Real Time, Smeal Time

I've done a ton of thinking about Twitter. Who hasn't? How funny the mocking of Tweets ("Having a ham sandwich now. NO MUSTARD!") seems almost equal to the raves ("Twitter beat all the rest in showing the pain in Haiti"). I didn't plan to blog about it (see Done. Well, mostly done., first blog in a year, below), but I felt the urge.

 For the moment, I mostly mean Twitter as representative of the real-time web. It's one of the "next big things." Yet my interest remains low. Why?

Do I see value? You bet. In particular, I see value for someone who has a natural following needing an efficient conduit to fans, friends, followers, etc. (Kutcher, Obama, Kobe). I also see opportunity for someone who, by nature of their life or activities, has a preferred vantage point for something of interest. If your job is to see technology before others, politician statements before others, martian visits before others, or anything else before others...and if there are enough of these "others" interested, you've got a niche. More power to you.

So real-time has its place. But I realize in my content consumption, I've gone the other way.  In audio, I've moved from radio to podcasts to lectures to audiobooks. I get more value from my valuable content consumption time when I listen or read information someone has actually thought about. And probably edited themselves.

This isn't a big deal and this whole topic is not an either/or. It's just a personal trend. Of course, it might also be a blind spot. Since I personally find more value in well-considered content, I have to be careful not to be blind to real-time value. Heck, Hawkins' On Intelligence would have something to say about that sort of blind spot, hmm?

Done. Well, mostly done.

I've had little intention of continuing this blog because I learned the basics of what I was after during my year or two of experimenting. Yes, I realize that's a ridiculously obvious statement with a last post in '07. Even I didn't realize it had been that long. Anyway, I've got nothing against blogging and have some favorites I visit most every day. But with the experiment over, I didn't see how it fit my schedule. We'll see. I have an urge to write a short one about real-time info. Fortunately, Blogger doesn't have some rule like, "blog monthly or lose your account."

Words and Music: What's the Right Mix?

Was thinking a bit more about my question below on the ideal mix is between audio with words (just called "words" below) and audio with music ("music") to stimulate productive thinking. I realized I started with the assumption there is a right answer. That assumption is probably ridiculous for a boatload of reasons, but one in particular got to me: Reasonable people won't agree on what "productive" is. Let's pretend all parties agree that words (rather than instrumentals) encourage small leaps in thinking--focused thinking that relates to the words in various ways. And let's even say that all parties agree that music allows a seed of an idea to grow in more divergent ideas. It ought to be a short leap to thinking about optimization of time spent listening to one and then the other. But optimization toward what? You hit an immediate wall that people will not agree whether short-leap focused thinking or long-leap divergent thinking is preferable. So you probably can't agree on what mix gets you the "furthest"--since you can't agree on what you're going "furthest" toward (I suspect there's a Myers-Briggs correlation in here somewhere.) Oh well.

I suppose I can still ponder it for my own idiosyncratic belief about the relative value of the contribution of stimulating these two types of thinking. Everyone else is going to have to optimize for themselves....

More on Words vs. Music in Audio

When I'm listening to casual audio, I often go back to my question about whether listening to words or music is better to encourage new ideas. I blogged about this a while back. It seemed (still does) that words encourage short leaps of new ideas where music encourages--or just makes feasible--big leaps to entirely new ideas. Words seem to encourage "applied ideas"--not in the sense of being utilitarian, but in the sense of limiting thoughts to new ways to apply the exact ideas in the words. It would be ridiculous to assert you can't get divergent ideas from words. It's more a practical statement. It's hard to think about two totally different topics at the same time. And when listening to words, the flow continues even as your imagination takes flight in a new direction. So you either zone out and stop listening to the audio or you get drawn back into the audio--away from your divergent pondering. So it's less that words can't stimulate great leaps in thinking than that words tend to anchor us to their specific topic. By the way, with a paper book, it's clearly different. With a book, you get a divergent idea and you pause in reading, look away from the text and, well, think. The flow of words stops until you "hit play" by looking at the text again. Obviously, audio players have a pause button, but the dynamic is different.

