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“The fragile structure of logic fades and disappears against the emotional onslaught of hushed tone, a dramatic pause, and the soaring excitement of a verbal crescendo.”

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Bill Bernbach

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

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Sue Monk Kidd

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Ok. Far too often when talking about pacing in life and business we focus on ‘slowing down.’ We do that because we have convinced ourselves that not only is the world moving at a faster pace than ever before, but that we actually have to move really fast or we are not doing something right.

I will not debate the sheer amount of shit we are faced with in any given moment but I would debate our concept of speed and moving fast is all that matters and our unhealthy belief there is not enough time.

Not everything has to be done immediately.

Not everything should be done with minimal information.

Not every moment has some magical window of opportunity that we will miss out on if we do not act ‘now!’.

Now. This is a little weird when we stop and think about it.

Facing reality, as an individual, it can appear like a speed boat … crashing through waves with any significant milestones flashing by so fast they become a blur.

Facing reality, collectively. It can appear like a fully loaded tanker … plowing its way through the waves where significance is measured, if significance is discernible at all, in broad sweeping miles of slow turns.

That’s life in a nutshell. That is time in a nutshell. That is reality in a nutshell.

Suffice it to say … reality can be a real bastard. Good leaders manage the bastard by managing the pacing of how we deal with all the bastard’s stuff.

Here is a truth.

The truth is that every good self-aware business leader has a panel in their head with a play, pause, rewind and fast forward button.  They have the ability to see things in real time, what has occurred up to that point and, in some way, can envision the ripples of what happens from there. Within that ability they decide to fast forward, or pause, or continue playing at the same speed … or even decide to rewind a little. They see reality and decide how to best take advantage of it.

Some leaders have one speed. There are some who we call ‘the bull in china shop’ asshats who only know forward at some fast speed bludgeoning and blustering their way forward. Some are like golf carts steadily chugging along at steady long play.

Good organizations have a variety of different types of employees, but there is no good functional organization without leaders, or a great leader, with a ‘play/pause’ panel.

Here is another truth.

The other way a good leader uses their ‘play/pause’ panel is how they think about possibilities. But we tend to make reality an even worse bastard. One thing we do that make reality worse is to convince ourselves that ‘the possibilities are infinite in any given moment.’

As I have stated before this is a false premise and a dangerously overwhelming premise. ‘Infinite’ sounds good conceptually, as does possibilities, but when it comes to real pragmatic decision-making the entire idea tends to overwhelm & freeze rather than enhance efficient & effective decision-making.

The reality is that within any given moment possibilities are finite.

And the good leaders & managers recognize that. The great leaders and managers not only see finite possibilities but they see each possibility as a window … some wide open, some slightly cracked and some closed. And in any given moment they have the ability to consistently scan the finite possibilities with a finger poised over their play/pause/rewind/fast forward buttons.

That consistency is at the foundation of any good leader’s value.

Shit. Consistency, in general, may have the highest value it has ever had in the history of Mankind.

Why? Well. Today’s world is structurally hostile to nuance. Subtlety not only doesn’t sell it invokes ‘space’ in which others are more than willing to place something. I mention this because a play/pause panel is all about nuance within the complexity of reality. It is easy to go one speed <or just stop when you get tired>. It takes touch and nuance to pause at the right time, rewind accordingly, fast forward through some difficulties or to take advantage of windows of opportunity or … well … just keep playing <which is sometime tougher than what you would think>.

This actually means great consistency is not about maintaining one speed but rather maintaining a consistent sense for how to adjust pacing accordingly.

This consistency is … well … complex. Business systems, more often than not, are a bit more complicated in their underlying dynamics than simplistic theory or simplistic diagrams attempting to create structure to an organization and its dynamics with the market & consumers/buyers/employees.

I would suggest that you cannot draw a picture for what is <because it is obsolete as soon as it is drawn> and you cannot draw a picture for what will be <because predicting multi-dimensional dynamics is outside the purview of reality>.

All that said.

That is why you cannot pay enough money to a business person who has the ability to know when to slow down to enable effective speeding up … or to pause to accept some responsibility <or explain> … or to fast forward at the right time.

That is why you cannot pay enough money to a business person who has the ability to stand still without really standing still. What I mean by that is the leader with a play/pause panel never really stands till <even though they may be pausing> because even a pause contains some activity and self-awareness to do something within that space.

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“She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.”

e.e.cummings

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I talk about this entire topic often. And it is a difficult thing to explain.

In our business world today we like to have simple formulas and handbook guides. Pacing is more ‘feel’ and awareness and, well, yeah … some humility.

I say humility because no matter how good a leader you are and no matter how good your pacing is there will always be some issues <mostly because you get some things wrong>. Part of the ‘wrong’ portion is you inevitably leave some people behind and some ‘minds’ get a little scattered. And you have to get them back on track and aligned and sometimes you have to step up and show a little humanness and everyone resets when you do that, give you another chance and get a little re energized to pick up their bags and hit the road with you again.

Look.

Real play/pause management is midstream management and not in some grand 5 year, or annual, plan. Midstream where you have some critical learnings and maybe even some momentum or real shit hits the fan. You purposefully do not have everyone stop … just maybe pause … assess … kind of like having a fighter squadron get fuel in flight … and then fast forward on the mission.

I will say one thing about the proper use of pacing. Good pacing business management creates exponential dramatic speed increases — velocity in other words. This occurs even if you pause, rewind or maintain the current play.

I feel confident saying that reality, occurring on its own, shows that these dramatic shifts don’t really happen as part of a business status quo. Dramatic business shifts are situational, contextual and often simply do not happen because a business doesn’t have a business person who sees it, senses it or can steer it … they don’t have a business person with a good play/pause panel.

It is a proven fact <I think> that pacing is one of the most effective tools an organization can wield to effectively run a successful business. I would also suggest that more often than not this pacing is not driven by the market, Reality, but rather driven by one person <or several> who have the ability to sense a contextual shift in the dynamics within a situation. A person who doesn’t have a picture drawn to adapt against but can draw a picture of what they see & sense from which others can leverage from to generate speed.

Not everyone can do this.

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John Coltrane: “I don’t know what it is. It seems like when I get going, I just don’t know how to stop.”

Miles Davis: “Why don’t you try taking the horn out of your mouth?”

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What I do know is that a leader who has only one speed and who claims ‘good business instincts’ when it is really only one speed is not a great leader, nor a good leader, but rather a one-trick pony <one speed> leader and they have a habit of making bad choices.

Suffice it to say a one trick pony shouldn’t be a leader, it should be an employee.

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“Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another. The role of ordinary people in such transformation is not that of initiators or principal actors, but as followers and supporters of one elite or another.”

Pareto

“a conspiracy of an easily located set of villains”

Wright Mills

Anyone who reads pieces I write know I am generally optimistic about technology and its future. So let me begin by recommending a podcast with Jim Pethokoukis and Marc Andreessen which was conducted after Andreessen’s ‘the techno-optimist manifesto’ was published. I recommend it because while I chafed at lots of the written manifesto, and still disagree with many points, listening to Marc discuss it softens it up a bit and fleshes out some of the thinking that is not always possible to communicate in writing. I encourage everyone to read the companion piece to this one, a discussion on technocrats, because my biggest concern with Marc, and other technology people like him, is he makes some very scary things – things with massive existential risks – sound incredibly reasonable.

That said. Tucked into the podcast is a short section where Marc discusses ‘elites’ and ‘masses.’ It’s a bit jarring to hear “elites” particularly when it is discussed in terms of “the people who influence the decisions for the masses.” Both words, elites, and masses, are burdened with a number of negative halo perceptions. So today I discuss the concept of circulation of elite.

Which leads me to Pareto’s “circulation of elites.”

The circulation of elites is defined by the process whereby the ability to govern and the powers of government lie in the same hands as well as that process which allows for the expression of social interests within the elite circles. The circulation of elites theory is grounded in a belief that people are unequal intellectually and morally and the more gifted, those who are most capable in any particular grouping, are the elite.

“By elite, we mean the small number of individuals who, in each sphere of activity, have succeeded and have arrived at a higher echelon in the professional hierarchy.”

It was Emory S. Bogardus who said:

“The theory of elite is that in every society there are people who possess in a marked degree, the qualities of intelligence, character, skill, capacity, whatever kind, that there are two classes of elite, that the two groups are disjunctive at any given time, that there is an up and down circulation of elite.”

Circulation, or upward and downward circulation amongst the members of the elite and non-elite, is a typical characteristic of an ongoing cycle of social change. That said. Very few individuals may join the ranks of elites from the non-elite groups. And a few elites may become non-elite members of society. In a fair economic system, heck, a fair system in general, there should be a constant and free circulation of elites. Unfortunately, the circulation of elites is seldom ideally free or unimpeded. In fact, typically the only time a vast change in elites occurs is either through revolution or war. Despite that, as Pareto suggested, it is true that a steady flow of elite into vital positions enhances a stable society that does develop and progress – just not optimally.

“History is the grave-yard of Aristocracy.”

Pareto

The cycle of history plays a really important role in that small ‘circulation’ of elites I mentioned earlier. It suggests an existing elite emerges, dominates, falls into decadence and falls in power to be replaced by new elites who have had disdain for the decadence or seek power with their new wealth. But, once again, most of the circulation of elites is on the edges – small percentages highlighted to create the perception of ‘movement.’  Certainly, some non-elite, by their merit, may rise to the level of elite and, of course, on rare occasions revolution overturns the elite class, but for the most part elites stay elite.

‘By the circulations of elites, “the governing elite is in a state of continuous and slow transformation. It flows like a river, and what it is today is different from what it was yesterday. Every so often, there are sudden and violent disturbances. The river floods and breaks its banks. Then afterwards, the new governing elite resume again and slow process of self-transformation. The river returns to its bed and once more flows freely on.”

Pareto

Which leads me to how circulation is managed and limited.

Control and power is easier if you control and have power over the everyday population’s (masses) perceptions of what the system is and should be. To be clear, perception isn’t reality. Reality is reality. That said if the Elites can shape a perception, which encourages most of the people to generate a reality close enough to that perception, control can be maintained. What I mean by this is elites establish images of the system that prepare the people for their own particular conditions within which they will survive or thrive. Elites shape reality in a number of ways, through numbers, through imagery, through words, all with the intent to generate enough success for the masses so their position can be maintained.  This is a bit easier than one may think because reality is unlikely to be as we believe it to be. Which means that we approach everything with just a bit of skepticism because its never exactly how we wish it could be (or believe it should be) therefore begin thinking there is something wrong – just not with us or our own view. This leads the everyday person to begin questioning data/information which doesn’t support the perceived reality and that leads the everyday person to give up on science or rational thinking and embrace some dubious non empirical speculative thinking. This is bad (but elites take advantage of) because it is rational thinking, in particular, which helps us understand things about ourselves and our relation to the world. But possibly the most important image elites foster is one of safety. When the societal imagery is crafted well the Elites are seen as the safety net for the entire circus. The masses become dependent upon the Elites for a level of thinking. What this means is that the everyday person offloads some of the really important shit for a number of very good reasons and yet it will inevitably decrease learning among the masses of everyday people themselves. It is a structure and a system of dependency or somewhere there is some powerful leader or group of Elites who exist to ensure that no catastrophic events follow as a consequence of the irresponsibility of certain individuals. This entire perception driven system encourages all of the everyday people to assume someone else, never them of course, is stupid and likely to do irresponsible things and it is the elite who ensures that ‘stupidity and irresponsibility does not affect me as an individual.’ Ultimately this means that the majority of people mirror the system that they are placed within. That is basically how the elites embed control.

