Learning is Change

Question 151 of 365: How do we predict the future?

By Ben Wilkoff June 1, 2010 June 1, 2010

: Image by louisvolant via Flickr

Everyone is trying to devine the next big thing. Reading the tea leaves on Twitter or letting the alerts drift in to the inbox of your choice. We are all looking to get in on the ground floor of the next version of the web (3.0, 3d, etc.). We are looking for what could be, in every cute logo or interesting color scheme.

I keep thinking that I will know it when I see it, too. I look back on what was the next big thing, and I knew it then, right? I saw Google way before they were Google. I was searching with them back in high school. I should have just invested in them when they went public. I didn’t, though, and so many other people are in the same boat. And that is why we keep looking for the next Google.

That’s not the only reason, though. We keep looking because we want to know the future. We are looking for reasons enough to invest our time or effort, if not our money. But we keep looking in the same places. We are looking toward app stores and startups with vowels missing.

Predicting the future requires a little bit of crazy. It isn’t going to be the same companies, although they will be major players. It will be someone that sees something completely different from the same set of rules and situations.

While I know this isn’t going to be it exactly, here is something that the future might be:

There are a special glasses for making things appear to be in 3d, but I believe that there are new glasses coming. I believe that there are glasses that block out every other frame of a movie. The reason they do this is because there are two movies playing, interlaced so that the glasses will display only one and block out the other. The sound will match for the one you are watching. You will be able to sit in the same theatre or in front of the same screen and watch two separate films.

This is crazy talk. It doesn’t exist, nor will it. There are two many unanswered questions. There are too many things that don’t make sense about something like this, but this is the future. The future of ridiculous technology that seemingly is more intrusive and convenient at the same time. These glasses are impractical. They are the unfortunate offspring of wanting to be completely immersed by the media you are consuming and wanting to be with others who are interested in being with you but not in consuming the same media that you are.

The future is in sharing the same space but not the same experience. The future is in finding connections without having to know all of the same people or the same facts. Differentiation is the future, whether that is with glasses or with a single online profile that knows more than it lets on.

The next Google is going to be the first company to let people be who they are with one another. They will present technologies to get people together. People have been trying this for years, but it is the one thing that is still severely lacking. The physical devices have presented screens to separate our learning and understanding. The ones that are coming are ones that bring it all together.

The ones that have already had their shot at this rather elusive prize probably won’t get it quite right. Google, Apple and Microsoft pay lip service to the future, but they really are trying to shore up the markets that have made them profitable. They won’t see someone coming up on the outside with a crazy gadget such as those glasses. They will see it as something that can’t possibly catch on, and then once it does, they will try and copy it or buy them out. But it won’t work this time. This time, the future will be too interested in creating itself anew. And it will.

Who Needs Windows? Google Starts Putting Their Computers Where Their Mouth Is (techcrunch.com)
Google is phasing out the internal use of Windows (joostteam.com)
10 Ways To Dominate New Google Search As a Blogger (bloggingot.com)

Question 150 of 365: What can we say in the moment?

By Ben Wilkoff May 31, 2010 May 31, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

I spoke at my high school graduation. Along with our valedictorian and a few other people who applied for the job, I gave a speech that was mostly a rehash of my application to get into college. I reprint it here to make sure that the absolute obtuseness of it is not lost on this audience:

To borrow from the classic movie The Breakfast Club, I say to those who believe they understand: “You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.” But what I found out was that we learned more than just Algebra and Physics and English and all the other things they bullied into our heads. We learned about responsibility, change, thought, enjoyment, love, friendship, differences and ourselves. I can’t define high school but I can tell you what I know.

What happened in the past couple of years? Our bodies were in so many positions. There was standing, sitting, laying, hunched over, fetally rocking, uncomfortably leaning, doubled up, reaching down and stretched out, with both feet, one foot, and no feet on the ground. Our thoughts though, were far more numerous. We used our bodies and minds wisely as well as recklessly. We had to force ourselves to go on green and stop on red. I only got in a few accidents. Repair was a habitual thing. It always came out better than new. Except for those tiny scratches on the bumper and the keying on the window. But I know what those are from. I remember those days.

