=================

… discovered a more complex problem. Most customers weren’t fed up with any one phone call, field visit, or other individual service interaction—in fact, most customers didn’t much care about those singular touchpoint events.  What was driving them out the door was something the company wasn’t examining or managing—the customers’ cumulative experience across multiple touchpoints, multiple channels, and over time.

Take new-customer onboarding, for example, a journey that spanned about three months and involved an average of nine phone calls, a home visit from a technician, and numerous web and mail interactions. At each touchpoint, the interaction had at least a 90 percent chance of going well. But average customer satisfaction fell almost 40 percent over the course of the entire journey. The touchpoints weren’t broken—but the onboarding process as a whole was.”

McKinsey: Touchpoints to Journey

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“Of course, disinformation,” Quinn said. “I can do that. I’ll leave out critical events, then I’ll put in false information and twist everything that has happened around into a vague, shadowy history that obscures what really took place.”

Terry Goodkind

=====================

So. I pick up McKinsey white papers on occasion because, while bloated diatribes, they are typically frickin’ smart. My opening quote on the ‘touchpoint journey’ is from McKinsey.

Now. In the marketing & communications world touchpoint marketing has been around for decades by one name or another.  But recently I had to discuss it and ended up talking about it in a slightly different way than I have in the past. I had scribbled down “tactical connection engineers.”

What made me sit back on this a little was this applies to a communications professional as well as everyday schmucks like you & I <who take in communications & messages>.

Communications professionals as tactical connection engineers.

Communications people have had a logistical organizational problem with an effective touchpoint connection plan for years. We hire specialists and then ask them to drill down in their specialty to insure ‘the most effective plan of action within that touchpoint silo.’ This translates into a couple of things, assuming they do their job well,

<a> it will focus so much on the target, the consumer, in its intent to herd and persuade & ‘connect’ that it can very easily slip away from the business selling the shit, and

<b> while today’s business world vociferously balks at ‘purchase funnels’ the truth is that if you have a specialist within some touchpoint segment they may show you some hurricane like visual to show that in the swirl of a connection they herd someone into a ‘meaningful relationship’ stage … uhm … that’s a funnel.

In addition. I would suggest that with companies going to specialized partners and silos what could be construed as a ‘customer focus’ may actually exacerbate the problem as everyone goes running toward their own view of customers and journeys and, maybe worse, prioritizing shit on the journey based on their own budgetary limitations. These silos aren’t really customer focused people nor are they ‘strategic thinkers’, they are actually more likely to be tactical connection engineers.

Everyday schmucks as tactical connection engineers.

Let me explain this one a little because I think it would behoove communications professionals to think about us everyday schmucks like this more often. We tactically engineer our input. We do his to engineer the productivity in our life. Sometimes it may be fr pleasure but the majority of the time we are engineering on Life efficacy <efficient & effective>. I say this because while communications talk ad nausea about a non stop ever changing world they tend t view us everyday schmucks in some stagnant way. They don’t view us as “tactical connection engineers’ but rather simply prey for their own tactical connection engineering. Stupid.  We are tactically engineering our own connectivity on a daily basis dependent upon the context of the day, hour, moment.

Ponder that a second all you “highest order of personalization” advocates. Your head will explode if you ponder too long.

All that said.

While I am not a huge specialized fan, in a specialized world I would argue that holding the center is the most important thing — holding the center on functional offering, brand/company character lens and vision <let’s call that the company distinctness>. Holding the center on the grander strategy & the greater good <brand value> beyond the simple transactional connection objective. It insures whoever is doing whatever will at least be aligned on what really matters – what you are selling and who is selling it. It also insures the intense focus on connection doesn’t inherently strip away the substantive shit that makes up the greater value in the brand.

I cannot tell you how many times I have pulled the following lines from “The Second Coming” by Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Siloes, or multiple partners, are the falcons. You need to make sure you have a falconer who can be heard <assuming you have a hierarchy type organization>. That means your tactical connection engineers need a head engineer <for ALL tactical engineers regardless of department or expertise>.

I have been asked a zillion times by my business owner friends I always tell them the same thing … do not hire multiple partners unless:

<a> you choose one as the one to hold the centre for you, or,

<b> you are strong enough to hold the centre yourself – and on b. I am honest enough to tell them that most companies/clients don’t really have that expertise to do that because it is far too easy to follow the next shiny object.

That is my #1 argument for finding one partner and using them well.

Now. Back to the risk in tactical connection management. Of course, it’s necessary to provide customers with what they say is important.  However, research consistently shows that it’s much more valuable to align customer experience investments to those elements shown to drive emotional connection, thus maximizing ROI while minimizing risk. For example, one research study showed customer-experience strategies that maximized emotional connection resulted in customers who are six times more likely to consolidate assets with the firm than customers who are highly satisfied, but not emotionally connected.

In the search for profitable organic growth, more and more companies are investing in the technological aspects of optimizing the end-to-end customer experience <each aspect of how customers interact with the company’s brand, products, promotions, and service offerings, on and offline>. They seek to optimize each touchpoint assuming by doing so they will optimize the entire ‘journey.’ They are wrong, in addition, most of these same companies lack a strategic objective for all the pieces & parts in the whole. This matters because without the strategy you gain efficiency (theoretically), but you lose the opportunity to increase customer value. This matters because without the strategy the tactical connection engineers just become the most efficient tactical engineers, not necessarily the most effective for the company.

Look.

I do think tactical connection engineers will also need to be better data interpreters <decoders>. Why? Well. data people are finally realizing to maximize customer value it isn’t about just customer satisfaction but also an emotional tier in which you appeal to some fundamental motivations and emotional motivators  <desire to feel a sense of belonging, to succeed in life, or to feel secure for details>. HBR has a nice article on this: “The New Science of Customer Emotions”).

In the end.

Touchpoint architecture is a good basic principled way of viewing things. Some people may argue against that, but it’s a framework, not a formula. I will say the larger issue is not the system itself but rather how the system is used, hence, my suggestion to have “tactical connection engineers.” Ponder.

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Gathering:

 accumulate, amass, assemble, bulk (up), collect, concentrate, congregate, constellate, corral, garner, group, lump, pick up, round up, ball, batch, bunch, cluster, huddle, heap, pile, stack, flock, herd, hive, pack, press, swarm, throng, combine, connect, join, link, merge, pool, unite

=====

Several years ago, in a piece called “thinking, decision making and leadership” I wrote this:

• Which leads me to declustering. Leaders like to cluster decisions and business like to cluster things. All are typically done because everyone believes it is more efficient and, possibly, more effective. Clustering is the unspoken organizational corrosive barnacle on the progress ship. It is true business, and clusters, arc toward replication. If a leader spots a ‘decisionmaker’ inevitably they will guide more decisions to that person simply. Decisions then cluster thereby making the overall – most clusters – desire to be involved in decisions to decluster. Yeah. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. By default, you’ve once again parsed out responsibility, not collaborative sensemaking, and created a different type of hierarchy. I am not suggesting some clusters aren’t better at making decisions than others. What I am suggesting is leaders’ natural instinct is NOT to spread sensemaking and thinking, but isolate so when convinced to distribute and spread, no matter how effective overall it may be, inevitably they will redistribute to a few – that’s the arc. Just ponder.