Meanwhile, as long as you have a seed for a new idea, music gives the idea room to develop without an anchor.

When I wonder about this, I invariably think of parents annoyed by teens spending untold hours with ears and brains plugged into their favorite tunes. Having a kid of my own, I probably could falled into the same pattern. I could have spouted self-righteously, "Any audio time not spent listening to NPR is wasted time!" But I've shifted my thinking about this. I've become convinced that the "words are the seed, music is the soil" idea is true.

So all this throws out so many questions, I'm not sure where to start. Among music without lyrics, say, jazz or new age or classical, is the effect any different? Is there anything about the music itself affecting idea development or is all instrumental music equally effective as long as our upbringing makes it attractive and familiar enough? What does this say about music that isn't pure melody? What about ballads with a clear, audible story? What about music containing lyrics and long breaks such as recordings of Chuck Berry, the Grateful Dead, or Eric Clapton? If supporting productive thinking is a goal, what's the right mix of words versus music?

My totally anecdotal experience is that, with me, ballads act just like words. That is, if a song has a strong story, such as Bruce Springsteen's My Hometown, it provides both a seed for new ideas and an anchor to divergent thinking. Now obviously, this is only because I'm one of those strange people who not only listen to words in songs, but actually find myself unable to avoid listening to them.

Yet Another: Chinese Toy Recall

An new report today on a massive recall of products from China. This time, it's lead in the paint of (gasp) children's toys--the beloved Elmo himself carrying poison. If this were a regional market, rather than an international market, repetitive quality problems from the largest manufacturer would quickly open a window for a smaller, higher-cost, "trusted supplier." That door may open on the international stage also. Remember when "Made in Japan" was turnoff to Americans? It later became a signal of quality and manufacturing prowess. Innovative, modern Chinese factories are joining small-time operations, adding capital to low labor costs. In doing do, they should establish new standards among Chinese exports for quality and dependability. Importantly, this should be true even if they don't set a lower standard for cost since the labor cost they are replacing is already low. And it looked like that's the way the story would play out. In 2005 and 2006, China seemed on the brink of turning the manufacturing-reputation corner from the standpoint of American consumer perception. Virtually all expected China to win the global manufacturing battle and, given the low prices and satisfactory quality, few were concerned (except those whose manufacturing jobs disappeared). Yet over the last 6+ months, seemingly biweekly reports on dangers lurking in toys, ramen, pet food, toothpaste, etc. has got to have some of the largest distributors hedging their supplier bets. China isn't going to stop making things, but if the manufacturers or the export regulators don't get their act together, it certainly isn't going to make everything.

Will China Success Crush Their Economic Revolution?

Is China going to fail under the weight of its own success? I'm an ardent supporter of embracing Chinese economic revolution. I challenge clients without an Indian or Chinese outsourcing strategy. Intellectually, I truly believe in the economics of comparative advantage and that open trade raises overall standards of living--for both trading partners. (It doesn't necessarily raise the standard of living for each person, of course, but that's another topic.)

Lately, however, Chinese domination of the world economy is starting to smell a little like the Japanese domination of world economy forecast in the 80s and 90s. Sure, all the ducks are in a row for continuing wild growth: number of workers, number of super-skilled innovators, business-friendly economic policies (nearly free s/w and technical infrastructure anyone?), and lots more. Just pick up China, Inc. (audio, print) for a fascinating walk through the Chinese domination park. But there are those nagging issues: not enough food, environmental travesties, tainted export products, urban poor with barely enough to live...and rural poor with less.

It's a race: can China succeed so greatly that it can buy its way out of the crises? Or will the crises sink the country before success is sufficient?

