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INTERNET | Noah Brier

Theory Objects

Google changes the way new ideas develop.

June 21, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 1 COMMENTS

You know those things you read and think are interesting, but kind of throw on the back burner? Then like two months later you find yourself yourself quoting it constantly and have to pull it out again and read it? I've had one of those moments with an article from Smart Mobs called "It's about spime". The essence of it is that with the way Google works communities can develop around words. Because of that, it can be very helpful to use a completely new term to describe new ideas, allowing you to use Google as your social networking tool. Bruce Sterling describes the process as it relates to 'spimes':

A neologism, a completely made-up word like 'spime,' is a verbal framing device. It's an attention pointer. I call them "spimes," not because I necessarily expect that coinage to stick, but because I need a single-syllable noun to call attention to the shocking prospect of things that are plannable, trackable, findable, recyclable, uniquely identified and that generate histories.

I also wanted the word to be Google-able. If you Google the word 'spime,' you find a small company called Spime, and a song by a rock star, but most of the online commentary about spimes necessarily centers around this new idea, because it's a new word and also a new tag. It's turning into what Julian Bleecker calls a 'Theory Object,' which is an idea which is not just a mental idea or a word, but a cloud of associated commentary and data, that can be passed around from mouse to mouse, and linked-to. Every time I go to an event like this, the word "spime" grows as a Theory Object. A Theory Object is a concept that's accreting attention, and generating visible, searchable, rankable, trackable trails of attention.

I'm not really sure what else I have to say about this, just wanted to share the quote . . . you can continue on with your regularly scheduled activities.

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COMMENTS

1Ed Batista

I love this concept--to a certain extent because I heard Bruce give that speech and it was funny as hell. The guy is a natural showman.

It's obviously a source of fascination for me from an attention perspective--these emerging theory objects are case studies in capturing, managing, tracking, employing, valuing, exchanging attention. And of course, any marketer worth his/her salt should be thinking about this stuff. But in a larger sense it seems to describe the way life is (increasingly) lived in general. New theory objects emerge constantly--most sputter and falter, but a few catch fire, and what seemed unthinkably strange--made-up, in fact--becomes mundane in just a few months.

I think spimes are where the new marketing BS of the "attention economy" intersects with what Goldhaber means when he uses the same phrase.

June 21, 2006