Which leads me to elites as a concept.

No matter how one decides to discuss ‘elites’ it has a nasty taste to it. For the most part we think of them as a group of people who believe they are smarter, more capable, and “more,” than the majority of society. Simplistically, partially true, and partially false, elites are the few who have the power and the majority are the many who do not have power to ‘pull the levers’ of policy and governance and business. This power decides who gets what, when, and how as well as the participation in the decisions that allocate things to society. They are the few who participate in the decisions that shape our lives while the majority of people are the many whose lives are shaped by institutions, events and the elites. Now. An elite group is not some conspiracy cabal desiring to oppress or exploit the masses. The reality is many elite decision makers may actually care about the welfare of the majority, but, they do so with an eye toward maintaining their own status and power and wealth. Regardless of theyir attitudes, we are stuck with them governing. This may chafe, but the reality is they possess more control over more resources and more information and knowledge of the processes then everyday people (note: this doesn’t mean an increasing amount of everyday schmucks think they are as qualified as the decisionmakers). This isn’t to suggest a well-organized, well informed, mass of non-elites can’t seek some control, but the truth is the majority of Americans are relatively apathetic and ill-informed about politics and public policy and, if we are honest, they have a surprisingly weak commitment to the freedoms that would actually give them power. What this means is that the critical element for the health of society (and a country) consists of the beliefs, standards, and competence of elites. This would also suggest that if society issues arc toward indecision, disaster, and crisis, the responsibility rests with the elite, not the majority, to find the solutions. This doesn’t mean the ‘masses’ never have any impact on the attitude of Elites, but only that elites influence masses more than masses influence elites. Once again, generally speaking, elitism is not a conspiracy to oppress society. It also doesn’t imply that those in power constitute a single body polity. This also doesn’t mean that the Elites in power are always in conflict with the masses and always desire self-interested goals at the expense of the public interest. All this means is that the decisions and direction are controlled by the elite. In the end elitism implies that public policy does not always reflect the demands of the people so much as it reflects the interests and values of Elites. This also means any change in policy or direction only occurs when, and if, the elites redefine their own values as well as what they value. And while the general attitude of an elite group is it is that it is always in their best interest to preserve the institutions and the systems, that doesn’t mean that public sentiment can’t affect a change in their attitudes and beliefs which can modify the existing systems. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that last sentence reflects that most changes tend to be incremental rather than revolutionary.

Which leads me to the economic elite.

It would seem like the main distinction between Elites and 99% is based primarily on control over the economic resources of society. This means that industrial and financial leaders compose a major part of the elite. This has been true since the dawn of time. Industrialization pooled extreme wealth creation and made a few men spectacularly wealthy. From there it became a short leap for the economic elite to believe they, rather than the government, should direct the country’s development. With that I offer a quick historical lesson from Heather Cox Richardson:

In June 1889, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie published what became known as the “Gospel of Wealth” in the popular magazine North American Review. Carnegie explained that “great inequality…[and]…the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few” were “not only beneficial, but essential to…future progress.” And, Carnegie asked, “What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few?”

Rather than paying higher wages or contributing to a social safety net—which would “encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy,” Carnegie wrote—the man of fortune should “consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer…in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community—the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.”

At the source of economic success attitudes and beliefs resides the fact America has never lacked for anything. This creates a sense of infinite abundance and a lack of appreciation, or respect of, of any scarcity. One of the consequences of this attitude/belief is that the ‘masses’ are continually drawn to ‘possibilities’ which, as a counterweight, simultaneously increases the likelihood of despair when possibilities are not attained. All of that said. We need to remind ourselves that the technology industrial machinery are solely instruments and it is people who are the true source of America’s power. Today there is tier of technocrats, business autocrats and inherited wealth who make up a more significant portion of the elite. In fact. Recently we recorded the first instance where inheritance, not entrepreneurship, has been the primary source of wealth for the majority of new billionaires. It is expected this trend will continue for the next 20 years (1000 billionaires passing an estimated $5.2 trillion on to children). The shift in the elite class will continue to accumulate wealth because we are in an economic period where market power consolidates in the hands of a few and market power has unprecedented power over governance and policy which ensures the power structure remains intact. I mention this shift only because it changes the challenges of how to break up the elite. Anyway. Circling back to an earlier comment, this is not a conspiracy within which there is some global cabal who ultimately make all of the decisions for everybody, like puppet masters, but rather they are part of a group of influential people that influence public policy and programs that impact society. And while people may be chafing on this whole concept of elite group making decisions I need to point out that the Founding Fathers of the United States were quite elite. They had elite education, elite experiences, and clearly viewed the United States not just in an isolationist or nationalist perspective, but as a nation among nations and had a very intentional international collective view. But getting back to economic elites, these economic elites – just like other elites – do not wield limitless power, they are nominally held in check by the ‘masses’ (shifting needs, wants, legitimate concerns, of the people). In fact, the process of the ‘circulation’ is often triggered by the existing elite’s ineffectiveness to meet the present problems, which effects their wealth, and new wealth ‘circulates’ into the economic elite. To be clear with regard to this group, as John Kenneth Galbraith said in A Short History of Financial Euphoria, “the relationship between intelligence and wealth is specious at best.” So, we do not always get the best and brightest simply through an economic narrative. That said. In capitalism, particularly with the advent of certain types of technology, wealth determines social status, and those possessing a disproportionate share of the capital, resources, and money to wield it all have assumed a disproportionate share of power. This inevitably creates a class bias based primarily on wealth where wealth is a fixed factor of the elites. In fact, while my information is dated, let’s say the wealthiest one-fifth of all American families hold nine out of every ten elite positions on the federal level with the next wealthiest controlling the remainder, save for a few token positions scattered among the rest.

Which leads me to experts versus elites.

I guess experts are part of the elites, but we need experts; not elites. I am not suggesting that we view those with the best qualifications and competencies as ‘the few who are chosen and everyone else is a failure and deserves to be forgotten,’ I will suggest that experts mostly get chosen because fewer people can actually do what they do – and do it well. I get that people are sick of experts, but that is misguided thinking because experts are experts for a reason. But, maybe worse, people are sick of thinking that people can actually do something they cannot do or make decisions they cannot make. The absurd overarching view becomes “a decision is a decision and anyone with common sense can make it.”

That is absurd. And, yet, that perception creates a reality in which those who truly have superior competence and excellent qualifications are treated to the unending joy of explaining why that doesn’t translate into a commodity. All this to say that we have a competency crisis at hand. If qualifications do not matter … if experience does not matter … if everything you have done is second guessed to a point of … well … nothing meaningful, then anyone and everyone is competent enough to maybe not do any job, but certainly able to make the same decisions anyone else can make. Reread that. If that doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, I do not know what will. Look. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion. And even the guy at the corner of the bar can find the right decision on occasion.

What made me include experts is that I had the unfortunate experience of listening in on Lex Fridman’s podcast with Jared Kushner. You can go on YouTube to find a couple of critiques of the podcast which outline the many lies and half-truths Mr. Kushner showcased. I’m not going to talk about that. But tucked within the podcast is a moment where Mr. Kushner physically ‘air quotes’ experts. What he espoused was that he was able to see things and think of things because he was an outsider and that the experts in particular on diplomacy and foreign policy – they just couldn’t “see things because they were, well, experts.” This is one of these insidious arguments that have a minutia of truth. Experts certainly can be blind to alternative ideas and thinking, but for the most part they’re experts because they have more experience, have seen more things, have a deeper education into the intricacies and complexity of that particular topic. While as an individual, they may have some objective blindness, within an expert group there is usually a healthy dialog and debate which leads to some fairly robust thinking. The main point of this particular little section is that the circulation of Elites was a theory developed when the Elites were aristocracy. In today’s world elites can be a number of different things or made up of a bunch of different groups – of which one can be experts. The experts who are directly involved in policy development, governance, and the development of system ideas can often be found in the Elites, but many experts reside outside of the elite category. They can range from academia, whose increased abstract knowledge may only equal decreased usable or relevant knowledge, to experts with specific specialties or skills (note: they are more likely to ease into the elite group if they are of value to the value creation of the elite). Within the circulation of Elites I would suggest that there’s a difference between expertise and expertism. Expertism is talking down from the authority of privilege and position. Expertism typically inhibits any systemic transformative adaptation and tends to maintain the institutions and the system construct of power and control. Expertise are true experts who offer us the structural knowledge who can enhance an adaptive adaptability and create the progress a society deserves.

“The theory of democracy as self-government must be understood as a myth, formula, or derivation. It does not correspond to any actual or possible social reality. It does not, however follow that the theory of democracy is without any influence on the social structure. The ruling minority always seeks to justify and legitimize its rule in part through a formula, without which the social structure would disintegrate. The positive significance of democratic theory is as a political formula of this kind.”

Which leads me to the irony of democracy (Dye and Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy) and elites.

Democracy, the construct, and traditions, are nurtured by those elites whose existence depends upon the continuation of democratic principles in the system. Democracy does not technically mean “self-government” or “government by the people,” but it does constitute a unique mechanism where there is a symbiotic relationship between the masses and the elite – one in which the elites seek to control and the masses nudge the behaviors of the elites. They are interdependent. The elites cannot ignore all realities and, yet, they can shape perceptions AND reality. That said. The elites circulate within this interdependence with an eye toward maintaining their status and control. I say that so that those of us in the 99% do not fool ourselves when elites do things that benefit us. Ultimately in any system, the responsibility for stability lies in the hands of the rulers–the elites who, “with few exceptions, have a special stake in the continuation of the system in which their privilege rests.”

“Elite theory pinpoints the central … actors. It does not tell us how much power they have with respect to any given social policy, and it does not tell us what social goals they will pursue”

It is important to remember that because it was Machiavelli who attributed fraud as an indispensable characteristic of the viable “ruler-type,” i.e., the elite. With fraud elites can continue in power by manipulating other elites and the 99%. Yeah. The elites are characterized by their ability to captivate the 99% via stories, uhm, fraud (lies).

“The useful lie serves to direct men into action and at the time create the basis of leadership”

Which leads me to my final issue with elites as they circulate themselves.

