(1) Why (2) How (3) What

It’s that classic dichotomy. Are you a master of one, single focus, or a dabbler in multiple directions, who leaves unfinished works in your wake?

An explorer is labelled ‘jack of all trades’ when his various journeys are measured on individual bases. If instead the journeyer himself were to be measured, one would discover a masterful endurance for the hardest parts of any journey:

1) The decision making power to “just start walking”
2) The patience & calmness to move beyond being lost
3) The effort & exertion required to gain that first plateau of momentum
4) The identification & classification of new patterns in order to develop a working vocabulary of a new field

As the availability of forks in the road grows at an accelerating pace, those who would have been dismissed as jacks of all trades now find themselves in a newly dominant position: Masters of New Trades.

I really do believe in the power of categories, of separating things into different drawers. The power of categories is to be able to filter, to chunk, to address many by one name.

But categories can be stifling too. A classic type of overdone category is “musical genre”. Classifying songs into particular genres is great when you’re selling the music and need an efficient way of reaching markets.

But those categories don’t allow the ability to choose music based on how passionate the musician is, regardless of “genre”. This is something not as easily put into a category, yet in my opinion, it’s precisely what I search for in music.

I just took a look at my dashboard and realized that I have 190 posts here, dating back to 2006.  I don’t know if that’s a lot or a little, or if the quantity itself has any relevance, but what’s interesting is that each time I sit down to write, I expect that newest article to carry 95% of the weight of a first impression.

Give or take _%.

Usually the writing is something that takes place in the moment.  It just happens.  Not necessarily about being inspired, or having been struck with some particular notion (although that does happen).  Mainly about deciding that it’s better to write today than to not write today, and let the words form into ideas as they will.

I forget a lot of what I’ve written a few months ago, let alone what I wrote a few years ago.  In moments such as these (i.e. as I write this post), I’m groping for an idea, for something to flow on, for a train to hitch… and so instead of writing about something in particular, I become self-reflexive and write about writing.. even writing about my writing about my writing as I am now…

How many other creation forms can be so self-descriptive?  Can you play piano about playing piano?  You can paint about painting.  Can you cook about cooking?  Can you make fashion that’s about fashion?

Sure, in every medium there are the products of self-commentary, and these are often lost on general audiences.  Adaptation (Nicholas Cage’s last respectable movie) was about a screenwriter writing a movie as the movie itself happened… somewhat.  That one worked well.  I’ve seen a bunch other films about the filmmaking process that very gropey, and likely lost on audiences who themselves aren’t interested in their own personal creative processes.

Funny thing about these films… they always have an actual climax, a conclusion, a resolution.  Even when the entire film is about not knowing what to do, the creative process figures out how to put a closing on the (non)narrative.  Because all narratives must stop, all must have a period, or question mark, or exclamation point (if you’re lucky).

How about ending a narrative with a + sign… or an equal sign.. how about ending on a #?  (Wait is that a pound or a question mark?)  We make decisions all the time using # signs (after choosing the appropriate extension number).  Or we could leave it off with that sign with the weird name and the big ol’ butt.

Yeah, I’ll do that here: &

I recently viewed Eli Pariser’s TED talk – which I’ll summarize so you don’t have to watch the video itself (or read the book for that matter).  Essentially, Facebook, Google, et. al. look at your clicks, searches, likes, friends, replies, etc, and determine that what you do, algorithmically, equals your preferences.  And over time, Google & Facebook filter what they display to you based on these assumed preferences.

One example he gives in his TED talk, is that, in Facebook, he has Democrat friends, and he has Republican friends.  Over time, even though he wants to stay abreast of what his Republic friends are up to, he naturally prefers what his Democrat friends say more, clicks on those links more, “likes” their posts more.  And what he noticed is that his “un-liked” friends have slowly become filtered out completely in his Facebook activity stream.

So… the facts on the ground here are very true.  I’ve often  had the experience where even on my own computer, with cookies intact, changing WIFI networks yields (slightly) different search results.

Eli Pariser sees this as a problem to be blamed on the big networks (Google, Facebook, etc).   He finds this to be dreadfully wrong.  He feels there is something very Big Brother about it. He is looking outside of himself, for something external to blame, which can therefore be rallied and called upon to change.  I disagree only with where his finger is pointing.

