Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Since this was written in 2012 things have gotten much worse, with deep fakes, audio and video, fake news and misinformation in general added to everything described in the post. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is more true now and more important than ever before.
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.
Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?
And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.
Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?
His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.
If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
Who’d a thunk it? A world I wrote about 5 years ago that I hoped I wouldn’t live to see has already happened and I’m still here. Bummer.
It’s a world of instant solutions, from quasi-immortality, postmortem tweets from soon-to-be-launched LivesOn, to futurist Ayesha Khanna’s idea for smart contact lenses that would make homeless people disappear from view—out of sight/out of mind.
Solutionists err by assuming, rather than investigating, the problems they set out to tackle. Given Silicon Valley’s digital hammers, all problems start looking like nails, and all solutions like apps.
And then there is Seesaw, which allows you to “crowdsource absolutely every decision in your life” and practically guarantees siloed, homogenized attitudes over the long-term.
The drive seems to be to avoid thinking in general, let alone any of the less comfortable deep thinking required to mature and develop anything vaguely resembling wisdom.
Leszek Kolakowski argued that, given that we are regularly confronted with equally valid choices where painful ethical reflection is in order, being inconsistent is the only way to avoid becoming a doctrinaire ideologue who sticks to an algorithm. For Kolakowski, absolute consistency is identical to fanaticism.
Or as Emerson said long before the rise of today’s technology, “A foolish Consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. With consistency, a great soul simply has nothing to do.”
The main problem with so many innovators is that they want to solve problems with an algorithm, which ignores the entire messy human equation; much like medicine desperately wants to believe that one-dose-fits-all.
Nor, in the rush to innovate, do they give much thought as to the longer-term effects of their miracles.
The interactive dialog provided by digital media was hailed as a way to draw millions more into the dialog, which sounds great until you look at the real effect of negative comments on stories.
Comments from some readers, our research shows, can significantly distort what other readers think was reported in the first place. (…) The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.
Turns out it’s not so much the comment, but the tone that has the greatest effect.
So. No discussion, no disagreement within your little world, no ethical dilemmas, no deep thinking, mental struggle, stretching or growing.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
It’s been three years since I wrote this, but crowdthinking has increased geometrically, while independent thinking, let alone deep thinking, has decreased in proportion. You have only to consider the questions on Quora and the crowd’s actions/reactions at any political rally to see just how bad it’s become. Read other Golden Oldies here
What do you think?
Do you think?
Or perhaps the question is ‘how do you think’ around the clutter and the noise.
“Nobody can think anymore because they’re constantly interrupted,” said Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School professor and author of “Sleeping With Your Smartphone.” “Technology has enabled this expectation that we always be on.” Workers fear the repercussions that could result if they are unavailable, she said.
Of course, there is the alternative of ‘why bother thinking’ when one can just ask and receive crowdsourced thoughts on any subject imaginable; from where/what to eat to raising your kids to how/when to die.
But what happens to the crowd when everybody stops bothering to think?
At that point the old saying, everyone has a right to be stupid, but some just abuse the privilege, kicks in with a vengeance.
Rather than joining the crowd, take time to think; you may be one of the few left who do.
It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time. Read other Golden Oldies here.
I’ve always been an original, much to my family’s consternation when I was growing up and to friends, bosses and colleagues since.
Being an original isn’t the easy way to go. It’s far more comfortable to be a copy; to follow without question the ideology, religion, parents, friends—anyone or anything that takes away the fear of making the wrong choice.
I don’t remember feeling scared as I careened through my early life taking sometimes crazy risks, but never without doing worst case analysis first.
I even adopted Frank Sinatra’s My Way as my personal theme.
For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels; And not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows – And did it my way!
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
More and more research is showing that real creativity is a more solo function than a team effort.
Susan Cain spells this out in a thoughtful LinkedIn post that is well worth your time, especially if you are a young founder raised on social media, with a penchant for crowdsourcing and Yelp.
Consider the words of Steve Wozniak in his memoir iWoz.
Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me—they’re shy and they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone where they can control an invention’s design without a lot of other people designing it for marketing or some other committee. I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Then read, digest and tweak Cain’s ideas to fit your situation, then put the concepts to work in your company.
There are many ways of taking a career risk besides making over-the-top bets for a financial business or starting a company.
Risk may be easier to spot these days, because decisions are no longer personal; more often they are crowdsourced, whether that means your spouse, close friends or 500 LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook connections.
While spotting risk may be easier, evaluating that risk is much harder, because determining whether a risk is worth taking can’t be crowdsourced.
The best way to decide whether to take a risk or not is through worst case analysis, i.e., think about the absolute worst thing that could happen if you do it. Then think through whether and how you would deal with that result. If you can handle the worst result you go forward; if it’s too much you go back to the planning board.
