I don’t Tweet; I don’t do Facebook; I don’t own a cell phone; I refuse all the invitations to join yet another 2.0 platform; I’m mostly inactive on LinkedIn, not and open networker and wonder, when I think of it at all, how to politely disconnect from the people whose invitations I accepted before I knew better;
I spend my time working on Option Sanity, the new product my company is launching; I write; I spend time with friends, in person and on the phone; I read, not “worthwhile” or business books, but for pure pleasure; I play in the dirt in my garden, which, after seven years, is actually looking good to me; I cherish my brain.
I know many people who are wired; who can’t imagine life without their smartphone; who have hundreds, if not thousands of friends; who totally freak out at the idea of not being connected 24/7.
What about their brains? Is the cumulative effect of all that information and connectivity positive or negative?
A series called in the New York Times this week offers a look at much of the brain research being done on this subject and it’s not a pretty site.
The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”
Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”
They [scientists] say our ability to focus is being undermined by bursts of information.
These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive.
Some experts believe excessive use of the Internet, cell phones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic.
Younger people are particularly affected: almost 30 percent of those under 45 said the use of these devices made it harder to focus, while less than 10 percent of older users agreed. … One in seven married respondents said the use of these devices was causing them to see less of their spouses. And 1 in 10 said they spent less time with their children under 18.
And if the articles aren’t enough to make you rethink your wired state, here is a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book ‘The Shallows’: Is the Net Fostering Stupidity?
Americans now spend 8.5 hours a day frenetically interacting with their PCs, TVs, or, increasingly, the smartphones that follow them everywhere. In the process, writes Carr, we are reverting to our roots as data processors. “What we’re experiencing is, in a metaphorical sense, a reversal of the early trajectory of civilization: We are evolving from being cultivators of personal knowledge to being hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.”
It would be unfair not to offer up a bit of hope with all this.
Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Winifred Gallagher, author of “Rapt,” a guide to the science of paying attention, calls the focused life.
It’s a lot of reading on a summer weekend, but the information will impact you and your kids for the rest of your lives—whether you accept all of it or just a tiny bit.
Darn! I knew I forgot one link. It’s in one of the articles, but here it is directly.
I was looking through my articles to see what I would offer you and I realized that I had five I wanted to share, but they didn’t fit into a nice, neat category. I decided I didn’t care that it was an illogical collection, it fits my mood and an irrational dose of spring fever I’m enjoying along with the weather.
First up is a little story to make you think. I write a lot about accountability; I read this years ago and forgot all about it until I saw it again in a post from Dan McCarthy. Share it as often as possible; it sinks in far faster than anything else I’ve found.
This is a story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody‘s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn‘t do it. It ended that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
Anyone who follows this blog knows that brain research fascinates me and this one is no different. Seems that laughter isn’t about funny, it’s a form of communication.
Laughing is primal, our first way of communicating. Apes laugh. So do dogs and rats. Babies laugh long before they speak.
Every week or so I receive an invitation to join Facebook that I politely refuse, explaining that I don’t do anything except LinkedIn. Many times they write back and ask why, so I thought it would be faster to post a link than to write every time and explain that I’m a digital dinosaur who still believes in an old fashioned concept called privacy—which seems to be disappearing whether by hook, crook or glitch.
On Wednesday, users discovered a glitch that gave them access to supposedly private information in the accounts of their Facebook friends, like chat conversations.
This one may offend some of my readers, but you don’t have to click the link. Again, long time readers are probably aware that I am vehemently opposed to the teaching of “intelligent design” or any other faith-based content, so I found the idea of someone evangelizing evolution through rap brilliant.
For Baba Brinkman has taken Darwin’s exhortation seriously. He is a man on a mission to spread the word about evolution — how it works, what it means for our view of the world, and why it is something to be celebrated rather than feared. To this end, he has concocted a set of mini-lectures disguised as rap songs.
Finally, a superbly intelligent explanation that, for me, answers the question of why the health care bill brought forth so much strong negative emotion. What do you think?