Look. I don’t begrudge the one percent their wealth or even their status. What I do have a grudge against is the system that they have crafted so that the one percent, or this group of Elites, constantly circulates itself. They’ve created a self-sustaining system within which 99% of the people cannot participate. Let me clarify that last point. 98.9% of the people cannot participate. Because that is what the circulation of Elites have crafted within their system where 99.9% of the elites constantly circulate allowing .1% to be eliminated and .1% to be added. This creates the perception that the circulation of Elites is a myth because the exceptions are highlighted as they get added. And it’s also possible that I have a grudge against this circulation of Elites because this elitism is typically not based on either social status or intellectual achievements to be able to sustain the system which allows them to exist. And therein lies ‘the rub.’ They have the most power and, yet, they do not have the most intellect to wield that power. It was Tolstoy who said that the state insured that the wicked dominated that criminals were far less dangerous than a well organized government were essentially violent forces held together by intimidation corruption and public indoctrination and, well, Galbraith said what I noted earlier. But where it becomes truly unconscionable from a society perspective is that it almost seems like the governing elite only know three things: money, propaganda, and fear. Each are not discreet in and of themselves, but a rather intricate DNA weave whirling around each other. The elite become elite by working the margins of ethics and norms when the more rules you break the more success you have. This gets compounded with a mindset where the game, i.e., where there are only winners and losers, never stops. This means that any pause for peace by the masses in the daily struggle simply becomes another opportunity for Elites to squeeze more out of the system. But maybe the worst aspect is the elites always view social problems as problems to be solved only if solving them would not reduce some dependence of a system. yeah. Sadly, there are no grand plans no grand strategies just a lust for power and an insane addictive desire to accumulate more and more because too much is never enough. And maybe that is where I end. With my disgust for the circulation of the elites.

Ponder.

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“Don’t be afraid to write lots of garbage (but also don’t throw any of it away). Have a very large storage system for all that garbage, because it’s only garbage in context. It may turn out to be a treasure in some other context you haven’t discovered yet.”

Courtney Balestier

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

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Thinking has a lot of garbage and a lot of in-between time. Unfortunately, today’s world has little use for what is judged garbage in the present, or even the past, and even less use for “in-between” putting the highest value on “useful now.”

This makes the world really really difficult for most thinkers because, if they are honest, they get a lot wrong initially and most thinking may have seeds of smartness and truth initially, but other than that, well, a lot is garbage. I call it “not quite right” thinking. Taleb called them “half invented ideas.”  The ideas that didn’t get traction immediately and, well, if we are honest, business life and our own spans of attention tend to discard an idea if it doesn’t show immediate possibilities or success. But if you keep the fragments of good ideas around, and twist them around a bit every once in a while, like a kaleidoscope eventually they can come together in a vivid image. Voila, your garbage has turned into non garbage. Your half invented becomes a useful invention.

Which leads me to suggest there is a relationship between useful garbage and speed – as in play, pause, rewind & fast forward.

The truth is that every good self-aware thinker has a panel in their head with a play, pause, rewind and fast forward button. They have the ability to see things in real time, i.e., what has occurred up to that point and, in some way, can envision the ripples of what happens from there. Within that ability they decide to fast forward, or pause, or continue playing at the same speed or even decide to rewind a little. They see reality and decide how to best take advantage of it. I would suggest the best garbage users have this ability.

That said. Some thinkers have one speed. These are ‘the bull in china shop’ asshats who only know forward at some fast speed bludgeoning and blustering their way forward. Then there are others like golf carts steadily chugging along at steady long play. Idea management, i.e., sifting through the garbage, demands a bit of all and each and nuanced use.

Well. Today’s world is structurally hostile to nuance. Subtlety not only doesn’t sell because it invokes that wretched inbetween ‘space’ in which others are more than willing to place something. It is easy to go one speed <or just stop when you get tired>. It takes touch and nuance to pause at the right time, rewind accordingly, fast forward through some difficulties or to take advantage of windows of opportunity or, well, just keep playing <which is sometime tougher than what you would think>.

To be a consistently good thinker is not about maintaining one speed, but rather maintaining a consistent sense for how to adjust pacing accordingly and when, and where, to pick through the garbage.

Which leads me to humility.

In today’s business world we like to have simple formulas and handbook guides. Pacing is more ‘feel’ and awareness and … well … yeah … some humility. I say humility because no matter how good a thinker you are and no matter how good your pacing is there will always be some issues <mostly because you get some things wrong>. Part of the ‘wrong’ portion is you inevitably leave some people behind and some ‘minds’ get a little scattered. And you have to get them back on track and aligned and sometimes you have to step up and show a little humility, admit some things are garbage, maybe even sift through other people’s garbage, and everyone resets when you do that, gives you another chance and get a little reenergized to pick up their bags and hit the road with you again.

In the end, all garbage has value. It may not all turn into a treasure someday, but it all shapes perspective. And perspective is imperative in the in-between time when outlines of some really important things can be a bit vague. Sometimes the garbage is what gets you out of the in-between. And maybe that is the most important point I have shared today. Ponder.

Analog – June 1962 – cover artist – John Schoenherr

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 “The single most important thing that could be done would be to substitute reasonably accurate positive images of the future for the depressing images that now prevail, especially in the Advanced Capitalist nations.”

futurist Herman Kahn in the 1970s

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It is just as deterministic to say “if we build social media, the world will be a more connected place” as it is to say “social media will destroy democracy.”

Danah Boyd

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“We saw Cyndi Lauper convincing a gentleman in a suit to put down his newspaper and dance, I saw a world of possibility, one in which adulthood could be fun, with surprise waiting around every corner.”

Shane O’Neil on the 1980’s & 90’s

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I almost called this ‘refinding technological optimism.’ Okay. Maybe it is more about anti-technological dystopia. I am not suggesting we be utopian, just that I question why we should ditch optimism. I thought about this in a conversation with Faris Yakob as we pondered our possibly naïve optimism about technology in the early 2000’s. Anyway. Two of the books I consistently pluck off my shelf to remind myself that technology dystopia has not always been the norm: The Cluetrain Manifesto and anything by Jaron Lanier. And while I imagine the Cluetrain authors may suggest that they were naively optimistic, I don’t agree with them. In those heady days technology was going to offer us many of the things that would solve, or resolve, many of the societal issues at hand. And technology, for its part, has held up its end of the bargain. Where things go a bit awry is with humans. And if you agree with that, fundamentally, anything humans make can be unmade. Just because some of the Cluetrain and Lanier positive possibilities have not occurred, doesn’t mean they cannot.

But let’s get to the optimistic part.

The roots of technological optimism arise way before the internet and computer technology. Its roots are grounded in technology (a) better utilizing resources against growing demand and (b) easing some of the societal issues through more efficient productivity/use of human time. Technological growth, in the minds of the optimists, meant technological advance where humanity got more output per unit of input – rather than simply more of an old technology. The optimism gained some momentum with the idea of ‘exponential.’ Technology was to provide exponential benefits rather than a more plodding additive or even multiplicative. In other words, today’s limits would look silly in the future because of the accumulation of a seemingly endless amount of breakthroughs. For the most part, this happened. But. We were also offered a blueprint for what could go wrong at this time. Toffler and McLuhan outlined the cognitive issues (human limits) and Anderson outlined the market issues in The Long Tail theory. Fragmentation in the market, profited exponentially, and humans, cognitively, didn’t quite profit as much. The exponentiality was indifferent to symmetry and asymmetry can be a motherfucker to humans and their minds.

But let’s get back to optimism. Distorted market incentives are solvable, businesses and institutions structured to exploit technology can be solved, even societal expectations and objectives can be solved. None of those things have anything to do with technology; they are human issues. That said. Constructive technological advances could enhance human solutions to those things. Technology, in the right hands, could even combat some of the negative features of existing technology.

To be clear, this optimism is not utopian (although I do believe we should do some more utopian thinking). This optimism is rooted in what we know and what we can actually do. To make a point, almost everyone who signed the AI “pause” letter could, if funded well, could develop technological solutions to much of what dystopians lose sleep over. I say that to suggest we should have technological optimism … as long as the right humans are involved in technology’s future. I imagine my grander point on that is technology has not failed us, we have failed technology. And within that we should find some optimism because no matter how bad people can be, good people have a gravitas that bad can never attain.

“In the long run, optimists shape the future.”

Kevin Kelly

Which leads me to shaping.

An optimist almost has to believe, in some form or fashion, that exponential technological growth will expand resources and minds ahead of exponentially increasing issues. This is a tough thought in today’s world because from most people’s perspective technology is an aggravating factor – amplifying all that is bad – rather than an expansive factor – amplifying possibilities and imagination to be mined. But once again, the problem isn’t the technology; its us (humans). The undesirable, aggravating characteristics, consequences of technology are reflections of humanness which many of us simply ignored or submerged under a variety of other things (results, altruism, etc.). Market forces are most typically a reflection of humanness. That is not to say technology doesn’t tweak our worst instincts, just that technology is equally a force for good and bad and only pursues what we want to pursue. The consequences are more us than it is ‘them’ (technology) so if we optimistically shape our technology we can shape a more optimistically good world.

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“I don’t think our goal should be to create conscious intelligent machines. Everything that makes a machine useful are generally the things that are not human, why do we need to create an emotional, unpredictable, volatile, machine and put it in charge of something mission critical. The whole point of machines is to do they can do the things we don’t trust humans to do consistently.”

Mike Walsh

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The fact of the matter is, McLuhan was right: “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” Technology is not just about things and devices; it is about processes and verbs and attitudes and people. You have to be a little careful about what technologies you adopt, because each technology is, broadly speaking, a way of doing things. Maybe we place optimism on top of these questions L.M. Sacasas suggests:

1. What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
2. What habits will the use of this technology instill?
3. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time?
4. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of place?
5. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people?
6. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to the world around me?
7. What practices will the use of this technology cultivate?
8. What practices will the use of this technology displace?
9. What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
10. What will the use of this technology encourage me to ignore?

Which leads me to suggest technological optimism is about faith and craft.

To be optimistic is to believe in human ingenuity with no foreseeable limit. Technology can be crafted as an unending cascade of advancement. What this means is a belief that each advancement can not only eliminate the present technological issues, but also stretch the limits of what is currently possible. In its constant stretching both good, and bad, can occur but the good is constantly erasing the bad. Yeah. It’s an understanding that technology is both empowering/enabling and oppressive/constraining; often simultaneously. But within optimism is a rejection of a conclusion that the world is ugly and the people are bad. Optimism rejects dystopia as well as the status quo. I believe the status quo never invents the future, and vision, creativity and innovation crafts the future. Yeats is correct, the center cannot hold, so the center may be the status quo and who’s happy with that today? Instead of griping about what’s deplorable, it seems a discussion about the future would be much more interesting. We can wring our hands all we want, but there’s no going back, so what’s ahead?

“Well, that’s the universal law of technology, that it can be used for good or evil.”

Michio Kaku

“Ahead” technology discussions today careen between an anticipation of doom or deliverance. All of today’s technologists, while they craft for utility, power and profit, appear to have as their north star as rationality. Somewhere along the way the technologists lost the distant dreams and aspirations for a better world. Sadly, I believe this is a reflection of business and society in general (it is a tough time for dreamers these days). While tools could have been shaped to shape a better society and world, the tools were shaped – by human hands and minds – to serve financial objectives (which, obviously, is the easiest way to pay for the technology). So. While we should expect far more from our technological innovations then convenience and efficiency, or even cognitive survival, we do not. It gets a bit worse. We also demand deliverance from problems, even the problems that technology creates, from technology. Yeah. Technological growth clearly aggravates real human problems and it is silly to optimistically count on technological advance to solve all of them. Technology is a mixed blessing capable of producing undesirable as well as desirable consequences. The mixed consequences of technological development is an issue that becomes more critical the more technological advance entails risks with catastrophic potential. That said. There is only “ahead” and we should be focused on delivery (and deliverance from dystopia), and not doom.

Which leads me to why dystopia is so much easier than optimism.