Several years ago I also wrote: “the natural arc of every business is to mediocrity.”

The two are related.

Yeah. I am saying clustering leads to mediocrity. That said, oddly, business tends to like clustering, or, they do not discourage clustering. Let me be clear. Given an opportunity to be excellent, a business will always choose the path to mediocrity. Yes. Always. What I mean by that is in every situation – customer service, capital investment, ideation, innovation, creativity, planning, strategy, implementation – given an opportunity to choose a Spinal Tap 11 choice, a business will always choose a 9 or below choice. And from there on out that ‘plus number’ begins diminishing bit by bit. And while I imagine I could point to a variety of reasons, let me focus on clustering as the culprit.

As soon as an “11” opportunity is identified, business will circle the wagons around some consensus data, group view, collective wisdom, whatever, which never raises the 11 to a 12, it only brings it down (usually significantly).

That’s clustering.

To be clear. Mediocrity is fairly equal opportunity employer. Data pools, cliques, opinions, specialists, likeminded clusters, all circle the wagons and transactional thinking actually (a) makes teams exclusive and (b) makes value finite and, yet, encourages a belief in exceptionalism (but a reality of mediocrity). From the ‘rational business’ perspective businesses like ‘clusters’ because they appear to be patterns (or some version of mass coherency) which they immediately associate efficiency and scale to. They don’t really care if the cluster benefits lose degrees of efficiency from that point on – they’ll flog the cluster until it is dead of anything good (or true value creating). Maybe worse is that over time clusters become ‘self-sealing belief’ parts within an entire system basically creating limits to tapping into the larger potential of the entire organization. That doesn’t mean they don’t offer value, its just that the value has limits and tends to stratify which makes them a bit more difficult to mesh with other components of the system. Clusters DO produce good things, but while those things seem good at scaling, it is not clear that they are necessarily good at innovation or anything ‘new’. Or another way to put it: clusters may might be good at exploiting (that is repeating a known winning pattern), but are less good at exploring (that is figuring out what needs to be done).

The corollary to that last sentence is clustering limits potential.

Business loves to cluster skills, but clusters tend to be herded into small clusters of micro skills in their macro skill puzzle. In this excellent video with Alain de Botton he points out that clusters are fragmentary in skills and interests and, yet, we are told what we are not good at, what we should focus on and then wealth is rewarded to that focus. In other words, we are told to cluster around a specific thing we may like or be good at and ignore (or relegate as a ‘hobby’) other skills and interests.

This has consequences beyond skills. The ways clusters interpret things do not translate neatly into larger decision trees. In addition. Decisions are not discrete, they are connected. A cluster may get parts of ‘now’ right, but the other parts may gather momentum or strength in the fact they were chosen as inconsequential in that ‘now’. In a cluster’s confidence lies its biggest risk. The truth is that, particularly in business, human expertise is usually tied to knowing what to look for – the nuances within hard data/information. Clusters become increasingly certain and blind to ‘new nuance.’ The repercussions to this is then a cluster is more likely elect to choose solutions or actions inconsistent with the problem/situation at hand but consistent with their view. That inconsistency can be in nuance or it can avoid some significant aspects, regardless, the consequences are often the same as the future unfolds from what was perceived as effective framing, but less-than-effective choice making. You have to decluster things. consciously. consistently, to optimize decisionmaking.

Which leads me to point out growth tends to polarize itself.

Cluster-driven growth is often spectacularly unprofitable. Business chases success/growth. Its inherent reaction to success is to milk that success until it is dry (albeit many businesses refuse to let go of even dry growth paths). Business uses math, numbers, relentlessly to pursue this objective. Reminder. It was Bernoulli who stated “mathematics alone does not capture a situation.” This is also true of a graph/dashboard. They simply inform or become a guide to a grander discussion of what exists and how to make sense of something, yet, business people cluster around dashboards and cluster energy/focus based on them.

“In a world glutted with information, the capacity to ignore selectively becomes ever more valuable … a system that is to control its environment successfully must adapt by constructing models that allow it to decide what information to get and how to act on it.”

Seth Lloyd, MIT

Business loves numbers. Which leads me to remind everyone one of businesses/s biggest lies is “the numbers never lie.” Numbers lie all the time. Even beyond how people torture numbers until they say what is wanted, numbers create clusters. Yeah. As soon as you find a number you like it becomes a magnet for other numbers, resources, energy, focus, etc. What this means is business relentlessly clusters resources against a diminishing growth opportunity. Invariably ROI can never really improve, in a meaningful way, but intrepid business people will always find ways to suggest things are good and getting better. Once again, it never hits 11 and is only getting closer and closer to 1. The only way to get off that slippery slope of lessening growth is, well, declustering.

Which leads me to power.

The issue occurs with, well, power. Those in power like evenness and replication and they view the only way to keep balance is to enforce it. They believe that no one else understands how to balance or maybe can even see the value of balance. They see themselves as being in the middle doing what’s best – for their sake – and they use ‘clusters’ as hammers. They cloak their hammers in ‘safety’, i.e., we keep clusters safe and the business safe. This gets tricky because most people clusters have an unhealthy trust in in larger systems with regard to what is beneficial TO the cluster which makes them less likely to realize when they (the cluster) has made a mistake AND less likely to realize when the larger system truly has something to offer that is beneficial to the progress/development of the cluster. All that said. Power clusters. Even though an individual in power is either (a) obliviously overconfident or (2) constantly paranoid, most individuals in power recognize they need other power players to dominate others. So whether it be by salary/$, titles, perceived meritocracy, education, or even psychotic authoritarianism, people will cluster for power – in implementing as well as in holding onto. Obviously, businesses should actively decluster power as much as possible to attain full potential.

“It’s a game of nanoseconds. Judgement calls have to slide through impossibly narrow doorways.”

Carolyn Barclay

Which leads me to data, technology and humans.

I have written a number of times about how technology can be used to decluster. In my unpublished book I even dedicate a chapter to how algorithms and technology can be used in a business infrastructure to nudge declustering to the benefit of sensemaking and gaining knowledge. That said. Technology amplifies everything – strengths & vulnerabilities – all of which stress the boundaries of any system. The corollary to this is the more you depend on technology the more likely a catastrophic even will occur (resolves little problems hiding the lurking catastrophe inside) because technology attacks/addresses things systematically while systems shape themselves organically (creating dissonance at some point). What that last mumbo jumbo sentence really means is that technology clusters shit by amplifying what people like and or are interested in. Sure. Machines and technology will often suggest potential actions and we may calibrate different paths with probabilities of success. The problem is that everyone will have the same input and if everyone does exactly what the input suggests everyone will, well, cluster.

