Musings & Meanderings

My post yesterday on anonymity led me into several conversations on the topic (issues of privacy and attribution/plagiarism are related but also completely different topics), and this led to my searching it on Sphere.

I’d missed Jeff Jarvis’s post on the Tim Berners Lee interview in the Guardian plus Tim’s response to the Guardian interview on his blog (numerous bloggers linking and commenting on that one), and found other related posts as well.

Out of curiosity, I searched “Tim Berners Lee” on Google Blog search - 19,123 results. On Technorati - 185 results. On Sphere - 188 results. In this instance, Sphere’s reach matched Technorati with comparable or better overall quality, depending on your interests and pov.

Sphere is a blog search engine that has just come out of Beta. So far, only a few of my searches there have returned no results, but that percentage is falling fast, while the overall quality of results remains excellent. Check out their cool bookmarklet to display related topics to the subject of any post you’re reading.

Anonymity has been my least favorite thing about the web since day one. I believe that safety on the web is as much a function of personal and societal behavior as of security software and programming features.

Anonymity is a thief of trust. I’ve seen it damage community spirit in forums where highly knowledgeable participants give generously of their time to share information and contribute to general education. It is the scourge of eBay, where many experienced and ethical dealers long ago declined to participate further.

Faceless, or masked, behavior is a powerful intoxicant. This has been recognized and understood by emotional power brokers since the times of primitive shamans. In North America, the first modern examples that spring to mind are Mardi Gras and the KKK.

I do hear and recognize the voices that could not speak without anonymity. Voices, for example, that seek a road to freedom from within the confines of repressive regimes. Of the hundreds of millions with web access, though, the percentage of those who really need anonymity is miniscule. I’m not classifying an employee who wants to gripe about the hand that feeds them as being in need.

Anonymity does undermine an important and very real need, that of taking responsibility for our words and actions. I find it interesting that although so many of us employ the heady power of anonymity to speak somewhat more bluntly and directly than we would otherwise, we are increasingly exercising more diplomatic restraint. As more of us become familiar with ‘nettiquette’ in various places, our web behavior gradually becomes more civilized. The actions that each online societal group must take, though, of enforcing community rules, still appears to be the determining factor of enablement on a personal level.

Tools such as spam and profanity filters are only slightly stronger than the equivalent of posting security guards at the entrance of a huge open building where large numbers congregate.

Whether the congregation is a rave or political gathering, as long as everyone inside remains masked, those guards can do little about malicious behavior on a personal level. When truly malicious actions take place, it becomes a civil matter, and this is where the powerful freedom the web can grant us is seriously jeopardized.

Forums, groups, or intranets are ruled first by the agenda of the party that funds their existence (whether with money or time). Even when a group is formed on a totally non-partisan and non-profit basis, it naturally evolves a slanted pov over time as individuals with much in common come together. Hence derives, also, the narrowness or shallowness of the largest communities.

The extent to which human behavior on the web is no different than anywhere else is a basic premise I focus on with everything I do online as well as many of my musings and opinions on this blog. To this dictate, the development of many relatively small communities that link and overlap, with dedicated individuals at the core of each, is, I believe, the web we can build for richest personal and communal reward. By link, I do not refer to hyperlink, but to the natural overlap of core communities as it takes place in highly populated areas, more akin to the concept of six degrees of separation, but with a depth of connection and ability to roam betwixt and between that is unparalleled in the physical world.

Blogging is a fascinating phenomenon in this context. It’s taken us a long way towards individuation on the web outside of private groups. Sure, a lot of it is the equivalent of free psychotherapy, but the purpose of therapy, after all, is to find one’s voice and learn to speak out for the first time. The population of voices that own up to what they say is growing because of blogging, and opening more potential for the natural progressions of real community development.

It’s worth what you pay for it, right? Yes and no. Conventional wisdom says yes, and there’s a wealth of idiom that has developed from this ‘wisdom’. Everyone has an opinion and will happily give you their ‘2 cents …for what it’s worth’. The ‘peanut gallery’ is, one gathers, packed with hecklers and malcontents who can’t even see what’s going on center stage, let alone in the back room.

There are various reasons for the common denigration of free advice. The most powerful is based on personal agendas. If you’ve ever hired lawyers, consultants, or other paid advisers, you’re probably well aware that the concept of getting what you pay for applies directly in this area, and perhaps you’ve also discovered that although the cheapest usually aren’t the best, sometimes the most expensive aren’t either.

Some conflict is likely to exist between any two people, but almost all of it is peripheral, and easy to identify and deal with. Serious conflict is usually very obvious and quite simple to identify swiftly and accurately.

More relevant to all of us, though, is our own lack of confidence in our observations and opinions outside of our own very specific area of expertise. The perverse thing about this is that a great deal of this lack of confidence stems less from our inability to observe and analyze than from our disinclination to really listen to the observations and analysis of others.

If you’re in any business where you’re dealing with people regularly then everyone you come in contact with can teach you something, even if they don’t realize it themselves. In other words, everyone around you is offering you good free advice all the time if you choose to hear it, if only through the way they respond to you, your presentation, your product.

What about the truly valuable advice? Who among us doesn’t recall a time when we were told something and ignored it, only to realize for ourselves (the hard way) that we should have paid attention? Why do we so often dismiss or turn down free advice or input?