You have to question some of the tainted pet food, human food, toothpaste, etc. stories as exaggerated by those with an agenda. But the issue is real. And in this case, international business is like local business: you can't be my favored vendor if I can't trust your products. Yes, you'll still get some of my business by being cheap (Doesn't everyone have some Wal-mart stuff around somewhere?), but you can't rise to the level of market domination without the trust of your customers. And if you repress and poison your staff, there's going to be some consequences. It's a race.

Personification as Marketing...in Religion

I heard a very cool lecture about play called Phaedo written by Plato about his hero, Socrates. Yeah, I know. There’s no way that a play by Plato can be just fun, right? And the star is Socrates, so that seems a double whammy. But it was only one lecture and I figured I could zone out during a workout and just listen to it again later. It turned out to be a great story. Socrates is the star. He's about to be killed for annoying the politicians and he has a couple of groupies hanging out with him. They can't figure out why he's so happy. So he tells them. And along the way builds a story about being completely sure that good and evil are linked to some sort of consequences in the afterlife. The story is simultaneously fantastic as pure relaxing entertainment and, yes, thought-provoking--even if you're trying to avoid thinking and just focus on the story.
Anyway, Socrates is sure that there must be consequences for whether you pick good or evil while you're alive. It dawned on me that if you lived in Socrates' time and believed him...and if you wanted to "market" that idea to the masses, you'd be far more successful if found a way to personify that good/evil/consequences thing. (Certainly more successful than Socrates who was put to death for his trouble.) This had an obvious link to some earlier thoughts about personification of the Republican and Democratic parties. To personify good and evil, you might want someone to be behind the scenes matching actions to consequences. And this is, after all, pretty much the definition of God's job in most faiths (well, after you get past creation of the universe, stars, planets, plants, animals, mankind, etc.). Unless you want God to be simultaneously good and evil, you might also want a Satan, but there could be a lot of disagreement on his role. As abstract a concept as God is, it would certainly be dramatically more concrete than just "good and evil." That might work for a few thousand years. But you know humans. They eventually get jaded, so as a good marketer you need to make the concept more concrete again. You'd want to bring the authority figure down to earth, figuratively and perhaps literally. So you need Jesus. At least initially appearing human, but by all accounts, pretty stand-offish. So you know where this going, right? Over time, you need to get more concrete. Hey, instead of an esoteric son of a carpenter, how about building on a trader, business person…even a military leader? Like, say, Mohammed? This is a crude storyline based on only one dimension of persuasion. And I certainly don't know the true role in the universe of these influential entities/deities. But it's staggering to me that at even such a superficial level you can derive the origins of Christianity and Islam from the simple words of an old, dead Greek guy and one good marketing rule of thumb.

All in all, if you agree that it's compelling to personify the idea you want people to accept--and there's plenty of modern proof this is true--it's a short hop to use Socrates' ideas of good and evil to derive the need for a more concrete being with which to identify good, that is, God…and then Jesus…and then Mohammed…and others who in recent centuries have tried to put themselves in that pantheon. It's like all of religion since the Greeks can be interpreted as marketing for Socrates' view of absolute good and absolute evil. This is a lecture…and story…not to be missed. I'm going to get off religion as a topic soon, but it's obviously a pretty fertile area for pondering.

Marketing within the Evangelical Tradition

I'll dip into the topic of religion as great marketing with a reference to an incredible view of marketing within the evangelical tradition in this Business Week article, Earthly Empires: How evangelical churches are borrowing from the business playbook. Believers and non-believers have to stand in awe of the success of the so-called "megachurches" at achieving their mission. The article asserts,

"Their runaway success is modeled unabashedly on business. They borrow tools ranging from niche marketing to MBA hiring to lift their share of U.S. churchgoers."

Even if Business Week has a particular slant, direct comments from Church leaders carry a similar tale. Thinking about market segmentation, Martin King, a spokesman for the Southern Baptists' North American Mission Board remarks,

"We have cowboy churches for people working on ranches, country music churches, even several motorcycle churches aimed at bikers."