To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
We are talking about communications this week; Tuesday we looked at a sample of opaque corporate communications; today we’ll consider personal communications.
I will skip the idiocy of the tell-all approach so popular on Facebook, MySpace, etc. and focus instead on the trail of poor communications so may people leave behind as they comment their way around the Net, whether it’s a review on Yelp, comment on a business/professional/”straight” blog, profile or some other form of “personal branding.”
Let me say this in words of one syllable: How you write tells people who you are.
As I’ve written before, this isn’t just about Millennials, it applies to anybody still concerned about the impression they make.
I came across a perfect example completely by accident.
Granted it is an extreme example; the comment was left on a blog post discussing social judging skills citing research showing that children as young as three months demonstrate them. (I’m not including a link to the post because I have no interest in embarrassing the writer who used her own name.)
well i think that people say they an change a baby if they are rude or like bad you know but really the baby knows what there trying to pull on them:) i think that people say they can change peope and if they think they changed someone there wrong cause deep deep down your still that mean cruel un hearted person or caring person:)
Lots of people write all lower case, so perhaps we should ignore that. And there are many words that sound alike with totally different meanings—there and their—so should we give that a pass? Can you make sense of what the writer is saying?
What is your impression of the writer?
Would you hire her or want her on your team?
Now consider that it was written by an adult, native English speaker, who has a college degree and works in a professional capacity.
If she was a candidate you were considering and you googled her name and saw this would you hire her?
It’s unlikely she writes like this all the time, because if she did she couldn’t do her job, but when it comes to the web the usual attitude is ‘who cares’?
Your writing is like breadcrumbs left along your route on the web; they enable the world to follow you and get to know you; it is their first impression of you.
It’s up to you to decide what that impression will be.
Join me tomorrow for the basics of good breadcrumbs.
Flickr photo credit to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeanbaptisteparis/224566560/
Today’s Odd Bits are kind of a hodgepodge, but in the twisty corridors of my mind they do fit together.
First the potatoes.
Do you believe all the experts, academicians, pundits and just-plain-people who keep talking about how the so-called Great Recession is permanently changing America’s stuff fixation? I don’t, I just think people will find a way to do the same thing covertly—call it inconspicuous consumption.
On the other side, have high-end retailers really changed their attitude towards customer service? An exec from Saks Fifth Avenue said, “Every customer is valuable and they’re even more valuable today because there are fewer of them.” Does that mean they will revert to form when there are more of them? Another little gem buried in this article shows that consumers haven’t changed all that much, after all, who really needs an $18 bottle of nail polish?
Microsoft, the company people love or hate. Since I’m in the latter camp I was delighted to see that they lost on appeal and the $290 million judgment for violating a patent stands. Their reaction is typical of today’s worst corporate MAP, since “…new versions [of Word], with the computer code in question removed, would be ready for sale when the injunction begins Jan. 11.” They stole, but that’s OK because getting caught won’t interfere with business and apparently the money is no big deal. Still more intriguing is an article at CNN wondering if Steve Ballmer will be out in 2010, “Ballmer has shepherded Microsoft to vanishing mobile market share (now just 7.9 percent of the market), a hesitant tiptoe into software as a service, and a general sense of retreat in emerging markets.” (Be sure to check the two links at the end of the story.)
And then there is Facebook, which is one of the top two time-wasters since time began (the other is Twitter). Besides providing you with a whole new set of virus to worry about, it’s obsessive (in case you hadn’t noticed) and the best defense seems to be defriending.
Enough with the potatoes, you need meat to balance your last meal here. And for that kind of substance you can’t beat Harvard.
Specifically, you can’t beat Michael C. Jensen, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus’ fascinating paper on integrity.
“Integrity in our model is honoring your word. As such integrity is a purely positive phenomenon. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad, right vs. wrong behavior.”
Therefore the worst villain has the same integrity as your favorite saint. Interesting premise, well worth reading.
Social media; stories about it are everywhere, but I find the most interesting are about what companies are doing and how its being used.
