pause and think

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

I don’t like Covid on a plane,
I do not want it in my brain,
I don’t like Covid, breathed in my face,
I wear a mask, from place to place,
I don’t like Covid numbers hid,
I do not want to infect kids,
I don’t like Covid, and I don’t care,
I do not like it anywhere #DrSeuss
—@keetmuise

Becoming a robot, by @VMaryAbraham

“Your employer has a secret fantasy: they wish you were a robot. Why? Because robots are reliable employees. They work without bio breaks and need virtually no downtime. Robots don’t seek opportunities to foster personal relationships with colleagues. Robots don’t call in sick unexpectedly. Robots don’t have childcare emergencies. Robots don’t create HR issues. Robots don’t have emotions or sensitivities or prior experiences or health conditions that need to be accommodated.

Robots are easy.”

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better stories for a better world

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“Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following.” —The Atlantic 2022

A decade ago I saw three factors in the production of what is generally called social capital:

  1. Intellectual Capital (ability to collect, retain & share information
  2. Social Capital (ability of people to work together)
  3. Creative Capital (ability to combine diverse ideas)

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community sensemaking

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We had a great conversation today for our monthly Zoom call with the perpetual beta coffee club. We had folks on the call from Japan, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, USA, Canada, and Spain. The diversity of perspectives really adds to our collective understanding, especially since this is a trusted space amongst peers.

A couple of books were recommended in the conversation.

The World of Yesterday

Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy

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finding the wisdom of crowds

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“Opinions have never been formed in a vacuum. They’re infectious, as people copy one another. And when this process is made visible it sets off public opinion trends. As more of the public square has moved online, we’ve seen how these can grow monolithic and bitterly factionalised, stifling potentially important public deliberation: take, for example, the hysteria that shut down public discussion of lockdown trade-offs.” —The wisdom of crowds descends into meme wars

Is the print era irretrievably over and are we seeing the end of objective media, as described in the article above? But did print really give us objectivity? In Europe the printing press enabled individual interpretation of the bible and the Protestant Reformation which to this day keeps forking off new branches like a berserk open source software project. On the other hand, print enabled mass literacy, but also yellow journalism.

The rise of yellow journalism helped to create a climate conducive to the outbreak of international conflict and the expansion of U.S. influence overseas [1866-1898], but it did not by itself cause the war. In spite of Hearst’s often quoted statement—“You furnish the pictures, I’ll provide the war!”—other factors played a greater role in leading to the outbreak of war … The dramatic style of yellow journalism contributed to creating public support for the Spanish-American War, a war that would ultimately expand the global reach of the United States. —Office of the Historian archive

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stupidity — the new normal

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Two years ago I wrote about the new normal of work, citing a Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions report that had just been published. The major trends identified in the report included observations such as evidence that in cities more likely to vote for Donald Trump, there were fewer jobs that can be done remotely. Much of the focus was on the impact of working from anywhere and the decline in air travel. Citi’s Chief Learning Officer discussed the company’s investments in learning technologies, collaboration technologies, and improved meeting practices — the latter which I had discussed in bloody meetings.

I concluded that most people would like the option to work from home, most of the time. Many workers have tasted it, and in spite of the challenges of being forced into distributed work — they like it. Now that everyone is familiar with video conferencing we can also see that in many workplaces — zoom is not the problem, meetings are.

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our world view

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

Last night at the theater opening of ‘We Are As Gods’, I had occasion to declare:
“Science is the only news. The rest is gossip.”
Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly. —@StewartBrand

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” —Salman Rushdie (1988) The Satanic Verses

“People usually only figure out that things are turning bad when they turn bad for them, and by then it’s too late. The time to act is when you still have privilege and power, not when you’ve had it stripped from you.” —Attack Surface (2022)

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media drive organization

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It was almost 300 years from Gutenberg’s invention of the European printing press (1450) until the Age of Enlightenment beginning in 1715. If we see digital media — first invented as telegraph transmissions in 1855 — to be the dawn of the electric/network age, then we may have a similarly long period of change and turmoil still ahead of us.

Marshall McLuhan famously said that, “The medium is the message”. Thousands of years ago, the medium of the written word enable rulers to extend their command and control over larger empires and kingdoms. Institutions, like the three religions of Abrahamic tradition, were able to use the written word to get their messages spread across vast regions. As discussed above, the printed word enabled the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. Printed works enabled mass literacy and market economies emerged in kingdoms and later dominated nation states. In summary:

  • Writing enabled institutions larger than tribal societies could build.
  • Print enabled markets that could cross oceans and continents.

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top tools 2022

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Every year, Jane Hart asks, “What are the most popular digital tools for learning and why?”. This is the sixteenth year Jane asked this question — and compiled the results into a valuable resource — and this is my eleventh year responding.

My responses have not changed too much from the past few years.

WordPress remains on top as it powers this blog, my online workshops. Also Slack has moved up as it will be the platform for our PBCC community.

I continue to use Feedly and Pinboard as ways to organize my online resources.

Zoom remains important because I have not travelled for business for the past three years and doubt I will again soon, so video conferencing is critical for my learning and work. Zoom still beats the competition in terms of usability.

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set an example or leave the building

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Leadership by example has been a continuous theme here.

2008 — Wrong Medium, No Message — You have to understand what it’s like to be a node in a social network and that there is almost nothing like it in the industrial workplace or school system to prepare you for this. The basic premise is that you have to walk the talk before you can criticize.

2009 — Communities and Work — The role of online community manager is fast becoming a hot job opportunity for people who not only understand the technologies but how to exert influence in a network. It’s like pushing a rope. Leadership by example (or modelling instead of shaping) is a good starting point.

2013 — leadership by example — Perhaps the problem is the nature of leadership. Is it a skill that can be fairly quickly developed, or rather a craft that takes time to develop? When it comes to crafts, that require much time and practice, modelling may be a better method than shaping.

2014 — leadership for the network era — In our networked world, modelling behaviours may be a better strategy than shaping on any pre-defined curriculum. With modelling, the learner is progressively supported. In connected leadership, people can be both teachers and learners. Therefore neither training programs, nor coaching, are enough. Leadership by example becomes the key.

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