If you aren’t passionate about something, does that mean that you are dead, brain dead, or otherwise insignificant?

Of course not, because you’re likely passionate about something else. You won’t be passionate about everything in your life because some things are painful, boring, or just generally suck.

However, the term passionate has been discussed in great detail by a number of different people. One of the more lively discussions about passionates/early adopters occurred at Mashable.com during the past 24 hours, although the comments section tended to revolve around an exchange of opinions between the author (Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins) and one of the commentators (Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble). However you regard the exchanges in the comments section, I do think that Mark brought up a good point that it’s worthwhile to look at the value of applications (or anything, really) to non-passionates (i.e. the folks who just want a tool to get a job done, like the way that I personally view most machinery, tools, etc.)

I think it’s perfectly fine to be an enthusiast, or maven, for that matter, because this kind of person helps usher change into our world. Much of that change is beneficial or will be at some future point.

On the other hand, if someone is extolling the virtues of something that I don’t care that much about… it’s kind of a lost cause, isn’t it? The nice thing about the Web, however, is that it’s pretty easy to ignore stuff that you don’t want to read or hear about. As Marvin the Paranoid Android once said:

Don’t try to engage my enthusiasm — I haven’t got one.

Not about everything.

However, at the same time, many of us don’t like to be told what to do, what to think, or that we are too limited to understand something. We can be pretty sensitive to that kind of talk and I think this is what likely upset Steven Hobson yesterday in his post about Scoble’s opinion on who would be interested in the new Mozilla Ubiquity product that’s being worked on at the Mozilla Labs.

The following quote is a comment that I left at Steven Hobson’s WinExtra blog about his concerns:

Steven, I like and admire your work; same is true for Robert Scoble. His post may have a slightly elitist tone, but to me his words would be similar to any maven who is raving about something that appeals to a small audience, whether it’s:

-wine
-sporting goods
-automobiles
-camera equipment
-designer clothing
-power tools
-gourmet cookware

There’s going to be mass-market versions of these products AND high-end stuff for passionates (or enthusiasts, or whatever else you want to call them). It doesn’t particularly bother me if a lot of that stuff is outside my price range, skill set, and interest level. I don’t need a $3,000 digital camera and if someone told me that it wasn’t for me, especially someone who WAS a maven, I’d probably take that at face value as long as they didn’t imply that I was stupid or inferior for working at a different level. Did Robert mean to imply that? Who knows? And, even if he did, big deal. We all know our own skills, knowledge, and sense of self-worth and it doesn’t matter if someone happens to reach a bigger audience to make their opinion heard. If people are willing to follow someone’s preachings without getting the facts themselves, then buyer beware. Meanwhile, you make your own decisions about what’s right for you.

For what it’s worth, based on what I just read, I think that Robert’s right, at least in the earliest stages: Ubiquity’s functionality isn’t for non-passionates because a lot of people won’t have the necessary frame of reference to use it. This is also true for something as deceptively simple as Twitter. For some reason this talk of Ubiquity makes me wonder if this is how developers and enthusiasts sounded when they first started tinkering with technologies like OLE. Or HTML. Or TCP/IP. Or RSS.

On the flip side: if I understand the plans for Ubiquity and similar products, we’ll ALL be using it in 5 - 10 years, although it will be in the form of tools that are easier to use.

At any rate, I think many of us know better than to read too much into what Robert writes. It’s quite possible that he’ll trash this technology within six months anyway OR he’ll love it even more. He is who he is.

Now, another point of clarification: my Twitter/FriendFeed conversation streams did address the tendency for a number of bloggers (myself included, on occasion) to write about the same topic almost in unison. I get a little frustrated, especially of late, because I don’t feel that there’s anything else that I can add to those conversations. Maybe there isn’t anything more to be said. But, you know, this is how groups of passionates work. They (we) talk about the same topics over and over because we love them and we are pleased when we uncover some nuance that we can share with other people. That’s perfectly fine!

You know, maybe this is all a good thing. Maybe we all need to remember that we’re multi-dimensional beings with many different talents and interests. One might be a non-passionate about technology while being a passionate about hockey, NASCAR, fishing, chess, or…. well, fill in the blanks. And that’s OK, as long as we acknowledge that we have the right to varying levels of interest about the things we love, like, tolerate, or hate.

Anyway, that’s enough for my first-ever WinExtra guest post. :)

Yes, a little joke at the end.

I’m one of the people who doesn’t take offense to the use of passionate vs. non-passionate, because mentally I exchange the word passionate for enthusiast and it means the same to me. I think I made my point of view clear in the comments above. However, to Steven’s perspective, I don’t like it when people try to engage my enthusiasm when I’m not receptive or when they try to shut it down without understanding me first.

I debated writing this because it’s already old news in the blogosphere, but what the hell.  You’re never too old to climb back into the echo chamber for a few minutes.

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