Part of the issue is that technology has become a God-like tool for, well, everything to, well, everyone; not just technological optimists.  As Alan Turing said:

“(Turing) predicted in about 50 years time it will be possible to program computers to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than a 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning. It is at that point we would start deeming a machine’s performance as intelligent.”

The truth is we are at the 70%, if not higher, now. But go on the internet and you can find all the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers adamantly stating all the ways a computer is not human and cannot mimic a human and, in fact, it is not intelligent. Well. The issue is the majority of the world are not tech nerds and philosophical thinkers. To the majority of THAT world the computer is intelligent. In fact (an aside to all the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers), that imitation technology is more easily understood than the tech nerds and philosophical thinkers.

What this puts us at is what complexity theory calls The Edge of Chaos. This refers to the exploration zone of complex systems where interesting things happen. In this zone systems are not so rigid that they cannot change at all, but not so chaotic that they immediately dissolve into useless disorder. The edge of chaos is the fertile ground for possibilities to emerge. It describes where we live in today’s world. It is from this space where optimists thrive and progress towards something better can thrive.

It is time to explore.

I believe there about the same number of neurons in the brain as there are a number of stars in universe. We have used technology to explore space, to explore the brain, to explore the body, to explore the capacity of humans. Technology is the ship which can carry us to the farthest parts of the universe. My real fear and pessimism reside not with technology, but with ourselves – human beings. We have met the enemy and it is us. The truth is technology simply amplifies all the worst things of human beings. I’m not speaking of evil, although it lurks in the depths of the Internet, I’m speaking more about conformity. The internet defines how things should look like and scores of people line up to conform to that likeness. The same thing occurs with ideas and, well, everything. We are imitation machines. More access to all this information and imagery and words just simply encourages us all to become average, i.e., to all become the same. At some point we will all look like each other, speak like each other, and even use all the same words. That is my fear. My optimism resides in the belief that people are not average, they do like to be distinct, and they like progress to something new and better. Yeah. All progress is grounded in some spectacular risk, some spectacular mistake, or some spectacular idea that encourages everybody to zig while everyone else is zagging. And my optimism also encompasses technology because technology mirrors humanness.

Which leads me to end with a thought Pamela McCorduck had: “this thinking machine amplifier would amplify these qualities as other as other as other machines have amplified the other capacities of our body.” The development of AI continues to promise to provide an extension of the human capacities we value most like, well, conversations and exchanges and connections:

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“The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met, and connected. The first markets were places for exchange, where people came to buy what others had to sell — and to talk.

The first markets were filled with talk. Some of it was about goods and products. Some of it was news, opinion, and gossip. Little of it mattered to everyone; all of it engaged someone. There were often conversations about the work of hands: “Feel this knife. See how it fits your palm.” “The cotton in this shirt, where did it come from?” “Taste this apple. We won’t have them next week. If you like it you should take some today.” Some of these conversations ended in a sale, but don’t let that fool you. The sale was merely the exclamation mark at the end of the sentence.”

Cluetrain Manifesto

Of course, there are reasons to be concerned especially when pondering latency – where effects are manifested long after the initiation of their cause – coupled with irreversibility, or a resistance to correction. Or the zero-infinity characteristic which refers to effects that are extraordinarily unlikely to occur, but catastrophic if they do.

Look. I am certainly not suggesting gambling our future on an optimistic point of view, just that optimism can shape the future we want. And I believe optimism is actually the only way to forge our way to a better future. Let’s go explore. Ponder.

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“The coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge; not just consumption. Power seekers’ will use this struggle to further their power ambitions. While mass media could have been seen as sweeping generalized manipulation of attitudes and beliefs, technology is using fragmentation to have those with power divide and conquer.”

Alvin Toffler, 1981

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It is too simplistic to suggest any society, or nation, is divided. The reality is that society, and communities, have become fragmented, each isolating into its own cocoon of mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and even performative metrics (proof). If we step back, this is a natural consequence of years of rhetoric and unhealthy narratives. What else would we do after years of businesses suggesting business was a war and the other businesses were out to get us and it was a battle of us versus them, kill or be killed. Or your church is telling you only you will go to heaven and everyone else is designated for hell (or heathens). Or some Cause suggests it is Armageddon if you do not agree with them and if you don’t you are part of the problem. Even issues like climate change, abortion and vaccinations have become battlegrounds of us versus them. And the politicians, well, they are an onslaught of ‘the other party is evil and will destroy this country” or “that country is evil and out to destroy us” or whatever us versus them derivative they can create. Each, individually, divides, and each contribute to fragmentation. There are two main consequences to all this which leads to the creation of smaller groupings, communities, of like minded people:

• –         The more dividing issues occur, the more complex the world seems and the more inept, or unable to contend with, any centralized center of power is, which leads to decentralization (of everything) which only compounds the sense of lack of coherence.
• –         From a whole cloth perspective this cacophony of dividing creates an overall sense that everything is out of control and the world is spiraling downwards into the depths of despair (this is the roots of cultural despair).

But then we get too technology.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, communities and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthens pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues and societal coherence. The extension of technology into our lives has only seemed to accomplish the fact that people everywhere sensing their control over their lives slipping away as the world becomes increasingly complex. With that mindset/belief people begin discerning specific scenarios within which they can find meaning, self identification & success and then go about creating a subsystem, a likeminded community, where desired actions and direction are created, further intensified by a sense of their own survival within the larger system. There is a general feeling of remoteness from the centers of decision making so they create their own decisonmaking centers. These choices are supported by a feeling (which becomes a belief) that those in power don’t care what “people like me think” which only increases an increasing sense how little capacity individuals, alone, feel they have to shape events. Individuals recognize they cannot flex power to manipulate any meaningful levers of control, they end up groping around almost desperately for ways to bring back some order and sense to their lives, and inevitably smaller likeminded communities are forged. What ends up happening is that society becomes an interaction between these likeminded communities and their changing micro boundaries at a community level all trying to exist in a macro larger system attempting to shape boundaries and pull levers itself for the collective good. The consequence of this conflict/tension tends to make the likeminded communities only double down and increase close identification with those within that particular group. This means that society has become fragmented and not divided.

To state again, a major part of the issue is that people have come to believe that whole systems are simply too complex to meet their needs or serve their wants. So, they’ve sought to regain control by turning to subsystems, in likeminded communities, less complex relatable groups, in the hope that their interests can be better served and some control is regained over the distant impersonal forces that intrude upon their daily life. Simplistically, people have simply given up on the distant big structures of power striking a “big is threatening” and “small is effective/beautiful” pose. Technology has simply taken a gentle sloping trend rising towards skepticism and doubt, laced with some conspiracy theories, and exponentially made it a steep climb.

This has become a period of cultural despair and creation of likeminded communities is an active response to fight despair. I say that because this smaller group creation is an adaptive response to the problems of complexity; not an abandonment of responsibility. The creation of likeminded communities should not be equated with indifference nor is it an expression of apathy or cynicism. Development of smaller communities is simply a search for new structures around which to organize scenarios and which the individuals’ micro needs can have macro consequences. I highlight this to make two points:

• –         This is active participation in society, not a passive reaction. These people are not retreating, they are going on the offensive toward things they actively care about. This is important if we attempt to engage with a collective future in mind. As with any self-decentralization if we seek to regain some centralization or, at minimum, coherence, the fragmented communities must be solicited with sincerity, not disdain or a belief they are not ‘smart enough’ to know better.
• –         Technology feeds on active participation. This is more a warning than it is anything else. If a likeminded community ‘feels’ something, the internet will feed that feeling until it hardens into a belief. It will also actively feed other likeminded people into that community. Contrary to opinion, technology can create blindness and will actually encourage people to go blind.

Which leads me to proof in a complex world.

In order to have some legitimacy and just survive within the larger system the likeminded communities construct scenarios, assume responsibilities, and assign analytics to everything they are involved in. In other words, likeminded communities have their own analytics, they have their own narratives and, unfortunately, sometimes they have their own facts. In fact, the larger the macro societal crisis the more likely it will involve a shift at the subgroup level performance criteria that they will attach to their own legitimacy. This expanded use of metrics may dispose people to rethink what has long been taken for granted and decide to shape their own performance criteria themselves. I would be remiss I remiss if I didn’t point out that media plays a role in subgroup performance criteria development. For example, what Fox News cites is important can often become a community criteria. This criteria becomes a measurement for the larger system – even if the larger system may not have the same criteria. So, while the larger system may actually be quite effective in totality, if not the very specific issue at hand, the performance analytics are not aligned and the conflict only creates further dissonance between the groups and the system.

Technology is the ally and the enemy.

Information should be intrinsically beneficial to society and, yet a fragmented flow of information and communication results in increased knowledge AND fragmentation. Technology plays a role in where we go from here, but first, people need to think about the future they desire which, typically, rests on the most fundamental assumptions we make about reality. In the present competitive view of the world, we often think that the most capable are those who are the most competitive, and accordingly that competition creates and secures long-term viability. On a societal level, we have essentially adopted a zero-sum dynamic behind most of the things we do. This separates everything, and everyone, into a binary 0/1, yes/no, good/bad, this way/that way design world (software, algorithms, business individuals and even countries). This current design belief has only made the divide between winners and losers constantly grow and this polarization leads to radicalization (of ideas, opinions, behavior) and, well, society does not benefit. A fragmented society is not one that will effectively build a future good for the collective whole.

We do need technological advances, but our humanity and society must develop at the same speed as technology develops. As our technological ability to impact the world is radically scaling up, our human ethical choices as to how to implement that power must scale up accordingly.

The solution resides in being able to see clearly.

It may be difficult for a likeminded community, from all views within a healthy community, to recognize that humanity – even theirs – is lagging our technology. It may be difficult for a fragmented society, specifcally the smaller communities themselves, to see beyond their loose talk about obsolescence and the rot at the core of our society and institutions and business when the existence of that community may be grounded in some apocalyptic view about every systemic crisis. It would behoove each of these smaller communities to understand it stretches credibility to extend each individual systemic indictment to the entire structure of business, government, justice, and institutions. Every debatable action does not demand some mandate to destroy the entire system and every disappointment or concern about the larger system is not a mandate to shrink away to a smaller community mindset. We need some optimism, not just in humanity, but in the grander systems and institutions. Not blind faith, but optimism. I always recommend reading Rutger Bregman’s Humankind to remind everyone about humanity. I recommend for the ‘We’, those who seek to find solutions to what seems like a dysfunctional society, we need to recognize the difference between fragmentation and divided because the solutions are different for each. Divided is about building bridges and fragmentation is about building coherence. Ponder.

“Tone is the hardest part of saying no.”
Jonathan Price

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This is part of my series of things I learned working the security company job I had in college.

This one is about Big Fred. That is what everyone called him. Big Fred was a mountain of a man. I am sure there was a lot of muscle hidden in there somewhere, but he was Jabba the Hut before there was Jabba. I am not sure he ever had to actually take any action because he was so intimidating.

Anyway. Big Fred’s job was always the same job at every event. He managed the artist/players entry area. He was the last line of defense to the performers. He said who got in, what got in and in general provided oversight for their well being. So when I was a backstage supervisor I was kind of de facto under Big Fred’s supervision.