And Pastor Joel Osteen, whose Lakewood Church is buying a former NBA arena to create a 16,000-person high-tech church, says,

"Other churches have not kept up, and they lose people by not changing with the times."

And what about the "product?" In a world of stress, pressure, and timelines layered with companies trying to deliver services to ease customers' busy lives, how can it not be inspiring to read about a customer, er, congregant saying,

"When I walk out of a [Lakewood Church] service, I feel completely relieved of any stress I walked in with."

Personifying Families as a Political Tool

I've been wondering about personifying as a marketing technique. U.S. politics is a straight-forward example: personifying the Republican/conservative family ideal is so much more concrete than personifying the Democratic/liberal family ideal. Close your eyes and imagine the Republican family ideal. Do it. No one will see you. The Republican ideal has a specific family structure, clear roles, traditional genders, coherent values. And Republicans need to connect their leadership to delivering that image. They implication is: "If the image is attractive, give us your vote!" No, that doesn't mean the Republican "tent" isn't big enough to include other sorts of families. Republicans have various non-Caucasian wings, gay and lesbian wings, etc. But the core imagery is consistent. These various wings say, essentially, "I realize my party doesn't portray me as a traditional member, but I am drawn to the broader ideals." That is, "I am a Republican despite my idiosyncrasies, not because of them."

I remember being amused to hear that if you give 6 - 8 year-old American children a crayon and ask them to draw a home, the vast majority draw the same thing: a square with a triangle on top. A door and a window or two. A chimney. You know it in your mind's eye. The amusing part was that this image is even consistent among children living in dense, urban, multi-family dwellings--children who have never seen that archetypical detached, single-family house outside of a book or picture. And who do they--and you--"see" living in this house? Is it a father, a mother, a kid or two, maybe a pet? The concreteness is staggering. And if this is not your view or your family, I've got a hunch you don't see anything WRONG with that image. And that's the power. I believe that humans tend to embrace a general ideal and dismiss or accept some amount of conflict. Up to a breaking point of fundamental difference, a positive image is worth supporting. Is the father working...or out of work? Are the children adopted? Is the mother a VP...or a stay-at-home mom? For most, these aren't deal-breaker conflicts with the Republican ideal. They will say, "No problem, give me a reality anywhere close to that image, and you can have my vote." But variation from that core image is, of course, a spectrum. What happens when the parents switch breadwinner roles? Does the image lose a few advocates? Maybe. OK, what happens when both parents can be the same sex? Do we lose a few more? What happens when each parent can maintain a second family to support their emotional or financial needs? Wait. We just lost 22 states. Where's the line? To a large extent, I believe that understanding this spectrum is core to driving success in American politics.

Close your eyes again. What's the Democratic family imagery? Do you get as concrete a picture? No chance. The Democratic "ideal" includes families with dramatically different forms: varied gender roles and mixes, varied physical home styles, varied interpersonal relationships among parents and children, varied racial mixes, varied value structures. In a word, variety. "That's the strength," say Democrats. And perhaps so. But the marketing challenge--where "marketing" means "influencing behavior" to vote Democratic--is far, far more difficult.

Politics as Marketing

I already noted that I believe blogging about religion is a terrible idea, but I'll be doing some of it anyway. Blogging about politics (at least in a non-political blog) is similarly terrible. And again, it almost guarantees that replies will be flames over conversations. I figured I'd never do it. I was wrong. Because, like religion, politics is about influencing behavior. At least in societies that are--or keep up a credible facade of being--democratic, politics is about influencing citizens to support your leadership. And once again, that behavior influence is the definition of (outbound) marketing. The stakes are high. And in many cases, the practitioners are brilliant. So I can't help but wonder about the techniques political practitioners use. For what it's worth, political bloggers are--and probably should be--open about their affiliation. I'm not a political blogger and so my affiliation doesn't matter. For the record, I vote somewhat, but not 100%, consistently. If you read between the lines, you might decide you know where my sympathies lie. But I contend that reading anything I write in that light would be a waste of your time. I hope that observations on various political techniques aren't a waste of your time. But they may be. We'll see....