Let’s start with Twitter. Everybody has heard of Twitter, even people who have no idea what it is talk about it—like my friend’s great-granny. But it’s their smarts in innovation that is most impressive—they outsource it.
Twitter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them.’ –Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T.
If you run a business these days you’re probably using Facebook or thinking about it—I know I am. So I found this article in the NY Times of great interest, especially since it’s written for folks, not pros.
You need to be where your customers are and your prospective customers are, and with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where your audience is for a lot of products and services. –Clara Shih, author of “The Facebook Era” (Pearson Education, 2009).
Do you know the key ingredient that helps police nab the bad guys? Stupidity—theirs. It used to be that they flashed their loot around and bragged to their friends, not they flash their loot and brag on Facebook.
Maxi Sopo thought he had made an excellent decision when he ran away to Cancun to escape a Seattle fraud prosecution. He also thought it would be a great idea to add a former Justice Department official as a friend and gush about his exploits on Facebook.
I love it when stupid gets stupider.
Last is an item that falls in the smart or stupid category—you decide. It asks the question; at what point does a CEO’s Facebook sharing cross the boundary to TMI (too much information)?
Recently Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre, a $230 million company with more than 3,000 employees, got enmeshed in a bit of a 2009 corporate culture snafu. Conley’s not your average Harvard MBA pinstriped buttoned-down corporate chieftan. He’s an entrepreneur. He writes his own rules. So to him, it wasn’t so strange to post some pictures of himself at the Burning Man whatever-it-is in the dessert on his Facebook fan page. Or to tweet on Twitter about the demise of his 8 year long relationship.
When his employees got upset he wrote about it on BNET. Read both articles and share your thoughts in comments.
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ‘em—at least most of the time.
Two great interviews today; just two because one if fairly long.
First is Dany Levy, founder and editorial director of DailyCandy in an interview conducted by Anthony (Tony) Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of Cue Ball, a venture and early growth equity firm.
Daily Candy is “a daily email newsletter that provides readers with an essential nugget of hip, insider advice about “what to do today,” began in New York and soon spread to a dozen other U.S. cities and London.” Levy took in one majority investor 2003 and the company was recently acquired by Comcast for $125 million.
There is both a written interview and a video, but Harvard doesn’t provide embeddable code, so you’ll have to go there.
Next, Henry Blodget interviews 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg who “started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Five years later, it has 300 million users and $500 million in revenue, and it’s worth something north of $6 billion.”
Many wonder what someone that age know about running a company that size, but Zuckerberg makes the case for not only hiring those smarter than you, something every has heard, but also listening to them.
Below is the full interview, the short version is here, if you prefer, but the full interview is well worth watching.
I don’t understand the current obsession with other people’s lives, in fact, I find it very weird.
Whether it is a public figure or not, the desire (need?) to know every little detail, what they are doing every minute of their lives, the products they use, their ups and downs to be almost obsessional.
This kind of interest used to be reserved for the intimacy of real friendship or close family relations—and even then there were boundaries—but now anyone is fair game.
Apparently I’m not as out of it as I thought; many people are shutting down their Facebook pages for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the effects they notice on their own MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).
Others are leaving because they don’t like the commercialization, which I find amusing. Any mass human congregating, past, present or future, will attract those who want to sell their product. Why anyone would think it would be different because the location is in the cyber-world is beyond me.
Other than malicious intent, two things happen on social media.
Not thinking, which causes people to post stuff to venues in which it doesn’t belong and giving access to “friends”—who may not be next week.
Not focusing, which leads to pilot error though the ease and simplicity of clicking the wrong button.
Consider this post, sent to me by a friend, as a great example of the dangers of multitasking while updating Facebook.
Can you imagine the reaction of hiring managers, potential mates or future kids? Even if it had been posted privately there is nothing to stop a “friend” who is angry from reposting it.
Once it’s out there it’s out there forever—definitely the wrong kind of immortality.
I’ve said many times, both here and at MAPping Company Success that social media never dies and people need to think about that.