?The people that knew us before we knew anything took a back seat to other learning methods. They sat at home while we mistook nightlife for something new and untried. Sometimes in a clear shove. Sometimes in a hug. They always had their hands near the jugular but usually just fixed our clothes instead.

We were asked to climb a mountain with people in front and behind. Our goal was to reach the height with the best view. Any falter would cause us all to have scraped knees. It was a burden to be depended upon. But there is no burden greater that that of being undependable.

School locked our hours tightly with a chain of double-edged paper. It was easy to break free but the cuts still hurt from every time I did. We were told at point blank range our worth. Built up with perfect marble and torn down with precision wrecking balls. A river of questions raged towards us, capsizing us or prolonging our ride. In the end our bodies ache from overuse but heavy objects aren’t so heavy anymore.

The never ceasing need to win drowned out many a day. Pride in a future unknown. Loving people for ability natural and learned. We were told to be the best according to every banner, announcement, and flyer. There was no celebrating of mere trying or thinking of things that saw further than Friday night. I too followed the blesséd ones. Why? Because I need to see someone do the things I can’t. We are people of action. Sometimes we just choose the action of inaction. But life would be pretty boring without the other exercises. My primary objective though, was within. Finding vocabulary enough to purge deep demons and strength enough to be completely fragile. I called myself names to satisfy the recognizable. But beyond tangibility lays just my name. No cleverly labeled packages, no boxes with ingredients, I’m filled to the brim with undiscovered theories without perforated lines. My ode to the four years past is “While most people were given their fishes of truth, I taught myself how to cast out the nets.” I’m not ashamed of what I caught. I know that many of my peers can say the same. In the end I am satisfied. That is the greatest thing about an end, the satisfaction of completion. We are now at point B and point A seems so very far behind us but as I see it we have about 24 more letters to go. And I’m prepared this time. My clothing is warm. I brought chicken noodle soup. My shoes are new but broken in. My watch is set perfectly. I have taken a comfortable sleeping bag and pillow. My deodorant, soap and comb are tucked away. I know how to make a fire. I know when to rest. I don’t know, however, what will become of these things on my journey, but I’m prepared. So let’s go.

While I still can look back fondly at some of those words, I mostly have no idea why I would just tell people what I was thinking. I mostly am completely embarrassed that they let me get away with speaking to thousand or so people who were there to see us off. I had that opportunity to say something real and I turned it into an academic exercise. I tried to write the kind of poetry that is heavy on inside jokes that I didn’t let anyone in on.

Cleverness is not flattering when you are the one doing the setup and the punchline.

We squander ooportunities like this all of the time. We resort to being cute or speaking around what we actually mean instead of coming right out and saying that we don’t have the first clue about what the future holds. Instead of giving a status report with a few engaging anecdotes, we try and make everything universal. And in trying to appeal to every experience, we can’t even relate to our own.

I hope I don’t do that this time. I hope that when the time comes for me to speak to my wife about her mother, I don’t try to be anything other than her friend. I hope that when it comes time for me to speak with my boss about the ways things should be heading, I don’t try and defend bad decisions in metaphors. I hope that when I am given the opportunity to present in front of others, I don’t try and drive home a message that is only valuable in my head.

I hope I have enough common sense and courage to state for the record that I don’t know anything but what my stories have told me. I want to be the one to not try wnd resort to movie quotations and other quick words of wisdom to score cheep relevance points with the audience. I want to stand there in all of these situations and respect the moment enough to know that it will never occur again. If I can see others for who they are and not as additional data for my version of the monologue, I will have done more to achieve the respect that my original graduation speech was supposed to.

Selfishly, I just wanted the audience to need more from me. I think that is pretty backwards considering how much I needed them, for approval, for their collective power to make me feel important. Now, I want to let the moment dictate what is important. If it isn’t me, so be it. I think that is why I have given so few speeches since. It is much harder to share a moment with others if all you are doing is talking at them.