Religion as (Great) marketing

Blogging about religion is a terrible idea. A terrible idea. At best, no one will care. At worst, I'll be dealing with flames instead of reasonable replies. Before I go any further, here's the obvious part: I have no idea whether one religion is correct or even whether any of them are correct. Personally, I'm a strong believer in some sense, but those of many faiths would question my devotion. For the topics I'll consider, that doesn't matter. I have trouble believing that any--from congregants to religious leaders to atheists, from the faithful of Christianity to Islam to Judaism to Zoroastrianism--would argue with the assertion that one of the foundations of religion is to influence behavior. Even the Universal Life Church, a self-described "non-denominational" institution that offers ordainment to anyone over the web and is vehemently open-minded about behavior, has the tenet: "Do only that which is right." So here's my problem. "Influencing behavior" is the definition of marketing. And I admire great marketing. (OK, to be strictly accurate, I'd say "Influencing behavior" is the definition of outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is about creating the right product or service. I'm going to avoid this aspect because if you extend the metaphor, you get into decisions about the defining the right religion and, well, that would be even more foolish of me to discuss.) Anyway, I've been doing some wondering about religion as marketing. I mean no disrespect and, for example, I don't capitalize "marketing" because I don't mean it as a business department or a self-serving function. I mean it simply as a phrase to imply a core of religion: behavior influence. More on this to come...

Jott.com: Save Time, Reduce Annoyance

One of my recent secret weapons is Jott.com: you call, leave yourself a message, and they convert the message text and email it to you with a link to the sound file. It's free (for now) and a wonderful time and/or drudgery saver for anyone on the move. As is obvious from previous posts, my in-depth focus on many topics comes from audiobooks, lectures, and podcasts. And the only time I have for these is outdoor workout time. So out on a trail somewhere, I end up having many of the ideas I'd like to use, explore...or just store away to fool around with later. And for 80+%, not only wouldn't I follow up without capturing the idea in the moment, but in truth, I may not even remember considering it. Before Jott, I used the voice recorder on my phone, but just the small step of transcribing put that somewhere between unattractive and annoying.

To me, Jott does several things right:

• The offering is simple and responds to a need some find critical...at least some of the time: call, leave a message, hang-up, and receive your message in text
  
• Visual design is simple and friendly, but not amateurish
• Sign-up is well done—not just easy, but well thought-out and “application-like” with tips about why certain personal info is needed.

Perhaps most importantly, they’ve thought through where to apply technology and where today’s economy lets them apply people. Apparently, initial transcription is by machine (with voice recognition using service-side server power rather than lower desktop power). Some number of messages are then redone or reviewed by “clean room” human transcribers.
I've frequently gotten an email with one transcription only to receive an email a bit later with a more accurate one.

If you read the "Why You Should Blog" post I link to below and decide to blog, I also suspect you will find Jott.com an invaluable tool.

Does Reptillian Always Win? WIIFM?

I considered commenting on Frank Luntz's interview on NPR regarding his book Words that Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. I checked around for reactions and enough has been said, so I won't add. However, in my search, I found a quote far more compelling. On the Rockridge Nation site, a post from Think4Myself noted:

Another masterful marketer from France, Clotaire Rapaille, is quite unapologetic and enlightening. ... He says, "I don't care what you're going to tell me intellectually. I don't care. Give me the reptilian. Why? Because the reptilian always wins."

The reference, of course, is to the so-called "reptillian brain," the ancient part of our brains driving such reflexes such as fight-or-flight and a desire for comfort or gratification. When helping people with compelling communications, we often ask them to focus on the question (OK, more cliche than question) "What's in it for me?" or WIIFM. It's easy to see WIIFM--a standard "tool" of business--as a fussy translation of "Give your audience the reptilian because the reptilian always wins."

