is the best.
The operative comment is this one, from user "Speed":
Wired's job is to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. Chris Anderson has successfully recruited TechCrunch and others -- many many others -- to help them do that job.
Michael Arrington's mission, should he choose to accept it, is to get Chris Anderson to return the favor.
Michael Arrington's mission, should he choose to accept it, is to get Chris Anderson to return the favor.
The idea really boils down to this: If someone's brewing a tempest in a teapot, you'd be an idiot not to break out the crumpets. So, yes, while some people are greedier, and some more altruistic, every blogger trying to make a buck is desperately looking for as many hits as possible. Don't get me wrong. I still believe that The Nates are the good guys here, exposing the big guys for their tricky expositions that may not be 100% spin-free, but honestly, if no one built controversy where it didn't have to exist, a lot of the little guys would be out of a job.
Now where are my crumpets?
Narrative Engineering
Counterintuitively, this data age has both granted information its wish to be free, and made the facts more difficult to obtain and ascertain. The crafting of narratives to convince people of certain propositions is as old as humanity, but now there are more people doing it faster and more profusely.
As much as the Content Economy ad-men (and -women, and -bots) want your eyes, the Narrative Gurus want your heart and soul. The Engineers of Reality strive to convince us what is right, what is wrong, what is healthy and unhealthy, and what is cool, fun, boring, or painful. They need you to buy in, and they exist in all varieties and have varying methods of attack.
In this battle, we are the infantry: your average internet user. The advent of user ratings and comments allows for the war to take place over every blog post and product listing in the world, provided it’s online. The comments, of course, range from the inane to the insane, the trivial to the trenchant. And as users spam, troll, and flamebait, their mini-narratives begin to form a larger one.
From above, broadcasters build and propagate their own narratives. The political entertainment industry becomes the shaper of American thought, whether by furor, candor, or humor. As this situation progresses, people line up as footsoldiers of a particular narrative-creating general.
Sometimes, even those who are aware of the role of narrative-construction in our culture still have to choose to buy in to one or another narrative. There’s not much middle ground between, say, believing that high-fructose corn syrup is benign or malignant. Further, some aspects of our lives require this buy-in as the price of admission. Religions, social clubs, political parties, and employers frequently require some buy-in.
Narrative not only drives the future of culture, it alters the past. A good narrative engineer doesn’t just tell you how things are, he/she/it tells you how things used to be. There was a Golden Age, perhaps, or a Dark one. Events in the past are now malleable in the hands of those who make opinion.
Narrative Awareness
An increase can be seen, of course, in those who identify and decry the attempts made to reshape our past, present, and future. There is a lot of power in changing people’s minds, and this power is sought by so many people with so many motives and allegiances. As our awareness of rhetoric increases, the power of the narrative decreases.
Each of us has a weapon in the fight against the abuse of narrative to alter reality. We all have social networks. As we discover the narratives being used to distort the world our loved ones live in, we can use our intimate, personal trust to defeat the bullhorns trying to confuse them.
The only reliable documents these days are primary sources. That may not last.
As much as the Content Economy ad-men (and -women, and -bots) want your eyes, the Narrative Gurus want your heart and soul. The Engineers of Reality strive to convince us what is right, what is wrong, what is healthy and unhealthy, and what is cool, fun, boring, or painful. They need you to buy in, and they exist in all varieties and have varying methods of attack.
In this battle, we are the infantry: your average internet user. The advent of user ratings and comments allows for the war to take place over every blog post and product listing in the world, provided it’s online. The comments, of course, range from the inane to the insane, the trivial to the trenchant. And as users spam, troll, and flamebait, their mini-narratives begin to form a larger one.
From above, broadcasters build and propagate their own narratives. The political entertainment industry becomes the shaper of American thought, whether by furor, candor, or humor. As this situation progresses, people line up as footsoldiers of a particular narrative-creating general.
Sometimes, even those who are aware of the role of narrative-construction in our culture still have to choose to buy in to one or another narrative. There’s not much middle ground between, say, believing that high-fructose corn syrup is benign or malignant. Further, some aspects of our lives require this buy-in as the price of admission. Religions, social clubs, political parties, and employers frequently require some buy-in.