In such a shared moment, we share a part of who we are. We can ask for someone to do the same, but that is up to them. It is the giving of your self to someone else that makes the contract between people so important. I nope to negotiate many more such contracts as I look out into the future.

How to write a Graduation Speech (howtowriteaspeech.net)
How to speak in public and get yourself a standing ovation (slideshare.net)
Graduation (beliefnet.com)

Question 149 of 365: What happens when it shatters?

By Ben Wilkoff May 30, 2010 May 30, 2010

The wind must have grabbed it while we were out. It must have taken hold of the oversized umbrella and flipped the entire table, shattering the glass top directly on the deck. It must have done this because when we came home we found the thousands of pieces and the heavily bent umbrella.

It was the hottest few days of the summer so far and the only relief was that umbrella. The cool air at night was so beautiful when sitting around that table. Grilling out or simply bringing the leftovers to the deck for one more experience with them, made the day just fine.

Nothing is fine now. The table is broken. My wife is leaving for one of the last times to see her dying mother, and all she can do is study for her final exams. She spent almost 12 hours today at Starbucks, trying not to feel everything that she has ever right to feel. And I tried to think of something that I could possibly do or say. I was unsuccessful in that regard. Everything feels utterly shattered.

But my kids aren’t. They survive, as they jumped through water fountains in the park today. They saw the shattered table and just wanted to watch it get cleaned up. I wish I could say that with that single act of cleaning up, that the rest of it would be okay too. It isn’t likely, at least not for a while.

Question 148 of 365: Who gets notified?

By Ben Wilkoff May 29, 2010 May 29, 2010

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The shipment of iPads came in. The ones that my father was looking forward to. The one that meant a message from Apple was was sent out to his email address. I was notified because he was notified. And I went and picked it up. I will mail it off tomorrow, but for today I will spend some time thinking through the idea of being notified when good things are coming your way.

I wish I could be notified for the following things:

When my children say they love me when I am out of earshot.

When I could get away with eating a bunch of junk food because of my low calorie count for the rest of the day

When my wife works on our budget or bills and I don’t know it. (This is to make sure I never take it for granted).

When someone adds something substantial to an idea I enjoy thinking about

When remember something worth writing down. (Ideally, this wiuld alert me to the idea I’ve just had and not the fact that I have just had an idea.)

Whenever something new is going to completely change my direction and interest drastically. (This may require being able to know the future, though.)

So, while I don’t get alerts for those things yet, I can be fairly confident that at least I get alerts for the new gadget du jour. That is nice and convenient, but not nearly as transformative,

Question 147 of 365: Who are the workout haters?

By Ben Wilkoff May 28, 2010 May 28, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

During my first year of college, I decided that I was going to work out every day. And I did. I ate whatever I wanted, but I worked out for at least an hour. I would start off by running on the treadmill or doing the stationary bike and then I moved on to the sit ups. I did about 50 a day for the first few months and then I started adding weights to my chest. This was a hold over from the summer before when I just used my graduation present dictionary.

I would do work on the machines in the fitness center too, but I never felt all that confident on them. I think I always just thought of myself as having more control over my body when I was the only thing that could break.

Throughout that year, I didn’t miss a day. I even found a gym while I was visiting my girlfriend’s family. I was obsessed then with making sure I worked out, much in the way I am obsessed now about writing these questions.

Right in the middle of the year, though, I received a phone call from a good friend of mine. He was worried about my working out so much. He said that my time on the treadmill was going to hurt my knees. He told me that I should take it easier and not worry about it so much. Now, this was coming from someone who didn’t work out at all. It was coming from someone who, while a wonderful friend, had no idea what the workouts were all about.

To him the running on the treadmill was something you did to get into shape. It was something to be avoided, if at all possible. To me, it was the rhythm of my day. It was what was helping to sort things and out them in their place. It was a way of establishing responsibility for something when I really had nothing to take care of. I had nothing tying me to anything else, other than my studies. I worked out because I could rely on it.