Data and technology are inputs, but it is experience, wisdom, patience, and emotional fortitude that are the key ingredients when added to the inputs that result in differing results. And this is where clustering gets, well, fucked. Yeah. I just said clusterfuck. If people are clustered, they apply the same experience, wisdom, emotion against the same clustered data and technology, hence, the clusterfuck.

Experts always suggest the key to an algorithmic future is to be sure you understand what an algorithm is optimized for. I believe this is too simplistic.

“We know from biology that relentlessly preventing small problems can increase the risk of future big problems.”

Seth Blumsack

 

Not only are algorithms typically built to head off problems immediately (eliminate small problems), but how they get advice, information, determines how they behave. This has some very practical consequences in that, generally speaking, is more likely to present only catastrophic complex problems to the attention of clusters. Basically it ignores small problems/issues. Well. Anyone remember: “its never the elephants that kill you, it’s always the ants”? We design our systems, process and even encourage clusters, to focus on building elephants. We even build algorithms with that in mind. Clusters are elephants.

Which leads me to end with cluster narratives.

I don’t really know if clusters of people, or data, create narratives or if narratives encourage clusters. What I do know is a good story told well gets repeated over and over again creating a myth – and people cluster around myths. Generally speaking, myths aren’t very good for business. Myths get in the way of reality and are stubbornly resilient against alternative narratives (learning). So, yeah, I am suggesting declustering narratives (which is actually deconstructing narratives). This is a semi-important point as I circle back to an opening point: the arc of business is toward mediocrity. I cannot remember one business narrative myth that extols mediocrity, yet, by following most business narratives you are simply following the lure of mediocrity. Quite the paradox. It kind of feels like the only way out of that paradox is, well, declustering. Ponder.

——–

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

Emily Dickinson

———

Life is startling.

Well.

That is if you let it be.

So often we spend time comparing ourselves to others, comparing our lives to others, comparing what we have versus others and comparing where we are, uhm, versus others.

Others, others, others.

Life isn’t a race nor is a competition.

It is a journey for fuck’s sake.

———

“Stop comparing where you’re at with where everyone else is. It doesn’t move you farther ahead, improve your situation, or help you find peace. It just feeds your shame, fuels your feelings of inadequacy, and ultimately, it keeps you stuck. The reality is there is no one correct path in life. Everyone has their own unique journey. A path that’s right for someone else won’t necessarily be a path that’s right for you. And that’s okay. Your journey isn’t right or wrong, or good or bad. It’s just different. Your life isn’t meant to look like anyone else’s because you aren’t like anyone else. You’re a person all your own with a unique set of goals, obstacles, dreams, and needs. So stop comparing, and start living. You may not have ended up where you intended to go. But trust, for once, that you have ended up where you needed to be. Trust that you are in the right place at the right time. Trust that your life is enough. Trust that you are enough.”

Daniell Koepke

———

Life can be a shitload of fun if you enjoy it. If you open your eyes to what is around you and not comparing yourself to what is around you.

Yes.

I can guarantee on the journey:

• You will break down <on occasion>
• You will get caught in a downpour <so strong you cannot see an inch in front of your face> at some point
• There will be nights so dark you will feel alone
• You will get lost
• You will have an accident
• <add in any unfortunate mishap you can think of>

But.

You will drive <you do actually get to steer you know>.

You will experience shit.

You will laugh & cry & be disappointed & be delighted.

You will be startled by how good, and interesting, and vivid people and life can be if you actually look around.

——–

“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

Alain de Botton

——

Aw. I don’t know. Maybe I have a whacked view on what and how Life is and should be.

All I really know is that you may think you know what success is, what happiness is, what failure is, what sadness is, and, yet, life will startle you if you pay attention. In fact. If you pay attention to living, you may have time for little else. Ponder.

===

“It’s not what you actually do in life that you regret just the opportunities that pass you by. It’s even in what you choose to do the opportunities you do not let pass by. In those moments it is sometimes only that you are not courageous or brave but rather you have simply exchanged one fear for another. Afraid for what we were about to do and how you will do versus the fear of what we might not do.”

Craig Johnson

===

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

Joseph Campbell

————-

Polycrisis in now the word of the moment. But here’s the thing. I would argue polycrisis is not a reflection of the present, but rather a culmination of compounding fears over the past decade. Let’s call it the price demanded by our continual fear. Just think back on every year since about 2014 and it has been a ‘year of fear.’ And with that reflection it is not difficult to sit back and think “that much fear mongering is just not sustainable.”  Its not. And it shapes how one views the present in some incredibly unhealthy ways as in “we are in a poloycrisis.”

Its nuts (but understandable after years of fear).

By any objective measure the current US administration is one of the most boringly competent administrations in US history. Yet, in certain media ecosystems one could feel like the US is simply careening from one crisis to another. And one, in that case, would rightfully feel buffeted by anger and fear and accept the polycrisis narrative. That said. We have had our mental etch-a-sketches shaken so often we have lost the plot. Terrorist attacks become potential wars, Ebola made millions of people work themselves into a panic over a disease that has claimed the lives of fewer Americans that year than some random exploding air bag, a bank failing because of poor management becomes potential financial crisis (there is not one), higher inflation gets conflated with a failing economy (the economy is in really good shape), Isis (which really was the JV team) was never an existential threat to not only the US but no one ever really envisioned an ISIS flag over a country let alone embassies around the world, China is taking over the world one Tiktok video at a time (they aren’t), and every conspiracy has moved from possible to probable. The United States has lost its collective mind with fear of shadows. I am not suggesting some things do not deserve concern and some attention, but we seem to be addicted to fearing something if not anything.

This fear is exacerbated by the perceived unpredictability of things (which are actually a small minority of things but the fearmongers liked to heighten the “exogenous” events as indications of typical and not exceptions). To be clear. Exogenous events are events impossible to predict. That said. Most events are unpredictable and, yet, there is no lack of people predicting shit.

Its bullshit. Everyone who ‘predicted’ either:

• <a> has a resume filled with predictions that never came to fruition therefore their one successful prediction is an anomaly, or
• <b> their ‘prediction’ or hindsight brilliance has some other prediction attached to it <a consequence> which is false.

The people who claim to predict Armageddon are asshats who thrive on feeding the perceptions of polycrisis. The truth is the world is strewn with exogenous events which are simply an emergent property of a dynamic system, i.e., they will naturally pop up on occasion. But the world is also strewn with assholes with access to media <who loves to put these assholes onscreen> who love to treat exogenous events as rational predictable events <and therefore someone can be blamed>. And the world is strewn with everyday schmucks <people> who love to believe exogenous events are anything but exogenous. And, as a consequence, the world is strewn with everyday people fearing what is predicted as well as what is not predicted. Yeah. We are in polycrisis mindset now.

Regardless. All that really matters is that things that are impossible to predict create fear among normal everyday people. We like to think the world is predictable <despite the fact everyone knows that their own lives include a strong thread of unpredictability> and get absurdly indignant when uncovering rational reasons <something to blame> for seemingly irrational events.