Over the years, I've become convinced that subtlety in communications--whether design/graphic communications, presentations, or even conversation--rarely expresses desired points. I hated that realization, but what I want is irrelevant. That's not to say that people don't pick up on subtle clues, just that you will probably fail if you plan and want to communicate something and do it with subtlety. Few will pick up that "those two pics are related because they are the only black & white images on the slide" or "our company name means value and honesty in Chinese." What seems obvious to you is just not worth thinking about to anyone else.

Of course, there are exceptions, typically based on your role. If you are your country's President/Prime Minister or the head of a central bank you words will be dissected. But you're not, are you?

Anyway, this is part of the same issue. The reptillian brain isn't tuned for subtlety, just as the weight lifter isn't built for needlepoint. WIIFM. It won't let you down.

China Getting Old Before Getting Rich

Following up from my last post on low Chinese labor cost observations, the Mercury Center (website for the San Jose Mercury News) has an article "China's Getting Old Before It Becomes Rich." It's an obvious story once you think about it, but has not been covered much. The gist: China's one-child policy reduces young people while better healthcare and nutrition increase the elderly. It's the U.S. social security crisis on steroids. In one estimate, the number of people over 60 will be larger than the entire U.S. in several decades. The crisis part? China is still a developing country even as it becomes an industrial powerhouse. So the challenge of feeding this number of seniors may be a nightmare. The one-child policy has been going since the late 70s, which would put those unborn kids in their 30s now--prime production years. And the move to capitalist ideals, including rural kids moving to cities to find fortune runs headlong into ideals about honoring and providing for one's elders. Yikes.

At the risk of an overly ridiculous analogy (I'll take ridiculous, but not overly ridiculous), this brings back memories of the era when Japan, Inc. was going to crush the U.S. And along the way, the geopolitical shift was derailed by Japan's banking system, real estate bubble, and more. I'm not dismissing in the slightest the massive impact I expect from the exploding Chinese industrial might, but just noting that a few twists may happen on the way to the party (or should I say "Party").

Why You Should Write Blogs--Not by me

In my shortest entry, I encourage you to read a long one: Steve Yegge's "Why You Should Write Blogs." It's a fun read and I came across it after I'd been messing with blogging for 5+ months and figured I'd gotten a sense of it...and could just stop. But after reading Yegge's comments, maybe I'll keep it up for a little while longer....

How is the World Different with (Near) Zero Labor Cost?

A while back, I spent several weeks traveling through China. I came away with one staggering observation--or perhaps I should say question: "How is the world different with (near) zero labor cost?" Westerners hear constantly about the current and future impact of low labor costs in China...and elsewhere. But I found seeing it myself showed a more extreme magnitude than even the media expresses. Imagine driving out of town on a good road that, after 2 hours, turns into a poor road. At the transition sit three men on white, plastic chairs (the sort you might buy for $3 at Target or Walmart). Each has a 3'-long chisel and a hammer. And each is using these hand tools to break up the old road. From the looks of their progress, the three might move a couple of feet per hour. A single front loader could move that distance in 45 seconds. And it's not like China has no front loaders. Needless to say, the equipment to create that Yang Tze dam is massive and plentiful. Using people and hand tools just makes more sense. And that's a terrible example because the "world isn't different." It's just the same old task, but with people instead of machines. OK, here's a better one: a very old traditional building had been painted a bazillion times over the centuries. Apparently the layer of paint four or five layers down was the one they really wanted. So rather than repainting the building that color or stripping the paint off and starting again, an army of people with tiny hammers and tiny chisels was tapping away at the top layers of paint to remove them and leave a particular layer of paint. Again tracking the progress, I'd estimate each person finished 1 square foot every 30+ minutes. A generous soul tells me this is typical of these sorts of preservation projects....but it is staggering to see. And I don't expect to see it done the same way with any preservation projects in Chicago. To trade my anecdotal stories for those of someone with far more focus and time on the subject, I highly recommend "China, Inc." by Ted Fishman (paper, audio)--fascinating and great fun.