And for him to suggest that this thing was going to negatively impact my knees was ludicrous. It was as if he was attacking being healthy and being sane at the same time. I didn’t stand for it, either.

But, people keep telling me to get off of this treadmill too. While they admire my stamina, they keep on asking if I am really able to reflect or write to the depth that I could if I would slow down. They tell me that I am going to get burned out or that I will run out of ideas. I can’t guarantee that either of those things won’t happen, but what I can do is to pound even harder on the keys.

The repetition of writing at this point is much more about fighting of the intense instability that is everywhere else. This is what I can control. And I have continued to add weights to my chest as I go.

At first, it was just answering questions. Now it is something different. Now, I have to tell stories. I have to write over 700 words. I have to tell the truth. Now, I have to challenge myself to write about more and more personal memories, to see just how much I am willing to let out.

This daily habit is breaking me too. I don’t have the option of taking a night off or quitting because my question sucks. I have to follow my idea to its logical end, otherwise I will have wasted a day.

I can feel myself getting stronger, too. I don’t hesitate to state my opinion or couch it within a greater movement. I don’t have to apply everything to a technology or a teaching technique. I can let my posts just stand for themselves, even if no one reads them. I trust myself that given enough time to think and write, I will come up with something that at least I will be interested in reading again someday.

So, don’t tell me I am going to hurt my knees. Come running with me. Don’t say that my torrent of posts in your feed reader is too daunting to catch up. Draw a line in the stand and start there. Don’t say that I am spreading myself too thin. Rip down barriers for me so that I can spread unabated.

If only I could find time for working out now, too.

Question 146 of 365: How are we taking turns?

By Ben Wilkoff May 26, 2010 May 26, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

My children take turns with the best of them. They have a strong instinct for when it is their turn, but they will (if prompted and given a reason to do so, sometimes) give other people a chance to play with an important toy or go down the slide in front of them. Their sense of ownership is absolute. They say “mine” as if their lives depended upon it. My one and half year old has developed this low rasp to his voice whenever he is arguing with his sister over an item that he doesn’t want to give up. It is so insistant that often my three and a half year old daughter will have to run to one of us to make him stop. But, he is just as gracious sometimes, too. He will bring my daughter her socks instead of putting his on first. He will hand me the remote to the wii instead of banging it against the wall like he wants to. My children take turns and share, and they do it with more transparency than almost anyone else I know, including adults.

Adults have a hard time taking turns on much of anything. There is the sense that we have already done our waiting (perhaps as children) and we no longer need to do it anymore. In our professional lives, we see little benefit to waiting in line. The stories that get told most often in professional circles are of the outstanding wunderkinds or amazing successes achieved in short periods of time. We are in awe of 1 million iPads selling in the first month of existence or the meteoric rise of LeBron James. Even in our poetry, Dreams Differed are not well thought of.

And yet, taking turns is still a value I harbor. I just think it requires more investment than we tell our children.

Taking turns requires us to all agree that there will be some point in the future at which the turn will be reciprocated, that my attempt will be just as respected as the previous one. There is no guarrentee of this in business or school. That is why we don’t take turns in our careers. We know that no one will ever give us our turn back or hold our spot in line.

It is my contention, however, that anyone who will not invest the amount of effort it takes to hold your place in line or to give you a turn in front of them doesn’t matter. I believe that all relationships that are not turn-based are doomed to fail. And I know this because of my family.

I mentioned that I my children take turns pretty well, but the person that I take turns with the most is my wife. We take turns all of the time. I get up with my children while my wife gets another 30 minutes of sleep. I never get that sleep back, but that isn’t the kind of turn I’m looking for. I put my son to bed so that my wife can start studying for her Micro-Biology exam. I’m not exchanging that time for something else, however. I drive 30 minutes out of my way so that my family can have a dinner out at Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. I don’t expect my wife to do the same.