Which leads me to what someone wrote somewhere about news:

…. a group of kids playing soccer: there is no strategy, just a raw, run, get it response. All running after all of those balls, irrespective of origin, and just trying to shoot.

 Plays happen in bursts, with no resolution.

But we, the people, jump into this game almost happily. It is a weird continuous doom loop of predictable behavior fueled by dubious ‘unpredictable’ events, or, less-than-consequential random events that the system naturally spits out on occasion. This culminates into a confluence of stagnancy, despite the fact it feels like things working at the speed of light, within a perception of increased complex world (its not really any more than before), perception of lack of control (control has always been a fallacy) and a perception of, well, polycrisis.

In this doom-loop reality we are trapped in a fear-driven world of inertia convinced things are moving too fast. That said. It seems like the news network’s, and politician’s, purpose is to let you know that things are moving too fast to manage and something is on fire (some event) and that we need to burn someone at the stake for starting the fire (but there was no arsonist, it was just lightning, i.e., the system just creates these things on occasion). Pick your ‘crisis du jour,’ immigration, crime, gun violence, domestic terrorism, moral decay, sharia law, urban issues of crime/homelessness/lack of safety, China/Russia/Iran/North Korea/some socialist country, the list is almost endless and is certainly recyclable. What I mean by ‘recyclable’ is that it is a constant churn of choices simply to make stomachs churn with constant fear of something. And it is within that constant churn that polycrisis thrives. None of these things are really a crisis, just concerns that need appropriate attention, but they create a perception of ongoing polycrisis.

I would like to blame media. I would like to blame politicians. But. It is us: the people.

Sure.  The media and politicians are surely bound to have a role in exaggerating common misperceptions, but we can’t lay the blame entirely with the media; it’s a much broader, attitudinal ‘people’ global issue. The issue is us, the people, and how we remember information, how vivid demonstrations/metaphors are retained in our heads, regardless of whether they are describing something that is an exception rather than the rule.

We also suffer from what psychologists call ‘emotional innumeracy.’ This is where we focus more on what is worrying us more than trying to get the right answers, i.e., concern leading to our misperceptions as much as our misperceptions creating our concern.

a Commenter on online Ignorance article:

We may be ignorant on proportions and statistics but we know and can trust what our eyes see

Example we don’t have to be told immigration is out of control and all the rest of it

This comment reflects how most people respond to facts & information and proves the point I am making. People cannot trust what they see with their own eyes because they filter what they see through what they think. For example, immigration is not out of control and they actually don’t trust images that support that only the images that their “eyes see”.

Look. There are two accepted approaches in the quest for knowledge – the deductive and the inductive.

The danger of inductive method is that we can be led to a false conclusion even if we begin with the correct assumptions. It actually makes more sense to deduce — challenge and modify any assumption repeatedly until you find truth. Unfortunately in everyday life most people do the opposite — develop a set of rules based on personal experience <and beliefs> and then apply them to other experiences.

In addition. We tend to view events, even global events in which we have no set of experiences nor have any dimensionalized real perspective, through rules of our own personal experience. Let’s add in an uncomfortable truth that most times we don’t care unless we believe it will affect us.

Let’s go back into the way back machine as an example. In August 2014 ISIS became a household word striking fear into Americans that with their long reach global organization they would terrorize America.

Why? Despite the fact Isis gained a foothold in January the world wasn’t interested until they beheaded an American journalist in August. All the while ISIS went ahead killing other Muslims.

Ultimately this is about personalized “micro” fear which leads to a sense of macro crisis. Because in our fear we want to assess blame or seek to have someone destroy what we do not understand. And here we are in 2023 with a laundry list of fears, crisis and things to destroy. In other words, a polycrisis.

Let’s be clear. While USA has issues, 99% of the 340million people wake up, are relatively healthy, a shitload of them go to work , are productive, interact with people around them in a courteous way, go home a little tired but to a home they are relatively happy with, talk with some friends and, in general, have not much to fear. And, yet, we are hounded by a sense of fear and polycrisis.

Which leads me to when can we get out of this doom loop.

I believe we are getting closer to a time of reckoning. We are getting exhausted and getting a bit closer to recognizing the fears we have had over all these years, well, never came to anything. I believe it’s actually the moment where more people stop acting like ignorant scaredy cats and focus more on rational thinking than emotional thinking and ideological tribes.

I am not suggesting it will happen easily because sticking to your personal attitudes & beliefs is better than uncertainty and compromise. And It certainly has become easier and easier for a person to find some media outlet <television, radio, or Internet> they agree with. And it is a natural human tendency to find ‘your people’ <people who share the same philosophical view>.

And, yes, we are fairly simple as people in what we want and like:

• want to feel a sense of certainty on whether something’s right or wrong, and
• tend to follow or bond with those who agree with our ideas, and
• through confirmation bias, ignore or attack things that contradict our personal beliefs <or experiences>.

These are normal human reactions. We all do it.

In addition. When overwhelmed in a ‘polycrisis world’ we naturally tap into emotions and emotional responses faster than intellectual ones.  And traditionally once we let emotions take total control we lose the ability to think rationally. But I think in a time of reckoning, even in the face of loudmouthed predictors of fear & doom, people are so emotionally exhausted that the ‘time of rational’ is nearing us.

In the time of reckoning I believe a lot of people will just shut out the loud asshats as we seek out rational explanations and rational narratives and rational solutions for the future.

Which leads me to my finishing thought and my message to people:

“Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems.”

• Nothing is ever as good as it seems.

This may sound pessimistic and while there are certainly lots of good things in life & in the world it’s important to remember that if something seems too good to be true; it usually is.

This is the insidious side of fear. Fear that it will not stay ‘good.’ and constantly seeking out things & people to blame for it ‘not being as good as it used to be.’

Stop. Just fucking stop it. It most likely wasn’t as good as you thought it was <particularly because when we look at things in the rear view mirror they always seem to look better than they really were>.  We shouldn’t be dictated by a fear of ‘losing good.’ Just be careful and maintain some perspective.

• Nothing is ever as bad as it seems

When it seems bad it is incredibly easy to exaggerate the severity of the situation <in our own perceptions as well as by asshats trying to influence our thinking>. Most times it is not as bad as it seems and it will not become as bad as you imagine.  Sure. There are ‘we are in deep shit’ moments and events. But most of the time it is just not as serious as we think. And most times it will not have as serious repercussions as you imagine.

Both of these are about perspective. Fear makes us lose perspective.  Lose the fear; gain perspective.

Look. 2014 thru the present was not as bad as we feared. In fact. Most of what we feared never happened.

What a waste of energy.

And who is to blame?

Us. The people. No one else.

Not the government. Not the media. Not a president. Not some incompetent greedy business leader.

Not anyone but us. The people.

Fear can only happen if we allow it to happen.