I would say everyone I talked to thought Big Fred had the sweetest job in the company. After a couple of months watching Big Fred in action I was pretty confident if I paid attention I could learn a lot and very confident you couldn’t pay me enough to do his job.

• **       note: by the way, while I didn’t follow closely, I do believe he was recognized for ability beyond being big because I believe a number of bands hired him to manage their backstage tour.

Big Fred had a big job that was easy to miss because of all the glitz and glamour surrounding everything taking place.

Big Fred was constantly squeezed – by those within (the performers) and those without (those who wanted to be near the performers). He had to balance all that and make it all seem like it was under control. I am pretty sure I never once saw Big Fred freak out (even as the oiled up dancers came racing out of the Van Halen dressing room).

Let’s see. So. I have Neil Young at the back entrance wanting to be let in. I don’t have his name on the list (and you learn VERY quickly it doesn’t matter who it is, if you don’t have them on the okayed list they don’t come in). So me, capable of making many decisions, frankly ain’t gonna make this call.

“Hold on a second, will you Mr. Young.”

Back to Big Fred. Explain. Now Big Fred was a master of this crap.  He knew if he should ask someone, put someone on the list or just say no (all while he has one eye on caterers wandering in, random special guests and keeping riff raff out of the way). Here is where he shared an even bigger lesson to me (the kid). “Nope. He can’t come in” (“oh shit” bubble over my head), but he then says “hold on. Let me come with you and we can tell him together”.

Look. This may sound stupid, but to a 19 year old kid telling Neil Young “nope” was a big thing. And Big Fred kinda had a great sense for how to defuse things as well as delegate and empower. And he wasn’t willing to hang one of his employees out to dry.

I know I say in my bio I have always been a collector of moments and Big Fred gave me some of the most thoughtful formative management moments. I am unclear whether others saw the same thing, but I hope Big Fred is still doing well. He taught me some basics I still utilize today.

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Other CSC security job learnings:

corralling chaos (a management lesson)

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practicing actually means more relaxed

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action has its time

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gaining perspective

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

Sue Monk Kidd

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“Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems.

That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.”  

Giuseppe Peano

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Fear of being misunderstood. If you type that into google you get about 159,000,000 results in 0.42 seconds and only one, yes, one result is about the version I am talking about. The version today is not being misunderstood as a person, but, literally, not being understood when speaking or communicating something. That said. I did find the term ambiguphobia which is applied to the pathological fear of being misunderstood. It has the same word root as “ambiguous.”

Ambiguity.

If you elect to believe the world is often ambiguous, complex not simple, that cause & effect (98% of the time) is nonexistent, and truth is more often conditional not absolute, you are doomed to have a fear of being misunderstood. This fear may be constant or intermittent or maybe even like a flux capacitor, but it exists in some form or fashion.

I thought about this after listening to a Jason Fox podcast where he kind of flippantly mentioned he had a fear of being misunderstood and read a piece he linked to at Ribbon Farm “The Tragicomic Exasperations of Expertise.”

Here is what I believe.

If you elect to believe the world is complex and simplicity is elusive, you spend a lot of time in the wretched hollow between:

Certainty versus uncertainty

Absolute truths versus contingent truths

Pragmatism versus dreams

Short term versus long term

Safety versus risk

Old beliefs versus new understandings

Fixed versus unfixed

Fluid versus solid

If you reside in the complex universe, you will find your cozy cottage resides in this windswept, stormy grassy hollow. And I would suggest you also spend a lot of time in the kitchen of the cottage mixing ingredients seeking the perfect potion to make the complex understood. I would also suggest this is the wretched hollow – continual experimentation of ingredients.

“<things> get better when exposed to external stressors and change.”

Dr. Jason Fox

That said. If you elect to believe the world is complex, let me suggest two thoughts for you to ponder about this wretched hollow in terms of ‘fear of being misunderstood’:

Wretched hollow version 1: where ideas go to die

If you have decided to reside in the complex universe, suffice it to say you have decided to be in the thinking & ideas business. While your skillset may have some aspects of ‘doing’ and results, you have put a stake in the ground that progress is dependent upon people thinking about shit and in that thinking will better navigate a way toward success.

In other words you have inextricably linked thinking to progress. This is important because in this version of the wretched hollow this is where ideas go to die if you are misunderstood.

In other words. You are in the thinking and ideas business (a version of the ‘Progress Business’) and if you are not understood your thinking and ideas die. Uhm. No more business and certainly no progress (or at least your version of it).

This is a pragmatic fear of being misunderstood. The product you want to sell, not being understood, is not bought.

I will note here this is where I believe business people, experience, has an advantage over academics & thought leaders. In business if you cannot make uncertainty certain enough or the invisible esoteric thinking visible enough, you die. You become a superfluous thinker who doesn’t know how to get things done or, in general, no one knows what to do with what you say & think. You are simply mental masturbation.

Wretched hollow version 2: where ‘self’ goes to die

Doubt, Imposter Syndrome, confidence, even arrogance wander in this wretched hollow. Fear of being misunderstood haunts not just your ideas and thinking, but you. This is the world you have elected to be in. Others have chosen detail, you have chosen definitions.

By choosing the path of definitions, versus details, you have, psychologically, purposefully placed yourself in a constant tug of war between all of the things I just stated. Your only real contribution to the tug of war is to continuously eat up more and more knowledge in the attempt to put more weight on the positive side of the tug of war. Unfortunately, knowledge weighs less, proportionately, than doubt/uncertainty, or even ignorance, so even as you become more smart, wiser, & better at articulating the Sumo wrestler sized doubts (the actual fear of being misunderstood) never lose any weight and keep tugging.

My point here is that electing to reside in the complex universe and making your business the business of thinking & ideas is a non-stop, never-ending tug of war. So. You are in the game or you are not. And if you are worth half a shit you will find that you never lose the tug of war, the other side just tugs a little harder on occasion. But. And this is a big but. The moment you stop pulling the fear of being misunderstood changes to death of the universe you have elected to live in and even the business you have elected to be in. I know that sounds harsh, but ‘self’ has some pretty dark places and if you give up the rope it is really really hard to not only climb back out of the darkness, but also get a new strong grip on the rope in the tug of war. Just ponder because even if you do not agree with me in totality on this point even at a lesser degree it has repercussions to fear of being misunderstood.

Let me end this version of wretched hollow by pointing out that if you have elected to make thinking & ideas your business, and you struggle to make people understand your thinking & ideas, you will inevitably start questioning the value & meaning you provide. Period. Full stop.

“Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.”

Horace

Lastly.

Mixing the formula.

That’s the deal, isn’t it? Finding the right amount of certainty, tangible understanding, to freedom (uncertainty) ratio? It’s the proportionate amount of traction points (I call them lily pads of certainty) to provide structure to hold up the uncertain, freedom and adaptability of thinking, in people’s minds (leading to them actually doing something). I say that because that’s where the fear of being misunderstood centers itself – will I mix the right formula this time?

This is where Life gets tricky.

All people inherently need some successes or, well, you go into some pretty dark places. So your natural instincts arc toward ‘being understood.’ That means offering up simplicity, maybe some tasty soundbites and, often, some fairly vapid generalizations attempting to tap into some common perceptions. That means you incrementally shave away at complexity which, inherently, shaves away truths and impact/effectiveness <you have slipped down the slippery slope of the bastardization of occam>. That means, while you have elected to reside in the universe of complexity, you are selling out the value of that universe (I would argue that diminishes self but that’s not my point today).

I will say (part 1) the people in this space with the most success not only constantly gain knowledge, but use it in a ‘play, pause, rewind, fast forward’ way. What I mean by that is the formula cannot be rushed and neither can complexity understanding be completed in a formulaic way. In other words it not only takes an ability to assemble the right fragments, but do so with pacing to engage cognitively.

“Be still amidst the chaos and active in repose.”

Indira Ghandi

I will say (part 2) that the tricksters, and ignorant, who casually ease round simplistic pegs into uneven hexagon complex holes exponentially outnumber the experts. And you know what? People, in general, like round pegs.  Smooth, simple and easy to grasp. This does not mean people are stupid just that tricksters are masters of the illusion, and delusion, of progress and the doyens of detail. In general, they thrive on detail cloaked in fortune cookie wisdom. It’s simplistic, not simple, and its horrible for us, society and business.

And maybe that is where I should end. The fear of being misunderstood is really about knowing, in your heart of hearts, you have chosen the rockier path as two roads diverge and, well:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear of choices – have I made the right one, or ones, and in doing so have I made myself clear of why the roads are what the roads are and why as they diverge we should walk on this one today.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about making the choice to making the complex understood.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about the choice that progress is actually made through the complex rather than simplicity.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear people do not understand the choice you made.

Regardless. There is a positive side.

Progress is not a linear process. Mastering complexity or at least wrangling complexity insures not only progress, but antifragile progress and progress with value. I will never suggest fear is a good thing, but I will say that when you get it right, when you share the thinking and ideas and it is understood, and your fear of being misunderstood is absolved for at least that moment – it is a great feeling. And it’s a great feeling not because you have been understood, but rather because by being understood energy has been created, or traction provided, for progress to occur. Ponder.

“I’m only good at being young

So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun …

I can’t take the speed it’s moving in

I know I can’t but honestly won’t someone stop this train …”

John Mayer

<from the song Stop this Train>

——–

“I think about dying but I don’t want to die.

Not even close.

In fact my problem is the complete opposite.

I want to live, I want to escape.

I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic.

There’s so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all.

I’m still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can’t quite figure out what the hell I’m doing or how to get out of it. “

Matty Healy

————

fictional undertaker David Fisher from Six Feet Under response to a mourner’s desperate question:

“Why does there have to be death?”

“Because it makes life important.”

====

Aging. Or. Without all the political correctness and ‘thinking positively’ mumbo jumbo — getting old. Every time I hear John Mayer’s song “stop this train” <which is actually a fabulous song> it makes me think of getting older … oops … aging.

———

“… once in a while when it’s good

It’ll feel like it should.

And they’re all still around

And you’re still safe and sound

And you don’t miss a thing …”

——–

Aging seems relevant to write about as today is my birthday. Aging is tricky <physically> as well as tricky topic <to discuss>. And let me be clear — aging is personal.

Personal in how you deal with it with regard to your parents <watching them getting older & dealing with it>.

Personal in how you deal with it, well, with regard to yourself.

The former I have written about: dealing with aging parents. The latter is what I am discussing today – personal in dealing with aging or, I imagine, myself dealing with it. I am old, but I am not old. Let me explain.

As I think of aging I sometimes worry that there is all this incessant tripe of ‘you are only as old as you feel’ or ‘age is just a number’, but then I stop worrying because it is simply just window dressing on the fact everyone who is getting older already truly knows in their heart of hearts — it is not about your attitude or how you think about it, you just have to “nut up” <as Lemon says on 30Rock> or “deal” with getting older.

Yup.

You just gotta deal with it.

You can try and ignore it. But as you age you mostly just try and, well, not reverse it, but maybe pause it on occassion, or maybe even stop it <for a while as in moments or ‘a day’>.

I will admit in many of my writings I have noted that it is often suggested the older 50something generation is narcissistic, heck, I even suggested they ruined business, but at minimum the older generation <mine> seems to constantly seek ways to regain youth or find ways to turn back the in some fairly ludicrous embarrassing ways.

