Dear Broadcasting Brain reader:  you might find this post a bit scattered, self-indulgent, and a bit less cerebral than what you normally read here.  However, every now and then I need to change things up a bit in order to break out of ruts and reenergize.  I considered posting this to my older blog, but in the end, I’m just gonna let this one go here.  I’ve tagged and categorized this post under social media, and it does sort of fit.  Thanks for tolerating this indulgence.

Image by inacentaurdump

People talk about digital nomads, those souls who wander from place to place with their gear, looking for places to drop the anchor and reconnect to the electronic stream of life from wherever they are. Then there are the other folks who remain rooted to the same two or three locations during their waking hours, living out their binary dreams whilst rooted to their seats, not unlike mushrooms. Many of us live a digital life in parallel to our flesh and blood existence. Why is that? Continue reading ‘This digital life’ »

Every now and then it’s interesting to check out what we were doing in the past.

This post – My favorite social media tool – my gift to you is actually kind of a funny example.

I wrote a fairly elaborate post trying to build up this fabulous and amazing tool that made my social media activity incredibly easy, wonderful, etc.

And then I revealed it to be… cut and paste functionality.

The thing is, despite the snarky or cheeky tone and intent of the post… I was dead serious.

Just think:  if you had to retype every darned link, text swipe, quote, etc… wouldn’t it drive you bonkers?  This just isn’t limited to social media… it’s completely throughout all electronic activity.  Just think of the time saved by this simple little piece of functionality.

Cut and paste.

In its own way, cut and paste was one of the top innovations in computing technology.  Top 3?  Maybe.  Is it as important as the hyperlink?  Not quite, perhaps.

What do you think?  Would we be were we are today without cut and paste?  Or is it completely overrated?  C’mon, take a good strong swig of coffee and share your thoughts!

“Measure twice, cut once.”  It’s not just about carpentry.

Some recent posts that have caught my attention:

Steve Errey’s guest post at Copyblogger.com, Want to Know the Real Reason Why You Write?, features this great line:  finding your voice is not optional if you want to live a rich, confident life and if you want to be a great writer.

At Lateral Action, Mark McGuinness asks Is Lateral Thinking Necessary For Creativity? The post looks at Edward DeBono’s lateral thinking concept and looks at some counterarguments which suggest that it might not be essential for creative thinking.

Kyle Lacy asks the question Get 30,000 Followers on Twitter. What is it Worth?  There is an excellent point to be considered here:  how valuable is it to have a huge following?  Kyle is looking at this from a business/marketing point of view and it’s worth checking out.

The incomparable Steven Hodson makes it pretty clear in this post:  I may be a lot of things but I am not a brand.

Hutch Carpenter provides another look at the concept of when ideas ignite and the role of intuition: Strategic Intuition: The Innovation of Flickr and Twitter

Louis Gray looks at transparency on the Web with Being Transparent is Fine, But Please Use Smart Filtering.

And, finally, Rob Diana hits the nail on the head with:  Sorry Twitter, Facebook Is the Data Gold Mine.  Robert Scoble agrees.

Check these out, won’t you?

EDIT:  and, apparently, UK kids will be taught to blog, Tweet and use social media in school…  lucky little…

So one day I needed to write a blog post.  It was almost 10:30 PM at night and soon I’d have to retire for the evening.    But I could not bring myself to write about any of the topics that lay in waiting in my notebooks, desperate for the chance to spring to life on the computer screen.

Elephants, I thought.  I’ll write something witty about elephants.

Two seconds later, I scratched that idea.  Elephants don’t use computers – we haven’t invented keyboards large and durable enough to work for elephants.   And we all know that elephants are afraid of mice.

Seagulls, I thought after a moment.

Three seconds later, I scratched that idea.  Seagulls are scavengers, they’re a bit dirty, and they poop everywhere.  What’s so funny about that?  I remember the time on my sixth grade school trip when our tour bus stopped at a fast food joint and there were seagulls everywhere.  We threw french fries at them and watched the greedy little creatures swoop down and get them.  I think I threw a whole container of fries on the ground at them and, although I was hungry for the rest of the night, it was so unusual, in my experience, I thought it was fun to see them flock around.  Except for the poop.

Spring, I thought.  Spring has finally sprung.

Four seconds later, I killed that idea, too.  There’s still plenty of bloody snow (OK, not actually bloody, but I hope you understand what I’m getting at here) on the ground.

TV shows, I thought.  Lots of people watch TV.

Five seconds later, I started looking for yet another topic.  As much as I was touched yet vexed by the series finale of Battlestar Galactica, the unevenness of Heroes, the promise of closure coming with Lost, plus some of the various little bright points out there, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t an entertainment blogger.  Sigh.

Social media, I thought.  I can always seem to pull a social media post out of the hat.

:: big, long, huge pause:: Um, OK, not this time.

After a lot of thought about blogging, it occurred to me that the whole concept of niches and focus certainly has its advantages.  Picking and marketing yourself as an expert, an authority that people can return to over and over again and all that jazz – it certainly helps to attract a few readers.