That isn’t what taking turns is about. Taking turns is about knowing the relationship so well that you never have to trade on a line of credit. There is never any true up and the end of the fiscal year and there is no bank that I deposit my efforts into with my family. Taking turns is all about knowing exactly where the next move is for everyone involved. It is about having a partnership that doesn’t wait for permission. It is about making a decision and then dealing with the consequences together. Sometimes I am making those decisions, and sometimes my wife is. Those are the turns I am talking about.

Anyone in the public world is not a true partner unless they can see through to at least some of what I am talking about here. Unless you can make decisions with someone else, whether that is another company, another colleague or another department, there is no hope for that relationship to last. The future is a daunting enough task without having to worry that your efforts have to dovetail perfectly every step of the way. You should be able to put in the effort with those people enough for you to make decisions sometimes and for them to do so the others, and for you both to deal with the ramifications.

There are some pretty big turns coming up for my family and the ramifications of those decisions will be felt for years to come. My wife has applied to nursing school. I have started a business. It isn’t about which one is going to win out, or which one has to come first. It isn’t about who quits their job or how we find money for child care. It isn’t even about whether or not we can find time for hanging out with our kids. These turns are about who we want to be when we grow up.

We want to be happy. We want to be fulfilled. We want to be together. Those are the deciding factors. Turns are not worth taking, otherwise.

Wish us luck.

How many husbands does it take to change a diaper? (lazyorganizer.com)
Naughty children? Blame mothers, says Oliver James (telegraph.co.uk)

Question 145 of 365: How can we make self policing work?

By Ben Wilkoff May 25, 2010 May 25, 2010

: Image by sociomantic via Flickr

Many people are uninterested in social networking.

For as many people that are joining Facebook every day (about 500 million total have done so), there is an enormous amount of people who want nothing to do with it. Moreover, there are even more people who would never like to see social networking (and the objects of social media) be a part of their working life. Of the 500 million people on that social network, not to mention the hundreds of other networks, there is a significant portion who would rather not have to mix their private and professional lives in such an overt way. They may be able to see the benefit in joining the two for marketing purposes, work related connections, or simply keeping a handle on trends for customers or clients. But, there is immense resistance to placing information on the open web or within a proprietary social network.

While there may be reason to call into question the placing of important communication on social networks, the ones that would make the most sense (we don’t own the data, the service may go down, etc.) never seem to come up. The only ones that seem to get mentioned are ones that reference a lack of control for the content.

Here is my theory: The majority of companies and organizations that are looking at social media as a part of their branding and marketing strategy never pull the trigger because they don’t trust the social contribution paradigm. They want to police the content and moderate all annotations, comments and embeds.

In effect, the same reasons that they want to engage in Social Media (virality, free distribution, and word of mouth) are the ones that they fear. They are uninterested in upsetting their own internal hierarchy with one from their users.

While this may be a widespread problem (and perhaps widely understood as well), there isn’t anything to be gained by this outlook. The most common effect of this fear for social networking even in the face of the benefits of its practice are half-hearted attempts at collaboration. The most typical is setting up a blog and turning on comment moderation. While there may be more personal blogs left for dead, I have a feeling that in the not so distant future, there will be an entire generation of corporate blogs that haven’t been updated in years and have never had a comment because of their arcane moderating practices. The next best thing to set up a blog is to put “follow us on Twitter and Facebook” on every page of an existing web presence. This looks like a social media plan, but upon further inspection, there are only a few status updates and no significant content or conversations contributed by users. By dipping their toes in the water, these organizations can appear to be forward thinking while still continuing to do things the way that they always have with “official communications.”

I am not unsympathetic to the fears that people have for letting their content go and become controlled (at least to some extent) by the crowd. However, I don’t think that locking down content is the way in which anyone is going to take advantage of the social benefits of social media. The alternative to locking down content is not turning over all content to the horde, it is a self-policing community. And I know this is because of red suspenders.

Punk music, or at least it’s late 80’s and 90’s inception, had a huge impact on my life. I dedicated a good deal of time to its ideals of DIY and rebellion, whether that was carving things all over my bedroom furniture or learning how to play the guitar by strumming the wood off of the body of my mother’s nylon string guitar. I let it get to my clothes too.