But, in thinking about it, I would actually argue that most of us simply want to ‘stop this train’ and renegotiate some things. Not really stop the clock as in simply stop aging, but maybe pause some things on occasion. I say that because most of us don’t mind aging and being older, we just don’t like the inevitable degradation in our lives. And what I mean by that is it seems like aging becomes more tangible in the diminishing physical rather than mental.

In fact. Mentally we become smarter and more knowledgeable and many actually become ‘wiser.’ It is just that the body just cannot do the same things it did before. Yeah. The body just doesn’t ‘show up’ every day.

What I mean by that is there are days as a 50something when everything is aligned physically – less aches, more energy, feel sharp, etc. – and, well, ‘once in a while its good … it feels like it should.’

We embrace those days. We want the train to maybe stop there for a little while.

I truly believe most of us do not want to regain youth or even recapture the trappings of youth <I certainly don’t>, we simply want to pause the clock at certain moments at this stage in our lives.

We do not hate age.

We do not regret aging.

But, let me be clear, despite all the tripe you find in gobs of articles and books … we are also not embracing aging. I am fine, and comfortable, in my age but that doesn’t mean I love all aspects of aging and I am certainly not embracing the additional years.

I would actually argue that most of us simply have a desire to embrace the <or ‘a’> moment.

And by embracing the moment I mean the present — not the past. But to suggest this is an easy topic is foolish. While I may have come to grips with aging all you have to do is scan publications to see some fairly absurd perspectives on getting older:

No one is ever old in their own heads. There may be fleeting moments of self-recognition – the inward flinch at the thought of wearing heels, the choice of bodyboarding over learning to kite surf, or looking at the snow and instead of thinking about sledging, wondering about falling.

Otherwise, 60 is the new 40, first-time mothers in their 50s are pushing swings in many a playground, and there is a category in the ironman world championship for any woman between the ages of 70 and 74 who enjoys extreme cycling, swimming and marathon running.

There’s nothing new about acting as old as you feel, except that it has suddenly become universally acceptable.

A generation ago, marriage was the launchpad into the life of the middle-aged. Where now women in their 60s wear their children’s clothes, then women in their 40s adopted their mothers’ wardrobes.

Getting old was respectable, and living in denial was looked on with pity.  For these new gerontocrats, living into their 80s and 90s has come as a surprise and not necessarily a good one.

Ann Perkins <The Guardian>

—-

This means my whole point of ’embracing the moment’ can be challenging because society, media and culture is banging us over the head with images and words telling us how we SHOULD be thinking about it.

Oddly shows like Mad Men and other period pieces and even Friends make many older people nostalgic for aspects of past.

In those moments of reflection we sometimes wish we could have ‘stopped that train’ on those aspects at those times. Maybe have recognized them and enjoyed them a little more.

I think it is human that all of us, all the time, at all and any age, find and see things about ourselves and some specific time in our Life we would like to ‘stop,’ keep that one aspect and that one feeling for, well, forever <or that’s how we feel at that moment>.

That is Life.

Aging is kind of the same.

Now, because Life is, well, Life; aging is about getting older. Yeah. I said it. Deal with it.

This means we renegotiate some things because the train doesn’t really stop. The struggle within ourselves often resides in that renegotiation there is an inevitable bit of anxiety. Anxiety because you realize renegotiation is finite. And that is where aging becomes challenging.

———

“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”

Simone de Beauvoir

——-

 We are incapable of accepting infinity <because we know there is an end> and yet we balk at ‘finity.’ Therefore. While age is a number and the past can make us nostalgic inevitably we, the aging, measure Life in present moments and ‘adventures’ <accumulating finite-y type things>

I say that because it can become easy to get caught up in ‘youth invigorates’ , but it is more than that. It is … well … as stated earlier … it is personal.

Age, and reflection, often cannot give you some flash of insight that differentiates your life and makes it seem like a worthwhile venture. It is only within the moment, when it all feels right, where behavior is instinctively good, that we have the sense of mortality <i.e., this doesn’t happen as often as it used to> and immortality <i.e., I want this feeling to last forever>. Yeah. That’s an odd <paradox> of aging — the moments of ‘really good’ are actually the moments in which you most recognize your mortality. This ‘within the moment’ thing inevitably means that part of growing old is not really knowing what’s going to happen next to you in life and therefore seeking to savor “what is.”

I kind of believe maybe it is human nature to want time to slow down for things to stop happening so quickly … so maybe it slows down what you cannot see happening next. And as we try and slow things down we have a natural tendency to look backwards a little. Kind of look in the rear view mirror.

———

And I think of the years ..…. and the love that I’ve known.

I’m now an old man …….. and nature is cruel.

It’s jest to make old age ……. look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles ……. grace and vigor, depart.

There is now a stone ……. where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass …….a young man still dwell.

————

I imagine the challenge with age is that because more time now resides in the past … there is more to reflect upon … and as we reflect we realize some ‘young’ still dwells within.  To be clear. This doesn’t mean living in the past, or having regrets, it is more about … well … stopping this train so you can have more time in the now, in the present — to ‘do.’

And ‘do’ is the right word because we realize it’s not really about the spectacular or the glamorous — it’s about the moments & experiences we collect. The truth is that most of Life, and our lives, are rarely glamorous. And because most of us recognize that we tend to treasure the moments when everything ‘feels right’.

Oh. And I also tend to believe we start treasuring the right attitude.

I found this on a really neat Australian tumblr site <called MadisonLouise I think> with the picture I have here:

—–

“Surely, the solution to rainy day tram gloominess is to approach extravagantly-dressed elderly passengers for portraits.

This lady stepped onto the tram and I gestured to take a picture, eventually opening a dialogue about her modelling career in her youth which she was more than happy to announce to the full tram.

Shortly after, a character from Glasgow hopped on and tried to photo-bomb, so I took his portrait too and rode the rest of the way chatting to the pair of exuberant strangers.

I was interested to see how this impromptu shoot and social exchange effectively broke the ice and turned the stale, rigid and compartmentalised tram environment into something that more closely resembles the intended human experience.

Four strangers sitting in a booth opposite me began smiling at each other and chatting, while the people behind me tore their eyes away from their phones and elongated their hunched necks, if only for just a second.”

tumblr photographer

—-

The young dwells within. And that is the attitude. And most of us ‘we’ ,who are aging, keep this little secret inside us.

Sure. Sometimes someone comes along <like the story above> and as strangers make our young come out and play. Play if but for a moment.

Sigh.

“If but for a moment.”

No matter what anyone verbalizes … mentally … aging is not easy. Despite what 50somethngs or 60somethings say about ‘embracing age’ and ‘I feel more alive than I have ever felt’ … well … it is simply not true.

Trite & untrue.

I hesitate to say it is lack of acceptance. Conversely I don’t think it is rejection <fighting it>. Aging is somewhere in between “maximize what is left and minimizing what is wrong.” It’s like the train stops at a station you like and while you would love the train to stay stopped you know it will not and you make the most of the time it has stopped. To be clear. This does not mean we do not like aspects of being older just that many of the things we like about being older would have been nice to enjoy when we were younger <that is a subtle truism I believe most aging people would accept in some version>.

I have often expressed my belief about the strong link between acceptance and the need to control. In other words, the more we accept things as they are the less we need to control. And, conversely, the more controlling we are, the less accepting we are.

Which leads me to how acceptance and aging is important.

We obsess less about things over which we are effectively powerless. We are able to “see” practical options that lessen life’s adversities. We tend to be happier and tend to be more pleasant <less curmudgeonly>. Not surprising, an Australian study published in the Journal of Happiness concluded:

Accepting what can’t be changed is the key to happiness in old age.

Maybe what acceptance does is permits us to enjoy the good moments a little more. Not nostalgically but in the present. You actually think about maximizing the moment. Because you know it is there <it feels right & good> and you know it will not be there <maybe tomorrow if not even later the same day> and you know it will be there again <maybe not until next week … but it will be there>.

Acceptance is kind of a freedom.

Yup.

There is a freedom in admitting to yourself that you are middle aged <or older>. You can do what you want when you feel like doing it <within reason>.

Oh.

Here is a tip to those who are beginning to think about this whole aging thing.

Instead of exercise and taking some magical pills which have some dubious promises of youth … try reading. There is some research supporting some surprising health benefits of reading.

–      A 2009 study showed that reading for only six minutes can reduce stress by 68 percent, as well as slow your heart rate and minimize muscle tension.

–      Reading improves memory. In addition, another study showed that elderly people who read regularly are 2.5 times less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease.

–      Of course you can’t stop the aging process but reading can help slow it down. A study showed that reading can significantly reduce your rate of cognitive decline.

–      It can be stressful not knowing the future. One study showed that reading fiction can cause an increase in tolerance for uncertainty. As people read their minds actually open up and they become more comfortable with possibilities, options, and uncertainty.

Reading can really improve your health and life and helps slow down the train <at least mentally>.

Anyway. Life always changes. One year, or period of time, may seem ‘so much’ versus another. That may be so, but the train really never stops until it … well … stops. And it really rarely slows down. The train keeps chugging along, scenery changes, people change, life changes. Inevitability.

So much versus so little with regard to change is simply words we attach to the inevitable.

Ah. But the truly inevitable?

Every time you wish time stops or wanna go back a bit, despite the temptation to do so, for many of us <I included> something in our heads always keeps saying ‘keep moving.’

As John Mayer mentioned once when playing in concert:

==

“i have no idea how i’m going to play this live, because it’s definitely the most emotionally confrontational song for me….ya know, time is moving forward, all the time, and we know that, but..its kind of like running out of a continually burning hallway- and you can’t go back and get your stuff. and all i wanna do is yell, ‘i wanna go get my stuff!’, but people are going, ‘you can’t! keep running!!’. and this fireball’s coming up behind you, well it’s not exactly as indiana jones as that, but it feels like that sometimes… so this is a song begging to go back and uhh, it’s called ‘stop this train.'”

==

Look. Anyone older, or aging, doesn’t have to agree with what i have said so far, but, I feel relatively confident that whether we admit it or not, whether we actually do like ourselves as an older version, at some point, at some time, we want to ‘stop this train.’

It’s human.

The years start adding up and it is kind of silly to ignore that fact.

From a personal perspective it just means that all the things I believe I have left to do need to get crammed into fewer moments in time. That is what aging means to me.  In my mind it is now about maximizing the moments especially the ones when the train has stopped for me. I really don’t want to stop this train, but I do see the train moving and do recognize that when it stops, its time for me to not stop.

=======THE SONG========

Stop This Train by John Mayer

—–

No I’m not color blind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind but…
I just can’t sleep on this tonight
Stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t
But honestly won’t someone stop this train

Don’t know how else to say it, don’t want to see my parents go
One generation’s length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t but honestly won’t someone stop this train

So scared of getting older
I’m only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you’ll renegotiate
Don’t stop this train
Don’t for a minute change the place you’re in
Don’t think I couldn’t ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we’ll never stop this train

See once in a while when it’s good
It’ll feel like it should
And they’re all still around
And you’re still safe and sound
And you don’t miss a thing
’til you cry when you’re driving away in the dark.

