Link: Gin, Television and Social Surplus
Clay Shirky: Gin, Television and Social Surplus
Clay Shirky recently gave a talk at my workplace, and it was typically awesome.
In this piece, Shirky coins a phrase that encapsulates our new reality:
I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."
And later:
It's also become my motto, when people ask me what we're doing--and when I say "we" I mean the larger society trying to figure out how to deploy this cognitive surplus, but I also mean we, especially, the people in this room, the people who are working hammer and tongs at figuring out the next good idea. From now on, that's what I'm going to tell them: We're looking for the mouse.
Link: Visual Thinking
Douglas Copland: Visual Thinking:
Author Douglas Coupland discusses how his mind works.
No, he didn’t see, because one is either a visual thinker or one is not. He was not. I’m beginning to think that being a visual thinker is like being right-handed or red-haired; it was all decided the moment the sperm hit the egg.
Coupland makes a connection between Mac-use and visual thinking. I certainly fall into this category. Interesting to consider what drives what.
What I've Been Up To
It's been quiet on the old blog, so I thought I would mention what it is that's been keeping me not blogging.
The answer is a small contribution to a new product, Times People. The premise is simple: Join the service, and share New York Times articles. A simple click on the "Recommend" button is all there is to it. Those who follow you will see your recommendation, and you will see the recommendations of those you follow.
Here's my pitch. Please note that the thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the New York Times Company.</disclaimer>
You can read all about what Times People is and does, and how it works on the welcome page.
Instead, I'd like to mention what it's like when you use Times People: You end up reading a lot of interesting articles you probably never would have. For example, because of Times People, I learned that there is a rule at the Met Opera House that there be no solo encores.
The rule has been in place for decades, with few exceptions, and a few weeks ago, an exception was made. The last time this happened was 1994, for Luciano Pavarotti. Imagine the performance worth breaking such a rule.
Not a regular Arts section reader, I likely never would have read this story, but because of Times People, I did.
Clay Shirky came in for a talk today. As he fired off examples of cool projects exemplifying the power of the internet, I considered the intense value of people who cull a topic presenting the best bits. Curators, if you will. Clay Shirky is a really good curator of internet social trends. He's read all the books and articles, and can tell you where to go.
Times People lets you take up the curator mantle for yourself. Or if you'd prefer, you can leech on to some excellent curators. The result for me has been a much richer reading experience in areas I would not have otherwise pursued. Of course, your mileage may vary.
If you do like the service, you might enjoy my contribution, the Times People iPhone viewer at http://timespeople.nytimes.com/iphone. I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to pass along any thoughts or suggestions.
Addendum: About Those Other Services
When I tell people about Times People, the question is invariably raised: What about x site. Digg, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. Why should I use Times People instead of those other sites?
I would offer two answers.
Times People has a complete API. Just about all data available in the system is exposed as RSS and JSON feeds. If you want to integrate our data with external services, much work has been done to let you do so.
If you feel your Times reading needs are met by services like Digg, that's great! Really. The mission of the Times is to inform and entertain our readers. We produce vast quantities of reading, listening, and viewing material. How you arrive is secondary to your being there at all.
If Digg is meeting your New York Times needs, seriously, more power to you. If receiving twitter posts of articles from friends is meeting your needs, awesome.
For myself, I'd rather not clog up my Twitter feed with Times links. I became disenchanted with Digg and vote-based systems long ago. Not everything that is popular is good, and not everything that is good is popular. There is a place for voting systems. There is also a place for the well chosen suggestion from a friend. We have built a service to let you do so, easily.
I would urge you, if you are skeptical, to give it a go anyway. I was skeptical myself when I first encountered the project, and have since come to really value the service.
If you want to follow me, check out my profile page You can also see who I'm following.
And for what it's worth, there will be no one on Times People commenting "First!". Think about it.
Gearing Up with the Daily Grind List
If you manage a to-do list to keep track of your tasks, I'd like to introduce a technique I've been using that you may find useful. Think of it as an alternate take on "parking on a downhill slope."
If you don't know that term, it refers to stopping just shy of completing a task at the end of the day, such that, in the morning, you can effortlessly top it off. Having thus begun with accomplishment, it will be easy to keep rolling. Inertia and such.
My alternate technique is a list I call the "Daily Grind". I use Things to manage my tasks. (Possible neologism: "I'm a Thinger"). One of my favorite features is the ability to go through next actions, and hand-pick the ones to be done today. These then appear in a pre-set list.
A recent build of Things added repeating tasks and projects. So it's possible to create a project full of tasks, and schedule a copy of that project to appear in the Today list automatically.
I made myself a list of stupidly easy tasks, the sort of things I usually do anyway, but sometimes don't. For instance, I sometimes forget to check for new episodes of The Daily Show, and I sometimes forget to update my podcasts. Sometimes I leave my power adapter at work.