For a while, I cuffed my dark bluejeans up over my converse all stars. I wore white t-shirts, and on occasion, suspenders. The only ones I had access to were red ones, thick and incredibly out of style, which was all the more Punk.

One night while I was wearing those suspenders, a friend of mine pulled me aside. He told me that only skinheads (racist punks) wore red suspenders. I tried to counter that it was only skinny red suspenders that were the choice of nazi punks, but I was vetoed. He didn’t want me to be associated at all with the dark side of our small movement, and I reluctantly agreed. I never wore those suspenders again.

He had changed my behavior because of our friendship. He caused me to rethink my choices. Even if I didn’t agree with the social norms of our group, I wasn’t going to go against them just so that I could complete an action that I had intended to. Our community kept on going because of this self-policing, and so does every other community online or not.

The only way to combat the folks who are apprehensive of the social nature of social media is to show them that these types of communities are bound by the same types of norms (although not necessarily the same ones) that bind their organization’s groups. I think that convincing folks to step out into the world of social contribution is as easy as getting them to recognize the unspoken rules of blogs and tweets that are so easy for them to pick up on in a face to face meeting. That way, they will see the self-policing functions rather than having to rely on the news and other sensationalized accounts of user control going horribly wrong.

Just to get a better idea of what these self-policing norms are, I would like to contribute a few that I have recognized:

Focused contribution begets focused contribution.

Media, of all kinds, is ripe for parody.

Being a resource or an expert is the best way to attract both praise and criticism.

People like engaging in both list making and quiz taking.

Graffiti and virtual vandalism are not random. They occur for a reason, and therefore can be largely avoided.

Authenticity is contagious, artificiality is a poison.

A link is the most effective way of sharing anything.

Facts are not as important as stories.

Small talk is not dead. Weather, Food, and Locations connect us.

Online communities will self-police according to these norms. They will call individuals into question or simply leave behind those that refuse to recognize the value of the established rules. We need to continue to outline these rules for those who cannot see them, especially if we want everyone to benefit from social media the way that people who are already attuned.

Anyone care to add some norms of their own to add to this list?

Community management from the Trenches (slideshare.net)
Establish Your Personal Brand as a Journalist Through Social Media (ricksrss.com)
Meeting Planners Embrace Social Media Tools (businessmanagement.suite101.com)
5/26 Webinar: Using Social Media to Enhance Your Implant Practice (implantblog.wordpress.com)
Social media and social networks/networking – there is a difference (blogmistress.com)

Question 144 of 365: How do we learn to rollerskate?

By Ben Wilkoff May 25, 2010 May 25, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

For my tenth birthday party, I received a set of black roller-skates. Not rollerblades or inline roller hockey skates, but rather old school roller-skates with different colored neon wheels. I was cool.

I rode my skates around the local roller rink as much as I possibly could, which actually meant as much as my mother would take me. I skated to the likes of the ghostbuster’s theme song, YMCA, and Eye of the Tiger. I loved the way that the four wheels supported me and the way the black leather seemed to clash with everyone’s brown rentals.

I had another 2 or 3 birthday parties in those skates before I had to give them up because they were just too small for my feet. For those few years, though, I’m not sure that there was something as freeing or as differentiating as putting on those two skates that no one else had (and most likely, no one else wanted).

I’m not sure how I feel about the roller derby resurgence as a cultural icon of our times, but I do know this: I didn’t have roller skating role models.

There was no Michael Jordan of roller skates. There was no Roger Clemens of the rink. In fact, I didn’t see much of anyone who was proficient at roller skating who was over the age of 18. About the best I could do were the kids that worked there or who stayed every day just for the races that were held at 1:00 or so. Most of them had inline skates, though. Even then, I knew what was going to be the dominant force in wheel-based root wear (minus the heelie which I really never saw coming). So, why did I choose to spend so much time and energy on a dying art? And, how did I learn to skate without the aid of role models that seem to be necessary to every other discipline?