Singing stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take this speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t
Cause now I see I’ll never stop this train

<

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====

“Embrace the present and invent the future,”

Karl Lagerfeld Chanel

=====

“Questions are what matters. Questions, and discovering the right ones, are the key to staying on course. The wave of information threatens to obscure strategy, to drown out details and numbers, calculation and analysis, reaction and tactics. To have strong tactics we must have strong strategy on one side and accurate calculation on the other. Both require seeing onto the future.”

Gary Kasparov

=====

This is about technology and intentionally shaping the future we desire and, peripherally, about business.

Where we are.

Human-ness: what it meant to be human and how to intentionally be human. It didn’t start with technology, but then again it did. Technology has introduced all the distractions necessary to forget we are human. To be clear. This is different than a ‘different than when I was growing up’ discussion (past), this is a discussion about our future and our intentions with regard to being human – individually, societally and in business. The debate, the discussion, should ignore the definitions of technology and focus on the definitions of humans – not generational mumbo jumbo – because there is no contrast between generations (in any meaningful way), the contrast resides in the liminal space we currently stand in – standing between the definition of who and what we want our future to be and a future, as yet, to be defined. Clearly there is room for improvement in how we engage with technology and even in the technology itself, but the expectations of the future should not reside in some fantastical technology, but instead the fantastic visions for people and what they will be defined by. Think about that because although we have a nasty tendency to view society and institutions as an array of products and services to ensure people succeed, the truth is that people will succeed with, or without, technology. That means to view technology as having an important role it should be viewed as integrating into the human experience for who and what they want to be – not manipulated by some technology trying to convince them what to think and who to be. This also means just as our notion of technology needs to be expanded, our notion of people needs to be re-explored, re-instated and reimagined. I imagine I am suggesting some version of a future in which it is a Learning Future where technology is simply learning systems undergirding learning people. Regardless. Intentions. Intentions matter if we desire an intentional future, rather than some future we adapt to, we need a vision for humanness.

Again. This discussion didn’t start with technology and, yet, it did. Technology has forced us, and is forcing us, to think more about being human than ever before. That, I imagine, means technology has forced us to state our intentions for the future.

Technology as an enabler for humans.

The reality is very few of us care about technology itself, we care about what it enables. Technology, wherever it resides (in hand, on desk, in lap, in car) are just tools to get things done (and ‘done’ can be answering questions and learning). Technology represents the means, not the desired outcomes. Technology is just a tool like all tools, if used properly it is effective, if it used improperly, it simply becomes an obstacle to attain some objective. What that really means is before we develop any technology, or technology plans, it would behoove us to articulate some unambiguous vision of what we desire in order to create the framework within which that technology can effectively enable. Let me be clear. This means technology does not lead, it follows and supports. This also means neither the availability nor the adoption of technology, its applications or construct, does not change the responsibility nor the overall focus of the business – we should be attempting to attain the same vision whether the technology is adopted or not. yes. What I mean is that technology adoption should not decrease the likelihood of attaining a vision. This also means technology must be relevant and connected to the vision, the strategy, the objective and the humans (and humanity). Ponder that thought.

Human-centric technology world.

Which leads me to the idea of human-centric and a human-centric Future. In November 2018, prior to the pandemic, I approached the Georgia Tech School of Human Design with a conference idea – The Humancentric Organization – in which speakers** would talk about technology through the eyes of creating learning organizations. In other words, human centric organizations enabled by technology:

It’s an exciting time to be a person in a technology world because it is all about Humans.

I’m convinced that ordinary people have more power in their hands to shape the world, including the future, than ever before. They just don’t know it because they keep getting told it will be a robot, automation, AI/Machine Learning world. The truth is technological progress is dependent upon people, conversations and thinking (morally & behaviorally). It’s clear that Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Biotech and any number of other technology-based innovations are set to impact society with consequences we can only imagine. This represents significant opportunities for people who recognize it will be a Human-centric future.

** note: the speakers who I had asked and expressed interest in being involved included Grady Booch, Mike Walsh, Dr. Jason Fox, Dr. Leda Glyptis, Teodora Petkova, Faris Yakob, Lisa Gill, Zach Mercurio and several others. All portray the goodness of human beings when given the opportunity to do good. I thought it would be interesting to have Mike Walsh, an unabashed futurist, and Grady Booch, one of the forefathers of software, together. Grady, in particular, portrays the goodness of technology when given the opportunity. He is the conscious of technology. He, above all, see humans create. He, above all, sees the integrity within the invisible, the black box of technology, which 90% of people will never understand and therefore are dependent upon the 10% accepting the burden of responsibility.

The human centric future, to me, will see a world in which:

• • Technology will thrive or die depending on humans, not the opposite.

  • The world, business & society, will thrive or die depending on humans, not technology.

We must keep an unwavering focus on humanness because as technology improves (as it will do) there will be a tendency to turn our focus more sharply toward seeing technology as the solution to, well, everything in the future. But this belief should give us some pause. If we focus too much on technology, we lose sight of the true purpose of technology which is to facilitate learning and improve the situation for humans.  I know I could argue whatever example someone comes up with that the future solutions should be created with same care and expectations as traditional effective solutions. Why? Because everything will still revolve around humans – an individual doing and thinking things interacting with other humans who are doing and thinking things. This is where complexity does come into play. We often, even with technology, think of our solutions in a one-dimensional way. The solutions, particularly if interested in creating a learning revolution, shouldn’t simply be based on convenience and simplicity but rather challenged and challenging. There will have to be a multi-dimensionality to the future – a complex one. I guess what I am suggesting is the we should not diminish the need for traditional principles like engagement, interaction and critical thinking but rather the strategic objective should have the intention to create some additional depth and dimensions to these principles.

A learning revolution.

Technology is first and foremost used for educational purposes. Now. We can debate the definition of education (beyond the institutional aspects), but for the most part people interact with technology to learn and do. [ponder.  This makes technology a transformation tool, but to what? There is certainly a role for undirected education/learning but inevitably if we seek to have a better system, the system should have an identified strategic objective. Far too often we make technology benefit into some simplistic ‘convenience’ tool. Why shouldn’t we expect technology to enable a learning revolution? This will demand a different type of leadership – one that is not passive but rather one that leads a revolution into the future. Since the preservation of the status quo tends to be equated with either protecting traditional values or principles, most leaders have learned (from experience) that ensuring a transformation unfolds slowly permits them the luxury of maintaining positions of power longer. A learning revolution demands a new type of leadership one that is active, enlightened and engaged. Any revolution is part push and part pull but technology offers a new dynamic environment in which opportunities can be exploited, in pursuit of a grander vision or strategic objective, if one is willing to actively engage with them. I have said this before but this new type of leadership is not about charisma, but rather about framing and thinking conceptually. The revolution only occurs if someone can frame the issues in terms that are directly relevant to the communities. The concepts are framed in a way that are easily articulated, understood and assimilated into individual (and collective) objectives. This is a bit grander than alignment (although alignment is certainly a key aspects) but rather it is about finding the coherence necessary for energy gravity grabs hold to increase progress.

Part of this progress, within a learning revolution mindset, is an understanding one cannot study something to death. Emergence demands some resolve to understand and take advantage of trends, opportunities and learning I general. Evidence gathering needs to be effective AND efficient wherein the mechanism neither slows nor delays yet offers up enough guidance to insure movement toward the vision and objective rather than away. This gets tricky with technology for 3 reasons:

• • Technology software is designed and consequences can run away faster than humans can actually assimilate. This is a Norbert Wiener concept.

Design carefully.

• • Technology is often the biggest contributor to ‘over-evidence-seeking’, big data and overwhelming amounts of information, and it must instead become a balancer to a culture of proper situational evidence – seeking not certainty, but rather probabilities.

  • Technology embeds some human bias/beliefs/convictions. What I mean by that is institutions, believing they are uniquely unique, put an overemphasis on what they perceive to be their uniqueness blinding decisionmakers, and learners, to realities which could actually improve their situation if not their learning (which is the first step to improving their future situation).

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

Sir Winston Churchill

Uneven progress.

Now. Understanding that technology in and of itself is significantly different than effective use of technology is the first step to achieving the future system we desire.  Technology, when implemented, will have an impact and an uneven one. As a result of these impacts a new set of rules, roles, relationships and behaviors will emerge. This emergence will recast any business, as an institution, in a new shape – one of which was not designed by someone upfront. The business model, as an unchanging institutional environment, no longer exists. In fact, the new business enterprise has little in terms of boundary constraints (even in expectations), but rather will reshape itself relying on dynamic, interrelated networks to enable the examination of arising issues within timeframes, some compressed some elongated, under which the system itself operates. In other words, people will change without any ‘transformational plan of action’ or ‘change management’, but rather through simple continuous iteration through interaction with each other and the marketplace/society/community.

And maybe this is where I touch on Purpose a bit because I envision someone saying to themselves “well, if the organization/person has a Purpose, that would probably resolve all future concerns of too much unevenness.” 

I believe individuals can have a Purpose and, in fact, if tap into Purpose are happier, healthier and more productive. I do not believe Business has a Purpose in the sense purpose is typically discussed.  I don’t believe ‘shareholder value’ is a Purpose, it is simply an objective (which creates systems in the business to achieve). I believe business has intentions. These intentions can get masked by visions or missions, both of the which can play valuable roles, but I believe a business should lay out its intentions – all of them.

An intent to contribute to the environment.

An intent to act with integrity every day.

An intent to engage with community.

Things like that (and there should be no limits to # of intentions).

Within these intentions the people IN the organization have a variety of paths they can choose to walk on – and clearly see where paths do not lie. I hesitate to call these principles because, well, they seem simply like intentions. With intentions understood a business can have a community of people interested in working coherently (some people may call this culture) and pursue quests to fulfill those intentions. Intentions put some boundaries on the unevenness while actually encouraging unevenness which increases velocity toward some vision. Intentions put some boundaries on technology.

—

“Community is the fact that we work toward the same goal, that we accept our respective roles in order to reach it.  Values is the fact we trust each other. And, culture?   Culture is as much about what we encourage as what we actually permit. That matters because most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”

Fredrick Backman

—

Intrinsic energy.

In having intentions and pursuing quests the business rely less on not having to tell people what they cannot get away with and encourage them more to go do what they can do. People gain knowledge, get better at whatever they do (and how they think), there is continuous improvement, progress is achieved (for the individual and the business), quests are pursued and everyone feels a sense of meaning in having contributed. Technology is simply a means to help achieve these outcomes.

Positive progress.

I have always believed we do a disservice to 90% of people by scaring them with disruption, revolutions and robots/automation stealing their jobs. I gravitate to people who make the pragmatic exciting. I gravitate to people who articulate change in ways people don’t distrust it, but instead are open-minded. I gravitate to people who don’t spew bullshit to sound intellectual, but rather see smartness in communicating in ways people can understand. The world, to me, is careening between technology-based fantastical hollow promises and dystopian technology hyperbole. I think we do a disservice to people by suggesting some piece of technology is more meaningful than a human being. I think we do a disservice to any person doing any job that they cannot find meaning in what they currently do therefore they should be happy some algorithm or robot can do it for them.  I believe we should put a stake in the ground for understandable positive human progress in an increasingly technological world. Progress, with or without technology, should be positive for humans and humanity.

Integrated.