I believe it is a time for rational words, thinking and thoughts stepped to the forefront. I know a shitload of people will shove this up my ass – “rational doesn’t get people excited” or “emotional engages.” You know what? Context matters. For a decade we have constantly been told to fear something. We have been convinced the world is just an onslaught of crises and we are stuck in a polycrisis world. Shake the fucking etch a sketch. Snip the doom loop. Let’s get some shit done. I believe if we share some rational thinking in an engaging way, I am willing to bet a lot of money a lot of people are in the market for something other than fear. And, for god’s sake, can we stop talking about a polycrisis.

Ponder.

===

“All things are hidden in their opposites – gain in loss, gifts in refusal, honour in humiliation, wealth in poverty, strength in weakness … life in death, victory in defeat, power in powerlessness, and so on. Therefore, if a man wish to find, let him be content to lose.”

Mulay Al ‘Arabi Ad-Drqawi

===

“The most dangerous creation in the world, in any society, is the man with nothing to lose. “

Al Freeman Jr.

“the second most dangerous creation in the world, in any society, is the man who feels like he is going to lose what he has.”

Me

===

There are gobs of articles about how much people strive to avoid loss even incorporating an aversion to loss into decision making. But I also opened with a piece of research to point out this isn’t really true, scientifically, to make a point that we create loss avoidance narratives in some unhealthy ways.
Which leads me to social proof. In today’s I am leaning more into identity rather than any real “win versus loss” decision. In other words, I am discussing the wacky world of expectations and the absurd levels people go through to maintain wealth status. Yeah. I am discussing money and wealthy people. Dealing with the wealthy people can often be like dealing with paranoid schizophrenics. On one aspect they flaunt their wealth with absurd confidence and on another aspect they are constantly looking over their shoulder for someone or something that will take it all away. They end up with all this money, but it’s almost as if as soon as they’ve got it, they start worrying about losing it. Or somebody taking it away from them. And it scares the shit out of them (despite their confident façade). It’s almost like even though they act like they are deserving of their status, they don’t really think they would get THIS high so once they do achieve such great heights all they start thinking about is what the fall would be like. For them that feeling is like a background program running on your computer that never stops running and constantly drains the battery even when the computer is not in use. It reminds me of something that Gabriel Garcia Marquez said: “we all have public lives, and private lives, and secret lives.” True or not, all wealthy people have a secret life. That said. I believe what most wealthy people are scared shitless about is that their own wealth demise, which they seem to constantly be looking for, will come out of their secret lives. The weird thing is that their obsessive confidence and status identity stances almost encourage everyone to think the wealth bluster is covering up some secret. Anyway. Inevitably the fear of loss is both defining and a consuming thing.

Which leads me to bitterness.

Most of the wealthy people I have glanced off of have a thread of bitterness and cynicism about the world despite the fact they are not only living the good life they are clearly living life better than the majority of people. They struggle to envision a happy ending. Within that thought, tucked somewhere below the fear of losing, is a simmering blend of outrage and hurt at the state of the world relentlessly pursuing their wealth. At that point you can feel a bit of bitterness and sadness, a sense of ill fate lodged in these people. In an interesting twist of irony, they have simultaneously accepted the ‘die had been cast’ with regard to their success and feel like the die are constantly being rigged against them by others seeking to ‘win away’ their cast in life.

Which leads me to the consequences of fear of losing.

Wealth often translates into a fundamental belief in some fundamental rights – which are typically grounded in some extreme ‘self ownership’ ideals. This also means a constant belief that everyone is always trying to take their money and give it to someone else. This includes the government, but cascades down to the ‘lazy’, welfare queen, socialism grabbers.

In their minds they see the ‘grabbers’ espousing the marketplace is unfair while they see the marketplace as fair with winners who deserve all the winnings and losers who deserve all of their losing. That said. While I don’t believe that the world, nor the marketplace, is fair, the wealthy people HAVE to believe it is fair to attach to their fear of losing something. Why? Because then the only way they lose is by being a victim not of their own circumstances, but of others efforts. This begets a winner-take-all competitiveness and within that concept resides a constant fear of losing. This gets a bit worse. What I mean by that is the nefarious mental jujitsu of “if this, then that” inevitability. If I lose this, what’s next? This means a wealthy person treats every slight loss as a potential precursor to losing it all. To be clear. Most things that start, stop. There is no “slippery slope.” But that gets in the way of the internal narrative so the wealthy walk around increasingly paranoid of losing, well, anything. This constant paranoia makes them douchebags to be around and generally unhelpful in creating positive solutions for a better society. I would be remiss if I didn’t end this with pointing out that losing anything you have gained is painful – to everyone. All I am suggesting is some perspective is lost among the extremely wealthy. Ok. What I am suggesting is that a LOT of perspective is lost among the extremely wealthy. And that lost perspective is unhealthy for not only them, but society. Ponder.

===

“Right now I’ve got just two rules to live by.
Rule one: don’t taunt elephants.
Rule two: don’t stand next to anybody who taunts elephants.”
Howard Tayler

===

Michael Jordan once said, “Larry Bird is the greatest trash talker and mind-game player of all time. He taught me everything I know about getting in folks’ heads.”

===

Yeah. I am gonna get in trouble on this. I am going to weigh in on the John Cena hand gesture women’s basketball Angel Reese Caitlan Clark trash talking issue.

There are several foundational thoughts before I get into the crux of the issue:

1. I have never liked any trashtalking. I have always preferred the stoic athlete. I found JJ Reddick insufferable, John McEnroe boorish and Deion Sanders an unnecessarily showboating asshat. All successful athletes who I just thought did shit they didn’t have to do. The closest I came to accepting trash talking was maybe the Larry Bird/Michael Jordan type. One-on-one in someone’s ear type. No showboating, just kind of their competitive dickedness on the field of combat.
2. I have seen almost all hyper competitive great athletes create a narrative. Me against the world. Some bulletin board comment. Some perceived slight. It doesn’t matter. Many of the most competitive create a story which they can use to deflect some of the other distractions attempting to dent their ‘zone.’ They use their narrative to fuel the performance.
3. I don’t care if it is sports, business, politics, whatever, context matters. A word, or a gesture, is only comparable in context. Without context we have flattened some important things to an almost absurd false comparison.

So lets get to the kerfuffle. Simplistically it has been dumbed down to John Cena’s “you can’t see me” hand gesture and a black player and a white player. Even typing it that was makes me think America is purposefully getting dumber on a daily basis.

Which leads me to the context.

• Iowa’s Caitlin Clark used the “You can’t see Me” move after her sixth 3 against South Carolina
• As the title game came to a close, LSU forward Reese celebrated the win by doing John Cena’s “You Can’t See Me” move on Iowa’s Clark

Haggle if you want, but one used the gesture while they were in a playing zone as a reflection of what they felt at the moment. The other used the gesture to taunt an individual player reflecting what they felt at the moment. The former felt like celebrating skill, the latter felt like a taunt. That said (part 1). I’ll admit. The Angel Reese use didn’t sit right with me (see #1 as a reminder on how I feel about trashtalking). That said (part 2). Is one better than the other? Not for me to judge. But my point is the point. Context matters.