It used to work every time, but these days fewer and fewer people are willing to think independently, so the input you get is unconsciously based on whether that person could handle the worst case result.
But they aren’t you.
Consider Beth Comstock, currently senior vice president and chief marketing officer at General Electric, who took a major risk that put her on the path to where she is today.
“I was at CBS, and it was rocking,” she said. Then she got a call from NBC, her former boss, offering her a position that involved being responsible for media relations and marketing in the news division. “I think the job had been available for a year. News was not doing well anywhere…. People were saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ It seemed like career suicide.”
The ability to perform worst case analysis clearly, sans rationalizations, means you need to take time to accurately know yourself—not just the self you project to others.
Only you live inside your head and only you knows what really goes on there.
The traditional sources of seed funding are savings, credit cards and friends/family; now crowdfunding has been added to the list.
Recently I suggested Kickstarter to a founder, but he rejected it out-of-hand.
I was surprised, because both his idea and funding requirements seemed made for that solution.
But it was his reason for dismissing it that really blew me away; he believed it wasn’t a “professional solution” and would diminish the success/value/ of his company.
His attitude was even more surprising, since he is in his mid-twenties. I asked him why he felt that way and he said he frequently turned to more experienced people when considering business decisions, especially financial.
He said there were several financial executives among this group and that is who he queried. All held or had held senior financial positions in Fortune 500 companies and they agreed that having crowdfunding in the company’s history might make it difficult to go IPO. An additional two, who are lawyers, warned him that the law hadn’t caught up with the world and that crowdfunding might blur ownership in the event of an acquisition.
Listening to him, Monday’s post about the embrace of peer pressure to the point that opinions on everything are open to review and need to match what is considered “correct” as dictated by social media took on a whole new meaning and pointed out a glaring problem.
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.
Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?
And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.
Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?
His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.
If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.
You may have noticed that the June Leadership Development Carnival was missing from the first Monday this month. It happened because this month’s host published it the second Monday instead of the first Sunday as usual. The delay, however, had absolutely no impact on the extraordinary quality of information shared on it. Enjoy!
Those of you concerned with strategy, either because you set it or are just interested in how it works, will find McKinsey’s approach to crowdsourcing strategy an intriguing idea. (Free registration required.)
…“making the vision meaningful to employees at a personal level” and “soliciting employee involvement in setting the company’s direction.” If that’s right, it suggests that making more employees part of the strategy process should be a powerful means of aligning them more closely with the company’s overall direction.
Finally, cyberbullying is rarely a laughing matter even leading to suicide. But sometimes even bad stuff can be fought through a combination or creativity and laughter.
The comedian Isabel Fay and fellow artists just posted a YouTube video featuring a song that ridicules online bullies who have targeted them. (…)“Love ya,” Ms. Fay says. “Keep on trollin’!”
So much of Twitter use in the US is banal, but the rest of the world is finding serious use for those 134 characters, like fighting crime. An administrative chief in a Kenyan village does just that using it to find stolen cows or sheep and even thwart a home invasion.
When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.
It’s fortunate that I’m extremely healthy, because I’m not a lover of the medical world. Individuals do great things, but I don’t trust the profession as a whole and those feelings have been reinforced by the secrecy surrounding the connections between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, but that’s about to change.
Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.
Household vinegar has long been the go-to ingredient for a host of household cleaners and solutions to everyday problems (just ask Heloise). Now humble, cheapvinegar is saving lives (not in the US, of course).
…a remarkably simple, brief and inexpensive procedure, one with the potential to do for poor countries what the Pap smear did for rich ones: end cervical cancer’s reign as the No. 1 cancer killer of women.The magic ingredient? Household vinegar.
Crowdsourcing is making waves in many areas, from funding startups to improving government processes to jump-starting medical innovation. Who knew?
“Offering a $100,000 prize has yielded ideas in six months that would have taken four to five years to develop at ten times the cost,” said Sanofi’s Dennis Urbaniak, VP US diabetes.
If you read nothing else today I hope you read this final link and consider registering. After all, can’t hurt and could save a life.
Q: What do you get when you combine a driving entrepreneur with a mission and an algorithm?
A: The National Kidney Register and the longest domino set of transplant surgeries to date; 64 to be exact!
Chain 124, as it was labeled by the nonprofit National Kidney Registry, required lockstep coordination over four months among 17 hospitals in 11 states. It was born of innovations in computer matching, surgical technique and organ shipping, as well as the determination of a Long Island businessman named Garet Hil, who was inspired by his own daughter’s illness to supercharge the notion of “paying it forward.”
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Two stories today made me really happy.
More and more research is showing that real creativity is a more solo function than a team effort.
There are many ways of taking a career risk besides making over-the-top bets for a financial business or starting a company.
The traditional sources of 
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
A bit of this and that again today.