I have always believed most futuristic discussions have done disservice to people in its “one-offness” or one-dimensional discussions. I believe we would benefit in presenting the future in an intentional integrated way – a system in totality. Software engineering, how people think, organizational structure, media & culture, power of individual purpose, how we speak thru technology. I believe if showcase humans at the center of the future in an integrated way we can show people that people are the thread to the future, not technology. Show people that if we are empowered to think and do, we will think and do. Show people the system is them and they are the system.

Human Future view.

I am tired of digital transformation, artificial intelligence and even customer-centric. The future is about human transformation, human intelligence and being human-centric. This can be practical business principles or larger societal issues, but at the center of all that will be done, what will be created, will occur thru humans talking with humans and humans creating things. That should be our strategic imperative for future intentions. Period.

Humans should tinker with the future, not technology, and they should do so intentionally.

In the end.

Intentions matter. What I mean by that is if we do not embrace a human centric world, intentionally, technology will be increasingly less likely to (a) be optimally effective and (b) optimally useful to the betterment of humans. Establishing the future is not about technology. It is about humans, society, culture and institutional tradition. The decisions for our future are both top down and bottom up, simultaneously, in which vision and pragmatism are aligned (and resources are equitably dispersed).

I would note that when goals and objectives are not reached, it has little to do with technology, but has a lot to do with people. This future system will not be the result of incremental change but rather of a strategic decision and structural mental models. The strategic decision, stating the intentions, permits the system to emerge rather than be driven by external forces and we inevitably find ourselves in a system in which human-ness thrives.

Hugh McLeod

‘.. striking a balance between humans and machines … on one side biased and arbitrary human organizations and on the other, soulless technocracy based on unfeeling machines. There is a path.”

Mike Walsh

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Technology, in and of itself, is an incredible tool for progress. When viewed in an ideal, or idealistic, way it is a democratized disseminator of knowledge, information, and connector of people. Technology, in its ideal form, lets call it a ‘static state’ is an energy for positive progress. So, if it is not within the ideal state we have to wonder why. The answer is not actually that difficult – humans, people. Humans ‘re-design’ technology to manipulate. I could argue that technology has simply amplified manipulation (someone is always attempting to manipulate you & your thinking and very often in a deceptive way) but the amplification has become so sophisticated we are being manipulated in ways it is difficult for people to unravel the manipulation (it takes an incredibly high sense of awareness). This isn’t to let humans being manipulated completely off the hook, just to say society, in general, has better things to do than question everything within the 30,000 decisions they must make, on average, every day. The truth is that humans have wired algorithms to reward our worst instincts/behaviors in, well, every domain.

** note: We would be ecstatic if people explored multiple sources online before forming their own opinions, but the reality is that the power of information distribution has fallen into fewer hands with more power to control the actual distribution of information. I would suggest this issue is only amplified with the increased use of handheld technology (smartphones/pads) to do research. I say this because smartphone research is increasingly likely to be “question/answer research” rather than “exploration research.” The former has its uses but is also more likely to not actually offer the greatest truths.

For example.

Why shouldn’t there be an algorithm that instead of sneaking in the infamous “you may also like this” (which tends to drive people farther down the misguided thinking rabbit hole) the algorithms offered up a “to better understand this topic you should read this.” In other words, algorithms that fight the natural gravity of shitty thinking.

To be clear. This, at its core, is not about technology. It is about humans creating things for humans to create a better society (and, yes, I could argue that I can be a raging capitalist and still endorse this idea – albeit it would make me work a bit harder to fulfill my profit goals as a raging capitalist).

Look. I’m not scared of technology; I’m scared of humans. I love technology. Its given me access to more knowledge and more knowledgeable people than I could have ever imagined.

But scared of Facebook? No. I’m scared of the people writing the algorithms & software and I am scared of the people who are either not self-aware enough, or have the critical thinking skills, to fight back against the humans writing the algorithms (I foresee this as an ongoing conflict).

“Knowledge, in principle at least, is infinitely expandable.”

Toffler 1991

The internet has enabled the quirky to unite globally. What may have been one or two people in a vicinity, loners in their particular focus in Life and thinking and likes/dislikes, have become clubs and groups and a swarming team of fish swimming in their own direction enjoying the fruits of the sea of information and things available online. The difficulty is that there are other humans crafting currents within that sea so that swarms congregate in certain areas and do certain things (and think certain things). Humans manipulate the sea so that the fish can be captured (by business) or driven to certain places (for business). The truth is that many of us either drown in the violent sea of information or get lost following currents of information.

It would be an understatement to say that technology has affected society. That said. I don’t believe it is all bad, I do not support the dystopian view of the effect of technology on people & society and actually a proponent of Grady Booch’s point of view: “New tech spawns new anxieties, but we don’t need to be afraid an all-powerful, unfeeling AI.”

I, similar to Grady, tend to focus on how artificial intelligence will enhance human life. This is not to suggest that technology has not contributed to economic inequality, social issues and some aspects of division. But I do not believe we are at the end game with technology, but rather the middle game.

The relationship between technology and society is not simple, nor complicated (it’s about amplification and access), but it is complex. Its complex not because technology is difficult understand, but rather because people are involved. Software is designed with theory in mind and those theories go beyond simple economics or even politics but directly impact the type of society, social change and civilization, we seek to have. These theories, embedded in things that influence/manipulate us, impacts how we view, and do, work as well as even our lives.

Now. Now that I have stated this is about people, I will now suggest that morality, ethics, and empathy need technology. The destiny of all those things are dependent upon technology. If that is so then I imagine I could say society’s fate resides in the hands of technology. That may seem backwards in that all of these things reside in humans, not technology. Well. They do but technology will either flatten, amplify or even extend the reach of all. I am certainly not suggesting that technology will guarantee morality or ethical behavior, but I would suggest improving technology increases the likelihood that morality and ethical behavior becomes more pervasive (expansive).

While morality and virtue are developed over time <via repeated decisions to choose what is right and to forego what is wrong> this means technology, currently crafted to manipulate us, can also be crafted to engage our ethical senses. Theoretically this means lots of small decisions being directed in the present to a longer term greater good for society.

** note: I believe it was Daniel Schmachtenberger who suggested ethical behavior was better in smaller tribes because it was more difficult to be unethical (transparency). This would suggest for this idea to be successful, technology engaging ethical senses, that there would need to be some transparency so that people couldn’t ‘game the ethical decision’ to their benefit rather than the collective good.

All That said.

Technology, in and of itself, is nothing. Without people, without people generating content, it is a passive tool regenerating itself to its own purposes. Yet. Once humans become involved technology begins to amplify – amplify divides, fragments, groups and tribes. It is within the fragmentation aspect in which we begin to pause on the benefits of technology with regard to society. The fragmentation, the phrasing of ideas, ideologies, values, norms and actual ideological commitments just begin to blur the greater truths associated with each. Fragments get emphasized to strengthen pieces of views all the while blurring larger issues.

In addition.

Technology has a nasty habit of increasing wealth inequality. It’s impact is additive to lower income gains and multiplicative to higher income gains. As technology improves “better” is not equally distributed. And just to return to morality and ethics for a moment. I would suggest that as technology improves (as improvement is judged in the present) there is a reverse distribution than wealth. What I mean by that is as technology improves low income morality & ethics get better in a multiplicative way while high income morality is additive. In other words, those with less wealth and less money own the higher moral ground while those with the money (and inevitably the power) reside in a lower moral ground.

That juxtaposition of things creates stress to a societal structure.

I am not suggesting that technology should be the tool which corrects inequities, but it would be foolish of us to ignore the fact technology amplifies both good and bad and is a tool which can affect inequities.

It was McLuhan who said, “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Once I again I point out without people technology is basically nothing – it needs designing, data, content, input, behaviors, attitudes, actions and, yes, even decisions to curate. 

I find it interesting that as we move into discussion on a world of technology, society and progress of civilization there are two loud voices in this discussion – one dead and one alive. Alvin Toffler and Daniel Schmachtenberger. I find them both equally interesting because they both explore the issues civilization is currently facing due to technology. Toffler discussed this from a speculative frame of reference while Schmachtenberger is discussing it from an experiential frame of reference.

** note: I wish they could have had a podcast together discussing this topic

It was Toffler, in 1981, who stated that technology will create a new civilization that “challenges all our old assumptions” by inspiring, or dictating, a painful process of social change. Toffler suggested civilization has its own atmospheres:

1. 1. Techno-sphere: an energy base -production system -distribution system

   2. Socio-sphere: inter-related social institutions

   3. Info-sphere: channels of communication

   4. Power-sphere: relationships with outside world -exploitative, symbiotic, militant, or pacific

   5. Super ideology: powerful cultural assumptions that structure its view of reality and justify its operation

As technology squeezes each of these layers there is an inevitably stress on the power, and distribution, of knowledge.

“the coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge not just consumption. Power seekers’ will use this struggle to further their power ambitions. While mass could have been seen as sweeping generalized manipulation of attitudes and beliefs technology is using fragmentation to have those with power divide and conquer.”

** note: power, and power dynamics, and the power of conserving institutions, is a topic in and of itself.

Knowledge, therefore, is the fuel for change, whereas technology is its engine creating the liminal space within which the social conflict occurs – people shocked by what they see as destruction of everything they know (and actively attempting to consolidate past fragments they see value in) versus people embracing positive change and empowerment thru the fragmentation. I say this because it is not a conflict of technology or enabled by technology, but rather of people – one within people’s minds and how they think. This means knowledge and technology are the two powerful ‘tools’ in facilitating changes in society.

This is where it gets tricky. Information should be intrinsically beneficial to society and, yet a fragmented flow of information and communication results in increased knowledge AND fragmentation.

Technology plays a role in where we go from here, but first, people need to think about the future they desire which, typically, rests on the most fundamental assumptions we make about reality. In the present competitive view of the world, we often think that the most capable are those who are the most competitive, and accordingly that competition creates and secures long-term viability. On a societal level, we have essentially adopted a zero-sum dynamic behind most of the things we do. This separates everything, and everyone, into a binary 0/1, yes/no, good/bad, this way/that way design world (software, algorithms, business individuals and even countries).

This current design belief has only made the divide between winners and losers constantly grow. Polarization leads to radicalization (of ideas, opinions, behavior) and, well, society does not benefit.

We do need technological advances, but our humanity and society must develop at the same speed as technology develops. As our technological ability to impact the world is radically scaling up, our human ethical choices as to how to implement that power must scale up accordingly. But the present reality is that our humanity is lagging our technology.

“The key dynamic is to move forward towards a more profound experience of ethics, and also aesthetics, in a way that increases our collective capacity to connect and solve the common problems on the existential level that we face.”

Tom Atlee

In the end.

As usual, the future will be defined by humans, not technology or any innovations.

Technology design needs to embrace less destructive manipulation and more ‘enlightenment.

People need to design algorithms not based on brain exploitation to the detriment of people (and society).

People need to make content not based on brain chemistry exploitation to the detriment of our whole society.

People need to be educated to become more effective at critical thinking and embrace a more thoughtful worldview.

People. We can keep talking about technology as if it were a person, but it is absurd to do so. It is not a person and, in fact, the problem I not technology, it is people. The future of society, let alone everything I imagine, resides in the minds and actions of humans and the quicker we accept that the quicker we begin taking steps to shape a future we like.