Which leads me to personal narratives. Angel Reese, as did several of her LSU teammates, created a “disrespect” narrative prior to the game. I suggest create because no where I can find Clark disrespecting LSU. In fact, all Iowa had done up to that point was suggest they had the ultimate respect for LSU. That said. A narrative is a narrative and noted earlier, it is an incredibly useful tool for a competitive athlete to get in a ‘zone;’ to compete. It worked. LSU played well and won. But. The trick to narratives is that at some point the narrative becomes not of use. In this case, LSU had the win. And at no point in the game had anyone on Iowa shown any disrespect to LSU. At some point you need to shut the narrative down and accept the moment for what it is. I tend to believe this is also a reflection of maturity. But. That’s just me.

In the end. I don’t really care about two great athletes making some gesture, which used at the right time is kinda fun, or how they trashtalk or do not trashtalk, or even the color of their skin. What I do care about is the idiotic simplistic comparisons which create unhealthy narratives which get distorted in public. It ain’t the color of their skin, it’s the color of the moment, i.e., the context which should be driving the discussion. Ponder.

=========================

“I’m a firm believer in the power of change. 

But there is one thing I’ve learned, and that’s the hardest part of moving forward is not looking back.”

Felicity

=====

Progress is difficult <and easy>. Changing is even more difficult <and easy>. Now. I am not sure if it is more difficult if you discuss this as ‘one’ <an individual> or as a ‘whole’ <groups, countries, society>.

Well, to me, the reason why I kept on throwing in easy is because I believe we look at “difficult” incorrectly.

Maybe difficulty is simply difficulty.

Maybe there are no ‘degrees of difficulty’ when it comes to change.

Maybe there is no ‘little or big’ change.

Maybe it is simply, well, change … no size … no degrees … and it is all difficult.

One size – same degree of difficulty.

In fact. Maybe I should be arguing we diminish, or boost the whole concept of difficulty by trying to find levels within it. And maybe a philosophical young student Tv character <Felicity> simplified change and progress and difficulty into the simplest form — not looking back. In other words, change difficulty is all about the past and not looking back. Therein lies the hardest part or the “difficult” as it were with change – looking forward & just doing and not looking back at what you may, or may not be, leaving behind.

That said.

Individuals or societies, the ones or the manys, always seem to want to go back or look back <in some form or fashion>. It’s funny. We do this even if we know it isn’t the right thing or the best thing. We look at the past holding on to what exists with ragged tenacious claws.

Worse? We sometimes <often> delude ourselves into believing we are proceeding in the most rational way by weighing all of the pros and cons of various alternatives which are actually alternatives usually based on looking backwards <with an eye on a future thought>.

Oddly.

Quite often it really isn’t rational thinking because in the end most often the decision ends up no more than “I liked that more than I liked the other alternative.”

Oh. And that is scary. Because our attitude and perception with regard to the past is wacky.

Wacky not only because, all things created equal, we not only view the past differently than it really was <we tend to gloss over things> but also how we think and feel today <please note this is the first time I have mentioned anything to do with the present> influences how we remember yesterday. Yeah. Whatever we are feeling now and about ‘now’ is a filter in which the past has to sift its way thru. That matters because tomorrow’s anticipated gains and losses inspire today’s decisions and actions.

–          Example one:

After being shown an ad talking about the wonders of Disneyland, including shaking hands with Bugs Bunny, people were asked about their own memories of visiting Disneyland. 16 percent vividly remembered shaking hands with Bugs Bunny, even though there’s no Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. (He’s a Warner Brothers character.)

–          Example two <using some research>:

This is about what is called Time perspective. It’s not the actual real events of the past that most strongly influence our lives. It is actually our attitude toward events in the past matter more than the events themselves <ponder that one for a minute or two>.

Our time perspective — whether we tend to get stuck in the past, live only for the moment, or are enslaved by our ambitions for the future – effect our attitudes and behavior and decisions <lets call this ‘progress’>.

Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo created this idea of time perspective. After a boatload of research over a lot of time <10 years> he concluded our attitude toward time is just as defining as key personality traits such as optimism or sociability. He concluded time perspective influences many of our judgments, decisions, and actions. Zimbardo identified five key approaches to time perspective.

These are:

• The ‘past-negative’ type. You focus on negative personal experiences that still have the power to upset you. This can lead to feelings of bitterness and regret.
• The ‘past-positive’ type. You take a nostalgic view of the past, and stay in very close contact with your family. You tend to have happy relationships, but the downside is a cautious, “better safe than sorry” approach which may hold you back.
• The ‘present-hedonistic’ type. You are dominated by pleasure-seeking impulses, and are reluctant to postpone feeling good for the sake of greater gain later. You are popular but tend to have a less healthy lifestyle and take more risks.
• The ‘present-fatalistic’ type. You aren’t enjoying the present but feel trapped in it, unable to change the inevitability of the future. This sense of powerlessness can lead to anxiety, depression and risk-taking.
• The ‘future-focused’ type. You are highly ambitious, focused on goals, and big on making ‘to do’ lists. You tend to feel a nagging sense of urgency that can create stress for yourself and those around you. Your investment in the future can come at the cost of close relationships and recreation time.

Anyway. All the research aside … here is an uncomfortable truth. Most of us are either focused on the past or the future. Or even both.

Here is the uncomfortable part.

That means if we are so preoccupied with past and future, well, that inevitably makes the present, well, smaller.

Yeah. The present becomes the smallest part of our attitudes which inevitably drives our behavior.

Unfortunately <or fortunately to any change consultant>  change actually begins and ends with what you actually do in the present. Nothing else really matters when it come to change.

Yikes. That sure explains a lot.

Anyway.

The hardest part of moving forward is not looking back. Heck. Maybe the hardest part of moving forward is not only not looking back .but not looking forward too.

<note: my head hurts after typing that>

Change is, adn will always be, about flipping today to tomorrow. Easy, and as hard, as that.

I imagine that change will always be difficult and the only thing that may matter is to make the present a little bit bigger in how you think in the scheme of things. I say that because when you do flip the present, and what you do in the present, and tomorrow looks bigger & better you will most likely have no desire to look backwards anymore, less likely to hold with ragged claws to anything you used to do, and more likely to just have, well, changed … and it is all said and done.

=====================

originally written October 2013

===================

===

“Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.
Who had nothing, who wanted everything.”
Lana Del Rey

===

Business has always struggled to navigate self-interest versus collective interest. They create these sweeping uplifting visions and now even discuss a grander purpose with the intent to create collective interest in a common objective. Yet at the same time they design a long menu of incentives, bonuses, pay raises and in general every tool available to encourage every individual, every self, to do what is right for themselves. This conflict is a tug of war between self and the collective ultimately makes an organization less productive. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this conflict, which is incredibly important to every individual because this is how they earn their living, bleeds into society kitchen table by kitchen table.