Evangelicals Going Green Revisited

In a December post, I noted interest at hearing a claim of growing support among religious leaders, in particular Evangelicals, for fighting global warming. The Associated Press put out an article on the subject, mostly confirming it, but with a requisite denial also. Definitely a changing landscape. Here's the article via the San Jose Mercury News' site (the maroon bold highlight is mine...I just find that quote very intense):

Evangelicals, scientists unite on climate

GROUPS SAY LEADERS MUST FACE REALITY OF GLOBAL WARMING

By John Heilprin, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Saying they share a moral purpose, a group of evangelicals and scientists said Wednesday that they will work together to convince the nation's leaders that global warming is real.

The Rev. Rich Cizik, public policy director for the National Association of Evangelicals, and Nobel-laureate Eric Chivian, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, were among 28 signers of a statement that demands urgent changes in values, lifestyles and public policies to avert disastrous changes in climate.

``God will judge us for destroying the creation. Therefore, we as evangelicals have a responsibility to be even more vigilant than others,'' Cizik told a news conference.

``Science can be an ally in helping us understand what faith is telling us,'' he said. ``We will not allow the creation to be degraded, destroyed by human folly.'' >> more

What Matters--the Expected or Unexpected?

I encourage you to read Cognomad's comment to my "On Intelligence II" post below (as well as checking out his blog). I was about to just respond to the comment, but the thing that caught my eye seemed a new entry: First--to Cognomad--enjoyed your blog...thanks for coming by and commenting. Cognomad seems to have far more physiological background in this stuff than I do, so I'll stay at the model level. If we accept any flavor of the "escalation" approach of Hawkins, that new perceptions get "noticed" or "passed upwpard" in the brain based on something about the perceptions, it's a pretty fundamental question whether the brain "notices" and "passes upward" the expected or the unexpected. Hawkins asserts the unexpected, while Cognomad asserts the expected. It's a tough question because seeing the difference physiologically is way beyond us for now (hmm, a neural packet sniffer?) AND I suspect it has the sort of Ptolemaic/Copernican thing is going on. Remember in high school science learning that Ptolomy said the earth is the center of the universe and Copernicus said we went around the Sun? I remember being interested at the time that the Ptolemaic model --with a few tweaks--was apparently working just fine helping ships navigate. So the question was still important, but on a practical basis, it didn't matter. For a while at least, I bet the same thing is true here: a good model (i.e. one that is pretty good at predicting outcomes) might be possible assuming either expected or unexpected things get escalated in the brain.

Anyway...I'm still on the Hawkins side that "unexpected stuff gets passed upward." My current pondering is whether the underlying algorithm might be something like a default binary test of "This doesn't matter." Then, when a perception breaks that default (i.e. it does matter because it's not only different, but different in a way that seems important), it gets passed upward. Arguably, this just begs the bigger question of how "importance" is measured. But at least it gets me going thinking about it....

Cognomad makes a case in his/her comment that escalating the unexpected would get bogged down by random noise. But given the length of connections between neurons, I'm not sure this causes the implied problem. That is, it seems plausible that direct connections between neurons at different levels could--once the escalation is established--bypass lots of levels to support the speed of thought. But that's just guessing. And although this is another topic (sorry), I also wonder whether this same mechanism might deal with Cognomad's comment about "deep" hierarchies being slower. If anything, this seems to be exactly what Gladwell, in Blink, called the benefit of expertise: lots of connections offering a deeply textured understanding of a topic allow extremely fast, accurate conclusions.

Cisco v Apple: A Fascinating Legal Doc?!

Who would have thought that my one "news" story below would result in another comment on a recent event, but I honestly recommend you read the original legal complaint filed by Cisco against Apple over the iPhone name. The link is below, with thanks to ZDNet. The beginning looks like another dull formulaic legal document, but read on about the way Cisco makes its case. Fascinating....