But, perhaps it was the lack or role models that intrigued me. Maybe it was the fact that there wasn’t really anyone else who was stating the way it had to be that made me want to do it. After all, if I wasn’t any good, I would still be one of the world’s best, right?

If that was the case then perhaps we should continue to look Into the realm of obsolete achievements for trying to find others who were like me, starving to be good at something that no one else was.

Perhaps we can go and find those things that have formerly shared the limelight and now have fallen out of favor. Or, we could see about roles without models as something to be sought after, something to be created by authentic individuals.

Here are things that I think fit into this category:

Cassette recording

Cursive writing

Wood burning

TI-82 programming

Film developing

I realize that all of these things could have a mentor, and have some pretty decent examples of what good and creative works look like, but for the most part any one of them can be a doorway into a world that very few people are traveling within. Anyone could come to these disciplines without a role model, and simply out of their wish to do something different.

I think that is what makes me most excited about starting up or about creating new learning spaces. Although there are plenty of good examples, there isn’t a role model for either that had the same sets of constraints or experiences. And much of what I do feels like I am trying to get people excited about the roller-skate again. They see reforms, new technology, or interesting collaborative tools as something that they have already tried. They are already to move on to the next generation of skate that seems to really have everything sorted out and comes with a huge amount of bells and whistles, but breaks down in a few months and must be replaced.

You see, on a 4 wheeled roller-skate, every single part can be replaced or modified. Because there are so few variables, the ones that exist are essential and can be toyed with until the perfect fit is achieved.

That is what I want: a perfect tool for the job, versatile and manipulatable. I want to be the best at wielding that tool, and know that others can’t just copy my technique because they haven’t trained their muscles to move like mine. Their technique is weak, and they are out of practice. In other words, I want to race them around the rink with everyone watching, and I want to win.

80’s Skate Party (secret-agent-josephine.com)
Chariot Skates want to be the future of rollerblades (dvice.com)

Question 143 of 365: What is too easy?

By Ben Wilkoff May 24, 2010 May 24, 2010

When I jailbroke my ipad, I pretty much had two goals in mind. The
first was to see what multitasking really looked like on an iDevice
and to get the TV Out feature for all applications. Both of these
things will be available in future releases of the OS, so I felt
pretty justified in doing it (plus there is that whole thing about not
really owning your own stuff until you can make it do what you want it
to). Justification or not, I am struck with something of a conundrum.
There are several apps of the jailbroken variety that will never be
made available as a part of the app store or a software update.

The one in question allows anyone who should download it to watch full
length films that are still in theatres. I do not wish to encourage
this practice, so I will not go into the particulars. Suffice it to
say that it as simple as clicking a few buttons and selecting a movie
title. It is a underground netflix of sorts. And it is all too easy.

I can access things that took hundreds of millions of dollars to make.
I can stream them and never have to soil my hard drive with their
illegal contents. I can get for free what costs time and money for
others. The sense of entitlement that it requires to access what has
been created for a true purpose is immense.

And this is why closed systems sometimes are good.

I do not take that statement likely. But while I like open access as
much as the next well informed consumer, I know just how tempting it
is to watch Alice in Wonderland from the comfort of my home via the TV
Out adapter. I would prefer to not know that this is an option. I
would prefer to live in a world where there are legitimate ways of
accessing all ideas and content.

When I say legitimate, I mean both by way of purchase and by way of
license. We should be able to choose the ways in which we receive
content, but in doing so, we should be held to a higher standard for
what we give back. If we can purchase movies while they are in the
theatre, we should recommend that others do the same and build reviews
for their further purchase. If we can download music for nearly
nothing, we must have some other economy of license that causes us to
give back a remix or further exposure for the content itself.

Apple has it at least partially right. Not just anything should be
made available to everyone. Limits cause us to be creative about
solutions.

Free movies cause us to sit down and watch them for as long as they
are available. Content we pay for causes us to ration, to plan, and to
work around the issues at hand.

