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Kera’s Think Podcast, interview of Frederick Wiseman, the acclaimed Documentary filmmaker.  My favorite quote from the interview:

Anyone who says their work is the truth is either a liar, pompous or both.

Google is a middleman made of software. It’s a very, very large middleman made of software. Think of what Goliath or the Cyclops or Godzilla would look like if they were made of software. That’s Google.

— Rough Type

the billboard inflicts itself unbidden upon all but the blind or recluse. Is this not an invasion of privacy? I think it is, and I don’t see that the fact that a billboard is out-of-doors make the slightest difference. Even if it were possible for you to not look at billboards if you didn’t so choose, why in the world should you have to make the negative effort? Moreover, this invasion of your privacy is compounded in its resale to a third party. It is as though a Peeping Tom, on finding a nice window, were to sell peeps at two bits a head.

— http://howtolookatbillboards.com/

I found the above “tweet” interesting for the following reasons:

1. From an outsiders perspective, this message is absurd.  Someone that has never heard of twitter will have a very hard time understanding this message.
2. It’s interesting that with only 140 characters, none are original commentary.
3. Twitter, for all its simplicity and focus, is very complex.  @ signs, # signs, RT.  It’s a whole new lexicon.

The challenge is to look at the rituals and events in your organization (freshman orientation or weekly status meetings or online forums) and figure out how amplify the real reason they exist even if it means abandoning some of the time-honored tasks you’ve embraced. Going around in a circle saying everyone’s name doesn’t build a tribe. But neither does sitting through a boring powerpoint. Working side by side doing something that matters under adverse conditions… that’s what we need.

— Seth’s Blog

As one group amasses huge amounts of centralized power the way that Facebook has, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the psychological relationship between the site’s owners and its users.

— readwriteweb

Listening dominates on Facebook

From Facebook’s statistics page:

“More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day”

But

“More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day”

By far most people are logging on to Facebook and then just reading what their friends are up to, instead of telling anyone what they are up to.  Conventional wisdom is that Facebook and other social networks are all about sharing (i.e. talking), but it seems that the dominate activity is listening (i.e. spying).

If the modus operandi on Facebook were more about connecting with close friends and family, I think the amount of sharing (i.e. talking) would go up, because for many people broadcasting their lives to a network of semi-close friends and colleagues is a bit intimidating.  Which explains why most people just listen.

My hunch is that in the near future we will find ways to parse down our list of followers to only close friends so that the social aspect of social networking is more prominent, whereas to date it has been much more about the networking.

Having a conversation with a few close friends or family on Facebook is not at all intimidating, and that’s what I think will start to emerge and convince the 80% that are just listening, to talk.

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is routine the enemy of creativity

begin routine

wake up

play with baby

go for run

shower

go to work

stare at computer

eat lunch at desk

awkward conversation in hallway

go home

eat dinner

stare at computer

watch TV

play with baby

read

go to bed

repeat

It’s somewhat strange to reduce my life to a list of actions like this, but this is nonetheless my (more or less) routine.    My question is whether or not routine is the enemy of creativity?  Am I less creative because I have such a routine (which is an argument I hear fairly often)?

I think not.

If that were true, all “creative” people would have no routine, which is certainly not the case.  Routine is good, and allows us to focus on things that matter.  My hunch is that most people hate their routine, which is why they blame routine for their lack of creativity.  So the root cause is a lack of passion for the things within the routine, rather than routine itself.

But I would argue that if you enjoy your routine and have a passion for some of the things within it, then creativity will be a byproduct of engaging with your routine.  So instead of dismissing the idea of having a routine, the focus should be on maximizing the time we spend on things within the routine that we thoroughly enjoy.

“Creativity and discipline go hand in hand.” —Jim Collins, quoted in INC

If you take this to its absurd logical end, we will soon have grntr, which will allow us to grunt our thoughts, feelings and expressions to our friends in 3 grunts or less.

We are actually only in an “age of commodified intelligence” — a “time of conspicuously consumed high culture in which intellectual life is meticulously measured and branded” but generally without true appreciation, writes George Balgobin.

“Facebook is devoted to cataloguing this cultural rebirth,” he adds. “Here people curate their personas and project them at the world.” Yes, the lights are on, but is anybody home?

— Idea of the day

Quality over quantity on social networks

Social networking sites have been growing and dying for quite a few years.  I don’t think they are going away, even if some of the well known, or over hyped options currently in operation are no longer in existence in a few years.  Why?  Because people have an innate need to communicate, share and keep in touch with other people.

But, I do think that many social networking users’ focus will change from obtaining lots of followers to refining their list of followers to just the friends and family for which they want to keep in touch.

It will soon be all about the quality of the connection, rather than the quantity of connections.  In fact, I think social networking sites should not only suggest new people for me to follow, but also people I should likely stop following since we aren’t close enough for it to matter.  That would be helpful.

I’m not sure if people are ready for this yet, though.  It has yet to become burdensome (like email) to monitor the social networking sites for enough people.  But it will.  Until then, I’m going to prune my list of followers and see what happens.

self-fulfilling research

See below for an email from Glue about why I haven’t been using their service much. I’m writing about it here because I found the “survey” they included in the email interesting and totally incomplete.  If I’m being negative, I find it uninsightful and self-fulfilling.

As you can see they only provide three choices, which from their perspective must be the only three choices possible, right?  Wrong.  There are many more reasons that might provide insight into what Glue could do to keep users like me (curious, but not engaged).  At least provide a space for me to write in my own response.

For me, Glue is an interesting idea but in practice I don’t find it very useful.  I think it is partly because there aren’t enough

1. people using Glue

and related,

2. of my friends using Glue.

The other reason I don’t use Glue very often is because although my friends are my friends, they aren’t always the people I want to hear from regarding products or services I’m thinking about purchasing.  For the most part I’m perfectly ok with reading a review from someone I don’t necessarily know, especially if it’s well written and insightful.

That’s what I would have told Glue had they asked correctly.

Hi there,

We noticed that you have not been using Glue: http://getglue.com lately.

If you have a moment please tell us why, it would really help us improve the service.

(1) I have uninstalled Glue
(2) I have Glue installed, but it does not show up anymore
(3) Firefox is not my primary browser

Thank you!

Get Glue:http://getglue.com
The Network That Sticks With You

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