Cisco v Apple Trademark Infringement, Unfair Competition Complaint by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- Following is the complaint filed by Cisco over Apple's use of the iPhone name: COMPLAINT FOR TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT, UNFAIR COMPETITION, FALSE DESCRIPTION, AND INJURY TO BUSINESS REPUTATION; CASE NO.[...]

On Intelligence II: Does Hierarchy Shape Matter?

In my first entry on Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence, I said it became a filter for an unbelievable number of the things I notice and wonder about...and yet I haven’t added new entries about it. Truth is, it's mostly because I fear it may seem so bizarre to use a single set of ideas as a filter for so many things, that you'll find my selection of blog topics even more oddly random than you already do. But it's time. To kick it off, I'll briefly mention step 1: The Hawkins Memory-Prediction model of the brain focuses on hierarchy. Ignoring the details, parts of your brain get information (typically from the senses) and if it matches what they expect, they do nothing. If it doesn't, they pass the information up the hierarchy. It's sort of like an entry-level worker escalating a new problem to his or her boss. And like the CEO (which, in a sense, you are), you don't have time or mental cycles to stay on top of what's happening at the low levels in the hierarchy, so you generally keep track of what's being passed up the chain. You could say, "Your brain--and therefore, you--only notice something if it differs from expectation." Simple, elegant, and able to explain many of our perceptions.

OK, step 2. The more accurate the predictions are at the lower levels of the hierarchy, the less they have to pass upward. How do the predictions get more accurate? By experiencing information more often, predicting something, and checking results. Practice makes perfect. They get "smarter." Suffice to say this works identically for observing something--as in knowing immediately whether a dirty, brown rock is a clump of dirt, a piece of quartz, or a diamond OR for doing something--like playing a sonata on a violin or designing a brilliant ad for a new soft drink (is there such a thing?).

Step 3. If a talented person spends 18 hours a day playing the violin, the violin-connected parts of their brain will be very smart. The lower levels of the hierarchy won't need to escalate messages often. When this happens, the theory claims, the upper levels of the hierarchy don't just take a vacation. Instead, they think higher thoughts. They look for connections between the things the lower levels are doing. It's like a lucky manager leading such a great team that she gets to spend time focusing on long-term strategy, integration between functions, or new ways to think about everyday tasks. The hierarchy of the dedicated violinist becomes very "deep." It has many levels because what is complicated and "escalated" one day becomes rote and simple the next. Of course, our master violinist will probably be a lousy diamond finder.

Now things get interesting (at least for me ;-). Imagine another person who is a dilettante. He dabbles in a thousand things, paying attention in the moment, but gaining no expertise. The theory would say his brain is constantly passing messages upward. Little is rote. The lower levels have mastered little, so escalation is the norm. You could say this person's brain hierarchy is extremely flat. Poor guy, right? But along the way, he is certainly creating connections and, if the theory is right, his dabbling brain is still making constant predictions. And he's really fun at parties. And since the brain doesn't "know" when it's playing the violin and when it's looking at dirty rocks, it seems clear that experiences in one field will start to inform predictions in others. I'm not speculating that if you look at enough rocks you'll be able to play the violin. But if your brain only has random data, it's going to use it the best way it can.

So here's my quandary: Of these two people, who would you trust to build your kid a treehouse? Or set up your Tivo? Or make you dinner? Or join your bowling team?

If you had them both on your team doing something neither had done before, would you assign them to different types of tasks?

Too ridiculous a question? Ok, then how about just this: What would you encourage for your child? What do you wish was encouraged for you when you were young? (Assuming this sort of thing can be encouraged at all.)

Will a flat hierarchy drive more diverse connections and relationships? Will a deep hierarchy--more practiced in "thinking about thinking"--provide more abstract, in-depth considerations in other fields?