In many ways I’m glad that the iDevices don’t support flash and the
editing of Wikis and Google Docs. It causes me to find out more about
how the device works and how to make it more mine.

Jailbreaking is about freedom from the single repository of knowledge
in the app store, not about finding the deep underbelly of the
internet and seeing how chained we can become to the amount we can
access. With limits imposed, we get more done. When it is harder to
access, we make more with that access.

I do not think that all things should be hard, but streaming free
copywritten movies to a mobile device should be one of them. If only
for providing an necessary layer of realism to an otherwise “magical”
device.

Posted via email from The Throughput

Question 142 of 365: Who controls the power of suggestion?

By Ben Wilkoff May 22, 2010 May 22, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

My children have trigger words. Certain phrases cannot be said in their presence. If these words are uttered within earshot, the response is so immediate and severe that you will wonder if there will ever be another state of mind for them. These are words like “ice cream” or “science show” (also known as Mythbusters). These words are so highly suggestive to my children that they find themselves repeating the words over and over until I have no choice but to act. I either have to give in to what was already suggested or explain, in detail, why the suggestion was merely a mistake and that it is not an appropriate time.

I have trigger words too. Mine are usually overheard from across e room or at a dinner party. If I hear those words, I immediately gravitate toward whomever has said them. Among them are WordPress, iPad, Moodle, wikis, Vonnegut, and Schools. I will drop whatever I am doing to make myself available for those conversations just by virtue of them being suggested. And just like my kids, I am wrong about their suggestions much of the time. Often I mistake people talking about schools in the abstract as something to engage people in a debate about the future of education. They tend to be more interested in talking about a few of the teachers their children have had throughout the years. I often confuse the interest gadgets like the iPad as wanting to have conversations about what is possible to do with them. Too many times people are just talking about how it is just a big iPhone or about something they heard on the news about them.

The power of suggestion is quite strong with me. I can be convinced to engage in almost anything so long as it has one of my keywords somewhere in it. Kind of unfortunate for me, but incredibly fortunate for anyone who is trying to get my attention.

While I cannot extrapolate that all people are this highly suggestive, I would say that from the experience with my children that we never really get over the few things that cause great want within us. We will always be triggered to buy, converse about, or simply lust after the ideas that we connect to the most.

And therefore we are highly controllable. To any great extent if others (or if a service) figures out what our keywords are (or if we simply hand them over in the case of a profile page), we will be manipulated into focusing out attention on only those things that we have professed our affinity for.

That is why the future of advertising scares me a little bit. Anyone that can access our desires, interests, and social connections will be able to serve up the perfect ad that contextualizes a product within the conversation that we would like to have. They will be able to lay out a path to engage with the next idea in the sequence they have developed to get us to purchase their service.

In the ever expanding world of “things that we like”, patterns will likely emerge. It is my belief that web pages and even books will be written for us based upon our interests and searching patterns. Rather than trying to find static pages with a few comments, when we search, the service will look at our complete profile and then compose an article with all of the information we are looking for, with carefully placed product placement in the text itself. The next generation of search will be “find and buy.”

These pages that will be written just for me will be composed into a book that I carry around with me, a reference library for all of the answers that have been created just for me. And because no one will be looking at the exact same pages, each individual version of the answer will be shareable and “likable” which will further lead to the web knowing more about how to better cater to your needs.

Our social interaction around machine created content will be in discussing the products and ideas that have been produced specifically for the purpose of that interaction. And why not? We will be getting better answers, more specific results, and we will only have to read it from our own perspective. We could even choose to see the Internet from other’s viewpoints as a change of pace, just so long as we keep “liking” and sharing along the way.

The power of suggestion will be controlled by those that understand our trigger words best, just as they always have. I use “ice cream” with my children, sometimes as a reward and many times just to see their smiling faces. They love me for both, just as we will love those who share the world’s knowledge with us and give us carrot at the end for us to purchase. I’m not angry about this future. After all, they will be talking about all of the stuff that I already know and love.

Buying 30 min. of primetime: Modern Family becomes iPad ad (arstechnica.com)

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