But what if you don’t have a product to sell?  A reputation to build?  Affiliate links to push?  Does sticking to a niche really matter?

Does a blogger have to stay in character all of the time, even if they aren’t a personal blogger?  Or if they are, for that matter?  Can they veer around on their subject matter, follow wisps of thought, ideas, and entertainment as their whims dictate?

Sure they can!

However, their readers might not follow along.  After all, certain expectations were set that led the reader to become a member of the audience.  If those expectations are not met, the implicit understanding and agreement between author and reader could be considered null and void.

All of which goes to explain that while I may dabble in humor, a few minor (but hopefully relevant) tidbits about my personal life, some of my geeky hobbies, etc., I probably won’t deviate much from my core subjects and persona (whatever those are!)

Which is why you should feel comfortable that you won’t read about professional sports, gambling, porn, fishing, cosmetics, cooking, overly tech stuff, etc. here at Broadcasting Brain.  Unless I can find a way to make it relevant.

Well, I guess I’d better start writing a blog post.  This one won’t do at all.

THE END

There are times when I’m a contrarian, going against the grain with my thoughts and my actions.  At the same time, I tend to place a certain amount of trust in authors that I respect.  And so I thought I’d try a little experiment to try, at least mentally, to challenge an existing trusted source of information.

Clay Shirky wrote about the current age of chaos the world media are entering as newspapers are starting to collapse, with no obvious replacements in sight.  He compared the current dilemma that some newspapers (probably lots of newspapers) are facing with declining ad revenues and increased competition from many sources on the Web to the introduction of the printing press and the changes that it brought to the world.  Shirky got a lot of kudos for his article from various sources, including Tim O’Reilly.

Profoky Neva attempted to critique Shirky’s blog post.  Somehow I came across Profoky’s article via some conversations that I was monitoring on Twitter and decided to give it a read.  I had been following Profoky Neva on Twitter for awhile and I had a vague sense of this person being unafraid to ask questions and stir things up a bit.

I have been pretty clear in my support and admiration for some of Clay Shirky’s work.  I figured that it would be a good exercise to try and look at his article from a critical point of view.  I spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking Shirky’s blog post and Profoky’s as well.

Some thoughts on the Profoky article:

• I admire Profoky’s willingness to critique Shirky’s article.
• I think the author has some good points about questioning the real impact on free services like Craigslist on newspapers (no question that classified ads were hurt, but they haven’t died either AND they faced plenty of competition from other printed publications that offered free ads).
• Generally speaking, I think it’s fair that Profoky did try to poke into specifics a bit.
• However, Profoky did themself no service by taking an antagonistic stance toward Shirky himself and Shirky’s other writings and activities instead of sticking to the subject at hand.  I didn’t seen the same “anti-Catholic bias” in Shirky’s article that Profoky did, as an example.  And, the whole Bolshevik theme running throughout the article grew tiresome, frankly.  Basically, it seems to me that Profoky amped up the venom and hyperbole in order to get some attention.

And now the Shirky article:

• Shirky is a very good writer and has talent for explaining concepts in an easy-to-understand manner.
• At the same time, you have to go on the leap of faith that Shirky knows what he’s talking about and has done his homework, because this article deals in generalities and contains references to some information that I haven’t read.
• I think he’s correct in that newspapers took a typical approach to dealing with competition (they tried to neutralize it.  Unfortunately, for them, they failed.)
• I think his overall analogy of the introduction of the printing press (and its effect on society and culture) is similar to the lack of willingness that many consumers have to pay for content.  It’s a shift of power from one group to another that can take a long time to sort out.  I’d argue, however, that it wasn’t just the fact that the Bible became available to many via the printing press that lead to massive cultural change.  It’s also the fact that you eventually didn’t need to know Latin to read the book, nor be forced to hear about it through the clergy, that led to such change.
• I think that Shirky overemphasizes the role in corporate advertisers in subsidizing news coverage (e.g. the Iraq bureau).  He seems to imply that corporate advertisers knowingly subsidized specific types of journalism,  which I just can’t fathom.  There’s no way they could knowing do that, especially without compromising editorial integrity.  Later on, Shirky seems to contradict his previous assertion, which confuses things a bit.
• The fact remains that there are still numerous news outlets, albeit small ones, across North America and other parts of the world, which are still in business and they will undoubtedly survive in some form.  There are still millions of people who are far more comfortable reading a newspaper than looking at a computer screen, even if the computer version is essentially free.  IMHO, newspapers are at least one generation away from serious trouble, when Generation Y hits the late 30s/early 40s.  However, newspapers which have a significant number of web savvy readers are probably going to see their print editions hurt and hurt quite badly.

And so on.

I still have a mainly positive outlook on Shirky’s article after reading and thinking about both articles.  However, I’m glad that I did read the contrarian opinion, despite any misgivings that I had about it.  I think we need to question our beliefs from time to time, even when they come from trusted sources.  These types of checks and balances are important in any system… or society.