But then there is this an added feature. And that would be group level selfishness. Humans aren’t stupid. Employees clearly understand what it takes to get ahead and to get more money and they understand they more than likely need other people to get what they individually want. Therefore, small groups form to not only fight within the system, but often to fend off the other groups from getting what they believe is a zero-sum pot of gold. It’s obvious this group level selfishness makes it hard for groups to get along. Like minded groups tend to amplify one key self-interest feature and that would be the different ideas of the appropriate terms of cooperation about what people should and should not expect from one another. Every individual has a point of view on this. Within a business, groups tend to coalesce around the common belief of their view on this. Obviously, what this means is that business has several different groups with number of different definitions of what they expect when they are asked to collaborate and cooperate with each other often of which are not in alignment.

Which leads me to shared ambition.

Look. I am all for communities, informal networks, distributed decision making and a variety of other ideas with regard to alternative thinking to command-and-control, but I think a business is a microcosm of society – a social construct grounded in some social contracts. Social constructs are inherently, and naturally, territorial therefore it would seem like the only way to share in a desired outcome is to tap into ambitions (which is inevitably a type of social contract). Based on that I think we need to spend more time on the social contracts aspect, as in “shared ambitions.”

Shared is important. Shared is not about efficiency, it is actually a “benefit multiplier.” An individual is additive and collective effort is a multiplier. I don’t need a case study to prove that, its common sense logic. Think about it in these terms: “if you say ‘I know I can generate these results, but I cannot generate these (something else) withouthout them.” that is tapping into potential through collective effort and collective interests. It is a combination of ‘me to you’ (what you get from me) and ‘we to you’ (how others expand individual effort). But this sharing demands a bit of a mindset agreement (not just in ambitions but in coexisting). What I mean by that is part of the uneasy social contract society has is its dealings with ‘helping others.’ Most people are perfectly happy to give money to their churches and other local institutions that serve other people. but when the government uses ‘their money’ (taxes) they think it goes not to hardworking people who just need a helping hand, but to welfare queens. Within this uneasy social contract, it means help goes to ‘them,’ not ‘us.’ This is group level selfishness and is fairly common – consciously or subconsciously. The tragedy of commons is a tragedy of selfishness, a failure of individuals to put us ahead of me which actually inhibits shared anything let alone ambitions. It gets a little trickier. The weird thing is that while moral thinking enables cooperation within groups it can simultaneously undermine cooperation between groups. This happens because each group has their own ‘codes’ and ‘moral ideas’ which remain slightly misaligned from either the collective interests or other groups. The outcome is the same however you view it – inefficiency and less-than-optimal effectiveness. In business terms, not maximized productivity. We need something that enables groups with conflicting moralities/codes to work together and thrive and a mindset that can resolve disagreements that create obstacles to progress. This is where shared ambition steps in. Complex social structures are about ‘us versus them,’ our interest versus theirs, our values versus theirs, disparate feelings and beliefs that make it difficult to cooperate and coordinate. I am not going to suggest every group thinks the same way, some will be more collective interest driven and some will be more individualistic driven, but if there are shared ambitions it creates a social contract which shifts the social construct. The automatic construct settings of each group, and individual, gets shifted just a bit to accommodate the shared ambitions. To be clear. What I am suggesting is that even group level self-interest has some vague outlines, rather than hard and fast boundaries, within which cooperation and effective collaboration can occur.

Which leads me back to self interest.

De Tocqueville said in 1845: “Desires still remain extremely enlarged while the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day. On every side we trace the ravages of an inordinate and unsuccessful ambition kindled in hearts which is which it consumes in secret and in vain.” He also said after taking a long hard look at America: “among democratic nations ambition is ardent and continual, but it’s aim is not habitually lofty and life is generally spent in eagerly coveting small objects that are within reach.” He was speaking of goals, but you can see the underlying seeds of self-interest and consumption within the thought. And then we should remember Faustus and his demon, Mephistopheles, wherein the insatiable thirst for individual knowledge leads him to make a pact with the devil –  a message about human ambition and stretching the limits. Everyone, every individual, has ambition in some shape and size. But the reality is any one ambition has limits and constraints which can only be expanded upon by interacting with others. Yeah. When we share ambitions, the tide does lift everyone; maybe not always equally, but all get lifted. It is a little dangerous even if you balance it all fairly well.  Clearly this is a tricky idea because to be as good as you can be you gotta give a little of yourself up to feed your talent and ambition to grow it beyond the normal levels. Someone is going to want to throw ‘trust’ into the ring here, but I will not. I tend to believe conflicting self interested groups will never really trust other groups, but they may trust in a more intangible, non human, thing like a shared ambition. In other words, we have the same ambition so despite their means, despite the fact they are ‘them’ and not us, they aren’t go to screw me/’us’. The good news with share ambition is that success at each level can be so addictive or pleasurable you have a tendency to want to feed it a little more. And maybe that’s the real prize with shared ambitions. Ponder.

===

“To paraphrase someone smarter than me, who still knows nothing, the philosophical task of our age is for each of us to decide what it means to be a successful human being.

I don’t know the answer to that, but I would like to find out.”

Ottmer <the futurist>

===

“Imagine a cheap little device that isn’t just smarter than humans — it can compute as much data as all human brains taken together.”

===

Discussions about all technology seems to careen in-between oblivious no-fear (lack of belief that something like social media or an algorithm could “effect how I think”) and conspiratorial fear (government control, globalists, ‘the great reset’). And that’s before we even discuss something like a brain chip, an invasive introduction into mental enhancement. But there is a future lesson found in that fear binary. That lesson is that something like a brain chip will make the world binary and, objectively speaking, even more unequal.

Let me explain.

The people with the least understanding of technology but the greatest fears will reject the most progressive innovations, i.e., something like the brain chip.

The people with the most understanding of technology and the healthiest skepticism of ‘technology for good’ will accept the most progressive innovations, i.e., something like the brain chip.

Simplistically, just to make a point, the quasi-ignorant social media users will become dumber and dumber while the quasi- careful innovation adopters will become smarter and smarter. The latter will accept the risks viewing the potential benefits as outweighing them and the former will just see risks with little benefits. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this means one group of people will progress while another group will inevitably regress which begets a societal issue.

I begin with those thoughts to frame what I see as the benefits of a brain chip (which I do believe is inevitable).

*** note: Michio Kaku believes it is inevitable and Elon Musk even has a company, Neuralink, attempting to design one.

Which leads me to say we shouldn’t dismiss fears, but should still embrace the better hope.

I believe it was Peter Thiel who suggested something like “there’s all these scenarios where the stuff can spiral out of control. I’m more scared of the one where nothing happens.” This may sound odd but I believe we have been lulled into belief that technology is progressing too fast. I say that because most technology innovation hasn’t really been that innovative. Most of it has been superficial, but highly accessible, so that there is a general appearance of fast paced high innovation. But most of the technological innovations haven’t truly moved the needle on truly meaningful things (but have made a lot of money through consumerism). What this means is that our general view of ‘better’ has been skewed toward a fairly low bar. That becomes important when something like a brain chip appears because it is so far above the common bar it takes on all the appearances of science fiction, fantasy and, well, scary stuff – mostly dystopian. But here is where ‘better’ steps in: the higher the brain integration – verbal, visual, special and execution – the higher the intelligence. If a brain chip stimulates just that, well, that’s better. Better thinking by any one individual encourages better thinking within all people. And if enough people embrace the technology it creates structural societal thinking lift. It is this version of better that will encourage a shitload of people to seek to augment themselves in terms of intelligence and skills. And those people will inevitably separate themselves from those who elect to not pursue this opportunity.