You, my readers, my friends and whatever enemies I have all use social media (well, almost all), I don’t. No Twitter, no texting (no cell phone:), no Facebook, no MySpace—OK, I do business blog,
But I do read a lot about it; follow the trends and tragedies, as when Twitter went down. So I thought I’d share some of the more interesting articles I’ve come across recently.
First is a clear, concise description of three tactics to get your company up and using social media. Not strategy (as several commenter pointed out) but solid action items.
The Wall Street Journal offers (more) advice—why and how—on the importance of learning texting lingo—that’s one no one will ever sell me on, but you should if you plan to function in the cyber-world.
From Psychology Today, 5 Smartphone Rules To Live By that teach you how to own your smartphone instead of it owning you.
But not everybody believes that everything you do should be chronicled for public consumption. Protocols NYC, a salon created by five Manhattan news media types and those they invite, has banned texting, cell phones, pictures, etc. They call it off the record and just talk to each other—it’s called conversation for those of you too young to have experienced that kind of focus.
Two final offerings for kids and adults who think it’s cool put their life online. They should serve as a warning to anyone with kids and the second for anyone who holds or plans to hold a job at anytime in their lives. The first tells us that “one in 10 teens admitted posting a nude or seminude shot of themselves or others online.” Combine that with the second, “35percent of the 2,667 managers and human resource workers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site,” and you have a recipe for disaster. Privacy settings aren’t the whole answer, since inappropriate pictures sent and information shared with friends may appear on their pages (and who knows where else)—and they never go away.
I had an interesting experience today—actually, I found it amusing, but ridiculous.
I used to live in Silicon Valley, the land of early adopters and the technically obsessed, and am still involved with several groups there.
Here’s the short version of what happened.
Around noon one of the project members sent an email to all of us saying he urgently needed certain information and asked if ‘Joe’ had it;
Joe replied around 1 that he didn’t have it, but maybe a Jean did;
Jean replied around 1:45 that only Mary had access to it.
I saw the thread around 2:15 when I got back to my office, called Mary and told her that she urgently needed to respond to the thread.
She did and the situation was dealt with immediately.
What was so ridiculous is that the entire group knows that
1) Mary is the only person with access to this info;
2) That she is ‘technologically challenged’; and that
3) she doesn’t read email as it arrives; she checks it on and off when she has the time.
That means that email wasn’t the best choice to contact her and everybody knew—if they had stopped to think about it instead of running on autopilot.
There are many ways to contact people these days, email, instant messaging, Twitter, but only if you don’t care that the world can see it, Facebook, ditto, etc.
The problem lies in focus; your choice should depend not on your preference, but on the preference of the person you are trying to reach.
So remember, communicating is like playing golf. The trick isn’t to play the whole course with one club, but to know which club to use for which shot.
It’s one of those odds and ends day, no unifying theme, but some good stuff.
Phil Gerbyshak sent me a link to an interesting post by his friend Roy Atkinson. Roy talks about speedership—the need to act quickly in today’s world. Roy sees it as a requirement for a positional leader, which it is, but I see it as an attitude that everybody needs these days.
Click over to the slideshow at Business Week and learn what experts are saying about how leadership has changed.
Next, in case you hadn’t heard, one of the newest social media trends are Facebook suicides, as in killing your profile. Click the link and see why people are choosing to kill their profile.
Finally, something for you to think about. What happens when doctors start treating medicine as a business? What does it mean for the future of medicine, not healthcare, in this country?
I am a digital dinosaur.
We are talking about communications this week; Tuesday we looked at a sample of 
Social media; stories about it are everywhere, but I find the most interesting are about what companies are doing and how its being used.
Entrepreneurs, you got to love ‘em—at least most of the time.
But I do read a lot about it; follow the trends and tragedies, as when Twitter went down. So I thought I’d share some of the more interesting articles I’ve come across recently.
There are many ways to contact people these days, email, instant messaging, Twitter, but only if you don’t care that the world can see it, Facebook, ditto, etc.
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