I think it is, primarily, because we don’t understand how to contextualize it, and secondarily because we’re wary of trusting.

Let’s say that I’m a serial and successful restauranteur. Everyone’s been to restaurants, and few aren’t eager to throw a statement of personal preference my way. Much as I love my customers to be, I’m likely not going to let Tom pick his favorite music, or Dick his preferred crystal, or Harry the way he likes his bread presented.

But. I really do know my customers. I not only hear what they say, but also watch what they respond to enthusiastically and what they ignore.

But again. The reason I’m really successful is that I also know what they want that they don’t even know themselves. I know this by listening to what they say and don’t say as much as by watching them. My biggest successes, in a way, are built as much on free advice as they are on my own creativity and knowledge of the business side of things.

What if, however, I’m in a less customer interactive business? Now I’m only getting the very rare offer of direct input, and need to spend time using clumsy marketing tools to solicit input and observe behavior. I’ll probably hire lots of consultants.

The thing that the restauranteur example does, though, is make it easier to imagine how any businessperson can learn to contextualize and benefit from all input. Doing it in other businesses is far less common because we tend to only process input from our own pov and mindset. We have to develop and crystalize our own knowledge, ideas, and methods in order to accomplish anything. What we don’t have to do is close ourselves off from the wisdom of others, even when it comes from the ‘wrong’ perspective. Often a person giving you a piece of advice is seeing something that you aren’t. It may not be central to what you’re doing, but if you learn to look at what you’re doing from all sides, chances are you’ll do it a lot better.

Smart, successful business people who’ve decided they like you will commonly offer a single piece of advice. Most of us typically respond to this by dismissing it on the basis that they only have, say 20% or the picture of what we’re doing and therefore don’t fully ‘get’ it. This is often a mistake. If you’ve received that offer or single piece of advice from someone you’d consider a peer in at least some ways, stop and think about it. Even if it really isn’t on the nose or directly applicable, it can inform you in other ways. For example, even if it’s really out in left field then maybe you’ve painted a picture of left field unintentionally.

We pay big bucks to professionals to give us single purpose advice on narrow ranges of issues. The top pros make a point of trying to understand our big picture or at least pretend to. Not all expensive advice is bad, but not all is great either.

Free advice, on the other hand, is something we tend to value most when we’ve found it alone, by researching or reading or observing. In reality, the best free advice arrives through personal interaction, once we learn to hear what people say to us in the context of their knowledge and point of view. Doing so requires confidence in ourselves and a willingness to trust and share.

If you’re shy, or inexperienced at sharing and networking, then choose a community leader in your sphere who you like and admire and watch how they do it. You may not have the same temperament, nor become a community leader yourself, but you’re sure to see ways of communicating and connecting that you’d have never thought to try on your own.

There are times when free advice is the most valuable. One of the very things that makes us suspect it, the fact that it cost nothing to give, can also be what makes it a true gift.

When Kathy Sierra makes a point, it resonates. Her diagrams are wonderful, but more than anything it is the unity of mind with instinct, the voice informed simultaneously by both experience and caring, that gives her writing impact. Her post on Friday about “Engineering/Math/Science Education in the US” offers an excellent personal perspective on how we are taught and what’s wrong with it.

Learning how life really works, and especially how the business world works, isn’t taught. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a good mentor when young (and smart enough to want one), you’ll receive guidance on specifics that relate to a task or situation at hand and your immediate destination, but the full life lessons we usually only learn by living.

Why don’t we teach each other how things really work? Is it purely selfish fear that sharing our knowledge and ideas will dilute our own advantage? Or is it that people simply don’t want to be informed by someone else’s view? How much of it is generation gaps and how much the spreading alienation pervading our world?

As a child, and mostly by default, I learned to seek and think. It was harsh and sometimes painful. The result, though, is something I consider one of my most precious possessions. It spurred me to develop the ability to observe and analyze beyond the immediate and on many different levels at once. As someone who is both creative and naturally idealistic, I can easily credit the mercilessness of my early world view with my survival and successes.

The ways in which many schools teach offer examples of personal and community alienation and disconnects. There are really good teachers out there, soldiering on, unfortunately rare, but the reality is that we can improve our learning institutions only by rebuilding our communities and our relationships to one another.

There are ways in which we can reach out to each other and teach the realities of life as well as perspective, in tandem with hard knowledge: through a metaphorical holding of hands, via infectious enthusiasms, sometimes in response to crucibles. We can’t be taught anything, though, unless we choose to learn.

It is remarkable, in my experience, how often thinking for oneself will lead us to conclusions written about before we were born. It isn’t the conventional knowledge itself that is lacking, but rather our understanding of ourselves, of relationships, and of how to learn. If your desire is strong enough, you’ll find sources, and teachers, and relationships that can amaze you.

The desire to learn will suffice alone, but when it also encounters the desire to teach the result is powerful.

Alain Ducasse took up Adam Roberts - The Amateur Gourmet - on his challenge.

The resulting post is a delightfully creative linking of physical and virtual reality. Now if we could only add electronic communication of smell and taste for those who don’t yet have related memories to trigger.

My mouth is watering.