Narrative not only drives the future of culture, it alters the past. A good narrative engineer doesn’t just tell you how things are, he/she/it tells you how things used to be. There was a Golden Age, perhaps, or a Dark one. Events in the past are now malleable in the hands of those who make opinion.
Narrative Awareness
An increase can be seen, of course, in those who identify and decry the attempts made to reshape our past, present, and future. There is a lot of power in changing people’s minds, and this power is sought by so many people with so many motives and allegiances. As our awareness of rhetoric increases, the power of the narrative decreases.
Each of us has a weapon in the fight against the abuse of narrative to alter reality. We all have social networks. As we discover the narratives being used to distort the world our loved ones live in, we can use our intimate, personal trust to defeat the bullhorns trying to confuse them.
The only reliable documents these days are primary sources. That may not last.
The Content Economy
One indicator of progress in an economy is the change from a dependence on industry to a dependence on service. Service economies put a value on work rather than a value on a product. That work, however, is often packaged and sold just like a hard good. Paying for a landscaping job, for example, is essentially like paying for a computer: it’s sold as a package, you either pay installments or all up front, and the costs to the supplier are essentially invisible to the consumer. Of course, other services are bought in different ways (legal services, for example).
As Western society has developed its service economy, it has customized it as well. As during the transition from agriculture to industry, the easiest tasks undertaken by agriculturalists were done by machines, now the easiest services are either taken over by machines (self-check islands at the store) or outsourced (overseas call centers). It appears that the service economy is evolving. A new subsector is emerging, one that many observers are calling the Content Economy.
As the internet has grown, it’s taken a chunk out of television ratings. It’s pretty easy to see that there are just some of us that prefer an interactive medium and all that comes with it. And it’s pretty easy to see, whether you believe television is being supplanted or merely supplemented with internet browsing items, that the hits just keep coming. And behind every hit is a pair of eyes.
Eyes mean ads. Interesting content means hits. Hits mean money. This is essentially the rule. There are plenty of people that would prefer that this weren’t the case—producing interesting content is hard. With a completely open content market, and a pretty low barrier to entry, the content that wins the hits is generally legitimately superior.
Professional smart-guy Frank Schirrmacher referred to people who consume and relay content as “informavores”. This tremendous interview on the consumption and dissemination of information identifies the mechanism of the advertising of content. Other commentary has called this “viral” media, or “memes”. All in all, the content in the market seems to act as a lifeform.
Like any market, things are not as simple as they appear. Not all content markets itself, and the barriers to true entry into the big leagues of the content market are larger than they seem. Posting content does not guarantee views, even if that content is interesting. Search engine optimization and other forms of content marketing and engineering change how content is viewed, and how content is formed.
As Western society has developed its service economy, it has customized it as well. As during the transition from agriculture to industry, the easiest tasks undertaken by agriculturalists were done by machines, now the easiest services are either taken over by machines (self-check islands at the store) or outsourced (overseas call centers). It appears that the service economy is evolving. A new subsector is emerging, one that many observers are calling the Content Economy.
As the internet has grown, it’s taken a chunk out of television ratings. It’s pretty easy to see that there are just some of us that prefer an interactive medium and all that comes with it. And it’s pretty easy to see, whether you believe television is being supplanted or merely supplemented with internet browsing items, that the hits just keep coming. And behind every hit is a pair of eyes.
Eyes mean ads. Interesting content means hits. Hits mean money. This is essentially the rule. There are plenty of people that would prefer that this weren’t the case—producing interesting content is hard. With a completely open content market, and a pretty low barrier to entry, the content that wins the hits is generally legitimately superior.
Professional smart-guy Frank Schirrmacher referred to people who consume and relay content as “informavores”. This tremendous interview on the consumption and dissemination of information identifies the mechanism of the advertising of content. Other commentary has called this “viral” media, or “memes”. All in all, the content in the market seems to act as a lifeform.
Like any market, things are not as simple as they appear. Not all content markets itself, and the barriers to true entry into the big leagues of the content market are larger than they seem. Posting content does not guarantee views, even if that content is interesting. Search engine optimization and other forms of content marketing and engineering change how content is viewed, and how content is formed.