I gathered this random assortment into one list, and set it to show up each morning. About half the tasks are start-of-day tasks, and half are end-of-day. All of the tasks can be completed every day.
There are two benefits to this practice. Much like normal downhill-slope planning, the grind offers you an easy win with which to start the day. The geek in me gets a little thrill every time a box is checked, but many of the tasks I work on can take days to reach the check-off point. The daily grind gives me a chance to score a little victory right away, every day.
Even better, taking the ten seconds to mark off those tasks puts you into the to-doing state of mind. Accomplishment becomes the order of the day, and in visiting your to-dos, you can now review the other items.
Secondly, a central tenant David Allen hits on with GTD is the need to put everything in your trusted system, and then trust the system. Everything means every thing. Each time I forget to pack the power adapter, not only is my computer time curtailed, but I also lose a dab of trust in my system.
By concretizing these stupid little tasks, I'm preventing that loss of trust. I can feel increasingly comfortable with my system, which means I can spend the rest of my time on more interesting topics.
The Warm Glow of Twitter
There's a topic of discussion making the rounds in the twitterverse: How do we explain twitter to other people? This is not a new topic. Indeed, there is a very very common pattern for joining twitter.
FAIL
Everyone tells you to try it, so you do, and you use it, and you post a message something like "Everyone says I should use twitter, so I am. Trying to figure out what the deal is." And then: Nothing happens. Because none of your friends use twitter.
If you're lucky, some of your friends join, and you pull through, and everybody loves it. Or you find out about some famous people who use it, you follow them, build up your following list, and you see the light. But it takes time, and for everyone I know, there's a stretch where it's not working and you just don't get it.
Call it The Twitter Gap.
Answering the Wrong Question
Once you're in, you want everyone you know to be in. There is a direct correlation between percentage of people you know who twitter, and the pleasure you get in using it. So you give them the Pitch. You tell them how to use the service, how it works, and then you do the little song and dance where you compare it to other services. It's a mini-blog. It's like a forum. It's like a series of IM away messages. It's like public SMS. Whatever.
None of our analogies are convincing. We are talking about How It Works, and nobody cares about How It Works. Most of us who use Twitter right now are technical people. Understanding and discussing how technical systems work makes us all happy inside.
The Right Question
But what normal people want to know is "How will this make my life any better?" There's nothing obvious about publicly available 140-character messages. Nothing that screams "You must use this thing!" Nobody buys a car because it contains an internal combustion engine that drives four wheels, can be steered, and may have a radio.
People buy cars because cars make them feel free. Or because they can go to anything, in any weather, at anytime, with little effort. People own cars because it connects them to the people, places, and things they care about, without the physical strain.
LIkewise, nobody uses Google because you type a set of words into a text box and you get back (hopefully) relevant web pages. People use Google because at any time, you can access any information you can think of. Any question can be answered in about 10 seconds.
So the real question is: Why do we use twitter?
How It Feels to Use Twitter
We use twitter because of how it feels.
Let's assume you pull through The Twitter Gap. You have a healthy set of people you follow, and you are comforted to know that a bunch of people follow you. Most people using Twitter these days are pretty plugged in. So they probably have twitter on their phone and thus post and read regularly.
The end product of twitter is a long list of short messages from people you know, like, love, and/or admire. Think of the hundred little moments on your own on a normal day. Standing in line at the grocery store. Waiting for some form of transportation. Pausing at work. Waiting to meet somebody. Waiting for the S.O. to come back from the restroom. Waiting for a meeting to begin.
Now take those lost moments, and inject perhaps half a dozen comments, some witty, some interesting, some utterly boring, from the people in your life. Whether the comments are worthwhile or meaningful is secondary to the fact that they're there at all.
Further, no one is jostling for your attention. No bells ding (unless you want them too.) There's no phone to feel guilty for not answering. There's no email to carefully craft. There's no IM to coordinate. Twitter just sits there. When you're ready, it sends along your snippets of text.
Queue the Sappy Music
Twitter is a button you can push at any time that reminds you that there are wonderful people in the world doing wonderful things, some of whom you know and care about, and who care about you. It's like the notes your mother would leave in your lunchbox. You find the note, and you think of mom, and you think of her kindly assembling your lunch. And you feel Good.
Now imagine those little notes dropping in at any moment of the day, but only on command, and from everyone you know. It's like a sinewy thread, weaving through the day, connecting the moments between actual connection with little reminders that the connections are there.
So that's my twitter pitch. I think that nice little feeling is why we twitter users are always bugging you about it and blogging about it, over and over and over.
I promise not to blog about this again. If you're interested in tuning into Radio Andre, you may do so here. You don't have to join to follow along. It just makes things easier.