That said. Let me describe better in my mind. it is clear that the human brain is incapable of coping with the onrush of new technology in the mosh pit formation available on a day-to-day basis. As trite as it may sound, while we now have more information available to us than ever, overstimulation makes us dumber on a daily basis if not unhealthier (depression, anxiety, etc). Many of us clearly understand our brains just can’t keep up with technology-driven cognitive load issues. Research has clearly documented the influence of information overload on attention, perception, memory, decision making, and even regulating emotions.  We have even seen that engagement with technology interferes with the pursuit of other behaviors critical for maintaining a healthy social contract. So, if an implanted chip is able to address many of our cognitive needs AND make us more effective thinkers, why wouldn’t we consider it? Why wouldn’t we consider augmenting our brain to better optimize it (not change it)? Maybe we should think of the brain chip as existing to help the brain as kind of a thinking companion. Try this thinking. Because this chip would be collecting real-time data on everything imaginable with regard to your brain physiology and sense-of-environment, it also optimizes your physical presence. You gain richer and richer datasets from which the chip can guide you so you could be at your highest functioning thinking and behavioral level. I imagine it actually could augment you to new level. I would be remiss if I didn’t note I am discussing a closed loop machine Learning System. Therefore it is secure and designed to augment only you and personalizes your data as opposed to a one-sized fits all system. However, this means the chip is on all the time (as is your brain).  You have to accept the fact your brain chip is listening all the time – to everything (including your memory). What this means is that many things – memories, knowledge, faces, etc. – stored away on some dark dusty shelf in your mind (meaning it has an imprint somewhere in your brain) can be activated by the chip. It takes away that nagging feeling you are forgetting something and brings it to the forefront at the right time. The chip activates a portion of your brain that says “hey remember this/remember what happened/remember that person” and it activates images from the past, in relevant context, thereby heightening your level of attention in the present. The interesting thing about this particular idea is the majority of us remember the things that we like to remember and forget things we like to forget. What that does is inherently bias your views and attitudes. The brain chip doesn’t permit this shortcut. It cuts in line in front of bias with even the things you wanted to forget. To be clear. The chip I am discussing means you remember even the things you really do not want to remember – yeah, even the horrible stuff and the stuff you hate. That said. What this means is you use, better than in the past, what you already know and increase depth of decisionmaking and insight into what you are thinking.

I imagine the next level would be if the brain chip could actually connect with the world wide web and supplement, or complement, what you already know to round out your knowledge. And it does so contextually (which we already know from education deepens learning). That’s next level thinking.

Which leads me to security and privacy.

Some people will never get over their fear of information being stolen and the fears will only increase with a brain chip because it becomes even more intrusively personal. That said. The adopters recognize within an increasingly complex world to keep identity safe and secure – from a personal identity standpoint as well as identity interface to things we own and have – the way to save identity is to actually lean in on technology. Insert a ‘yikes’ here. Yeah. Hear me out. While I have a couple of ideas on how to do this, I tend to belief an implanted chip is the best way forward <for a variety of reasons>. Every person could simply have a tiny chip implanted that permits a computer, or scanning system, to read a personalized code broadcasted by the chip. And while that may sound vulnerable to hacking or copying there are a variety of means and authenticating systems which actually protect us. For example, both Google Authenticator and Blizzard’s official authenticator use open-standard “TOTP” for authentication codes (although different). Google uses 6-digit codes, while Blizzard uses 8-digit codes, but the real idea I offer is that your personal identity algorithm, because it is implanted, can be tied to your biology which, well, cannot be stolen.

Which leads me to creating a good brain chip.

Algorithms really aren’t capable of thinking. They are simply yes, no; A, B; limiting, reductive, not expansive. Well. that is before the brain chip. A brain chip augments are complex brain so we see in patterns, not binaries. That said. We should simultaneously mistrust a brain chip technology and still recognize that it can augment the superiority of the human brain. It doesn’t circumvent our choice making it actually increases our choice base, our consideration set, so that our responses are more well informed and more well formed. It could permit all of us to sift through stacks of information which until now we were simply cognitively unable to do – or do effectively. A good brain chip makes us more effective human beings. It makes us optimize the present and increases our sensemaking skills (which cascades into better choicemaking). I could even argue it just makes us better people in that we become more well informed and a bit less biased. And if that’s the benefit, maybe it is worth the risk. To be clear. I would gladly take a brain chip. Heck. I would take a health chip implant that could possibly optimize my health. The benefits of ‘optimizing’ my brain and body clearly outweighs the possible risks – at least in my mind. And I end with that thought because that is the decision everyone is going to have to inevitably make and I worry that the decisions will only amplify societal divides. But. That is a piece for another day. Today we should be pondering whether you would put a technology chip in your brain.

===

“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”

Carl Sandburg

===

In a world where we so often talk about time being money I am surprised we don’t see this quote more often.

Oh.

Sorry.

I know why. Because it suggests you control your time and popular wisdom suggests that our time is out of our hands (and that there is not enough of it).

Carl suggests a different perspective.

Time is currency in your wallet and just like that ten dollar bill you have a choice how and where and when to spend it.

I am sure there has been a book written suggesting this, but suffice it to say thinking about time as money in your own wallet that you have to spend (and earn) is actually a useful thought.

It’s bigger than “time management” and closer to “time budgeting.”

Anyway.

A similar thought <which I liked> is time spent is not distance covered. I don’t know who wrote this, or said this, but it seemed appropriate here.

How we use our time is a discussion I am fairly sure we will never tire of.

Well. We may tire of it but we will never stop discussing.

Mostly because we worry whether we are using it wisely, or efficiently or whether we even have any control of our own time at all. In addition many of us assess our time investment by ‘distance covered’ <distance being defined by any variety of something tangible so that we can have some type of ‘measurement’>. In fact, we use measurement in some fairly absurd ways to judge time.

Look. I see many <many> people spending the coins of their life, not flippantly for sure, but I question whether they do so wisely. There is more time spent on … well … time … than almost anything else I can think of. People, websites, apps, far too many other things to list, all telling you how you should spend your time, on what, and how, and for what. So many people being told HOW to invest their time.

But it’s your money. Do you really want others spending it?

Sure.

We all have responsibilities but at some point, I admit this may be a selfish perspective, if I only have ten dollars of time I sure as hell do not want to let someone spend all ten dollars for me.

To be clear, whether I really know what I am talking about what I do know for sure is that Carl makes a valid point.

One which I believe is worth thinking about. Ponder.