I actually see this as something very natural, highly reflective of how our minds work in the real world.  I’ll give this entire phenomenon the label of “What you focus on, you see more of” and allow it to cover both this ‘filtering’ issue online, and the ‘filtering’ issue that occurs in all of our lives.

The classic example is when you’re considering buying a car, you suddenly see that car everywhere on the road.  It’s not that the car became more popular; it’s that your mind is dwelling on it, and therefore filters your awareness accordingly.

But this also happens to Democrats and Republicans.  Democrats focus on all the liberal banter; Republicans focus on all the conservative banter.  Both sides, over time, grow more and more distant in terms of styles and preferences, and over time, simply filter each other out.  The people at the Glen Beck rally don’t go to the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally, nor vicey versey.

So, what Eli Pariser has pointed out, is not a flaw in the system, but, in fact, an opportunity in the system.  Let’s take his own case, for example.  While in the real world it’s easy for him to not even notice that he’s filtered out those of differing viewpoints, on Facebook he’s been able to compare his current filter with a past filter, and therefore become aware of the filter itself.  This is a big deal. In the real world, it’s much, much harder to even notice our filters at all.

Second, Google & Facebook have no skin in the game, no ego to protect.  Since our own perceptive biases might be helping cover up certain insecurities, these perceptive filters are actually protecting something deeper from ourselves; there’s a conflict of interest going on that’s not as easily swayed.  But Google & Facebook rely on simple pattern recognition; what you choose, you will be served more of.

SO if you’re like Eli Pariser and you WANT to expand your horizons beyond your more animalistic “more-like-me” herd-like preferences, all you need to do is make that very conscious choice and figure out how to semi-trick Google & Facebook into allowing your horizons to expand.

Eli could make certain conscious choices to inflate Facebook’s assumed importance of those Republican friends of his, in order to see them more often in his stream.  I haven’t tested this out, but I know where I’d start experimenting:  make a list of those people who I know are different from me, regularly go over to their profile page, click on links, “like” certain posts, etc.  This simple activity, done on a regular basis, would surely send signals to Facebook to “show me these friends’ activity more often”.

Look, we have conflicting sets of preferences within us.  Each of us wants to validate our current selves, so we click on things that reflect our current state of being.  But each of us also has an element of wanting to expand beyond our current selves, and so we sign up for that charity, follow people different from us, and read articles that make us uncomfortable (or at least, we WANT to).

In pointing the finger solely at Google & Facebook, Eli Pariser relinquishes control of this issue, and it falls into a classic “victimized by the aggressor” model.  And this may be due to his brilliant past success with MoveOn.org, where he knows the answer to a problem can always be solved by rallying many people around a cause.

In this particular situation, I’m sure he’ll succeed in rallying people to heed his message; but will it actually lead to the expanded perceptual growth he’s so after?

The situation might be better served if he made a slight re-adjustment, and built/promoted a Facebook/Firefox/Chrome plugin that in some easy-to-use way, nudges you, reminds you, to take those certain actions which will let Facebook & Google know how to help you expand your viewpoints.

On the ‘net as in our minds, the question is not about knowing how to expand, but remembering that you want to.

From Richard Hamming’s “You and Your Research“:

“Everybody who has studied creativity is driven finally to saying, “creativity comes out of your subconscious.” Somehow, suddenly, there it is. It just appears. Well, we know very little about the subconscious; but one thing you are pretty well aware of is that your dreams also come out of your subconscious. And you’re aware your dreams are, to a fair extent, a reworking of the experiences of the day.

If you are deeply immersed and committed to a topic, day after day after day, your subconscious has nothing to do but work on your problem. And so you wake up one morning, or on some afternoon, and there’s the answer.

For those who don’t get committed to their current problem, the subconscious goofs off on other things and doesn’t produce the big result.

So the way to manage yourself is that when you have a real important problem you don’t let anything else get the center of your attention – you keep your thoughts on the problem.

Keep your subconscious starved so it has to work on your problem, so you can sleep peacefully and get the answer in the morning, free.”