Introduction to the Future
This blog is called “The Future”, even though it deals primarily with the present.
What It’s All About
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the ways that our society has changed because of the Information Age, both in the way information is propagated and information technology is improved.
The societal changes I’m looking at primarily deal with the way the average person lives and interacts with society at large. I’ve identified six aspects of this change, and I’ve written an in-depth introduction to each of them. Most of the blog, then, will be comprised of news items or personal observations that exemplify how one or more of the aspects of this change affect the world around us.
The Six Aspects
In this world of increasing possibility, we have ever-expanding lifestyle options: jobs and careers that didn’t exist before, new methods of saving and spending, and trends that offer additional convenience or control. These novel options I’m calling Routes of Power, and they include everything from coupons to telecommuting, and quite a lot of real estate in between.
Probably the most common of these Routes is the monetized (or even the professional) blog. With the advent of the internet, and the instant transfer of data that comes with it, a new economy is emerging—one based on the power of billions of ad clicks, freelanced infographics, and amateur analysis. This Content Economy is still nascent, but already robust.
Along with this economy, the internet is changing the way we communicate. People are conversing more on social media sites and via text messages, changing language and social norms. The Electronic Middleman is growing ever more present in even our basic, day-to-day conversations.
Explanations for the way the world operates are as old as humanity itself. In our era, though, these explanations are being seen more and more as tools to shape human opinion. On the other hand, people are seeing that manipulation more and more for what it really is, this Narrative Engineering countered by Narrative Awareness.
Information overload has been foretold by futurists for decades, and has clearly become a reality. The surfeit of demographic, natural, scientific, and other data is confusing some, leading to a desperate cling to narratives that resolve it. To others, it represents a unique opportunity to explain phenomena and produce useful content. The Sea of Data is difficult to navigate, but holds incredible promise.
Humanity is becoming more interconnected, and social networks have been altered by the technological and economic landscapes, and have altered them in return. This produces fodder for what I’m calling Quantum Soft Science, an understanding of the completely unexpected ways that human-built infrastructures react to the pushes and pulls of the world around them.
What It’s All About
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the ways that our society has changed because of the Information Age, both in the way information is propagated and information technology is improved.
The societal changes I’m looking at primarily deal with the way the average person lives and interacts with society at large. I’ve identified six aspects of this change, and I’ve written an in-depth introduction to each of them. Most of the blog, then, will be comprised of news items or personal observations that exemplify how one or more of the aspects of this change affect the world around us.
The Six Aspects
In this world of increasing possibility, we have ever-expanding lifestyle options: jobs and careers that didn’t exist before, new methods of saving and spending, and trends that offer additional convenience or control. These novel options I’m calling Routes of Power, and they include everything from coupons to telecommuting, and quite a lot of real estate in between.
Probably the most common of these Routes is the monetized (or even the professional) blog. With the advent of the internet, and the instant transfer of data that comes with it, a new economy is emerging—one based on the power of billions of ad clicks, freelanced infographics, and amateur analysis. This Content Economy is still nascent, but already robust.
Along with this economy, the internet is changing the way we communicate. People are conversing more on social media sites and via text messages, changing language and social norms. The Electronic Middleman is growing ever more present in even our basic, day-to-day conversations.
Explanations for the way the world operates are as old as humanity itself. In our era, though, these explanations are being seen more and more as tools to shape human opinion. On the other hand, people are seeing that manipulation more and more for what it really is, this Narrative Engineering countered by Narrative Awareness.
Information overload has been foretold by futurists for decades, and has clearly become a reality. The surfeit of demographic, natural, scientific, and other data is confusing some, leading to a desperate cling to narratives that resolve it. To others, it represents a unique opportunity to explain phenomena and produce useful content. The Sea of Data is difficult to navigate, but holds incredible promise.
Humanity is becoming more interconnected, and social networks have been altered by the technological and economic landscapes, and have altered them in return. This produces fodder for what I’m calling Quantum Soft Science, an understanding of the completely unexpected ways that human-built infrastructures react to the pushes and pulls of the world around them.
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