From the Bottom of My Heart

To be honest I’m at a loss for words right now as I try and reflect on the year that was. This website, and more importantly the community that’s developed around it, has simply been extraordinary. I can’t tell you all what it means to me that you find my thoughts interesting enough to read and comment on. To say I’m inspired by all of you is an understatement and I want to take this chance to thank you.

So . . .

Thank you.

Thank you for being there when I needed you.

Thank you for making me feel special.

Thank you for inspiring me to write and think at a higher level than I ever have.

Thank you for opening doors for me.

Thank you for your emails that just say hello.

Thank you for your comments that are often better thought through than the post they’re attached to.

Thank you for linking to this site and telling others you know that it’s worth reading.

Thank you for showing up for coffee at 8am.

Thank you for saying such nice things about me.

Thank you for introducing me to other people as brilliant as yourselves.

Thank you for writing your own blogs.

But most importantly, thank you for being a friend. For me this was the year that my online world met my offline world. I’ve had countless drinks, coffees and dinners with you all and I look forward to many more. The people I’ve met over the last twelve months as a direct and indirect result of this site have all been spectacular. When I started NoahBrier.com two-and-a-half years ago I never imagined it would be the catalyst for so many great things.

For that I am forever indebted to all of you.

Thanks again and have a wonderful 2007.

December 31, 2006

Trust, Brands and Transparency

In my last entry about trust, I promised to talk a little more about the role of trust, and specifically what I called the trust exchange, in marketing. As an addition to the post, I wrote, “Thinking about it again this morning, the most interesting part of this for me is the trust process. Transparency helps build reputation which can be used as colatteral in a trust exchange. This is possible because reputation has real value and can be used in lieu of things like diamonds or money.”

So why does this matter to brands?

Simple. Brands are reputations: They only live in people’s minds. A company uses its brand as collateral when it tries to get you to buy its products. Think about it. I own a PowerBook. I like my PowerBook. It’s well designed and works great. I have a very favorable perception of Apple’s brand as a result of the experience with my PowerBook. When Apple comes out with a new product they put their name on it knowing that I will associate it with their brand and the perceptions I have will carry over.

I don’t think any of this is terribly new, actually. Branding and marketing developed as a way to help consumers know what was reliable. What’s new is:

1. There’s less differentiation than ever before. As a result of cheaper technology and (most likely) stricter quality control laws, the difference between one product and another is tiny.
2. The store has taken on much of the trust burden. When you walk into a grocery store you probably don’t think any toothpaste they carry will make you sick. Same thing when you walk into Best Buy: Sure there might be a quality difference between the brand name and the no-name plasma television, but there’s an assumption that nothing they carry could be that bad.
3. We, as customers, are far more savvy about marketing than we once were. People don’t take something said in a commercial at face value any more. I think the two reasons for this are that we’ve been duped one too many times and everybody is saying the exact same thing, so how can they all be right?
4. Price comparison tools have shifted the power. I don’t think people talk about this enough. The ease of price comparison and research online has done more than force stores to compete more, it has changed customer mindsets. The person willing to walk away is always in control of a negotiation and its easier than ever to walk away and get what you want from someone else.

In a way, what I’m saying is that brand is both more and less important than it ever was. More important because there’s less differentiation and one great way to put your company ahead of the rest is by establishing your brand in people’s minds. Less important because people are more savvy and know that chances are there’s not that huge a difference between your tube of toothpaste and your competitors.

So what is a brand to do?

Well for one companies can make people feel like they’re in control. Max makes a great point in his latest Online Spin article. In it he says despite the popularity of the statement, consumers are not really in total control. “Consumers now have a voice,” he says, “they have more choice and can hold marketers accountable as never before. Consumers can quickly organize, mobilize, reward and punish . . . They are more empowered, but there are two sides to this relationship.” Max follows with a slew of ways marketers can respect their partnership with customers.

The bottom line for me, though, is make it personal. Brand relationships traditionally exist at the 100 or 1,000 foot level. Personal relationships exist at the one or ten foot level. That’s because personal connections build reputation: There’s more on the line when you know someone’s name, number and their kid’s birthday. Transparency helps bring brand relationships to this level.

Robert Scoble is the perfect example of this. Here’s a guy who worked at Microsoft and was willing to put his cell phone number on his website. He must believe in what he does to do that. If I ever really needed something I felt like I could call him up and tell him. While I don’t think he would have been able to do anything, necessarily, having an ear within the organization completely changed the kind of relationship I had with Microsoft.

That’s about all for now, I think there’s a lot more to talk about here, but I’ll save it for another time. Thanks to Adrian for getting me thinking some more about this.

December 28, 2006

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 2)

[Editor's Note: This is volume two of my favorite links of 2006. Volume one can be found here.]

Well folks, it’s time for round two of the best links of 2006. For those that missed the first half, go read volume one.

Now onto the links . . .

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 2)

• The Marketplace of Perceptions: This may be the article I quoted most this year. Behavioral economics is rocking my world and this is a perfect primer.
• Good News Day: Continuing on the inspiring tip is this story of Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams beating a seemingly cureless disease with perseverance and rhymes.
• ‘Baby, Give Me a Kiss’: This one’s certainly not inspiring and I hope it doesn’t offend anyone. The LA Times sent a female reporter to interview Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild fame. In the process she witnessed a date-rape and was attacked by Francis. Girls Gone Wild is an undeniable phenomena and Claire Hoffman, the writer, contemplates why. The article is a look at the dark side of the digital explosion. “This is so much bigger than Francis,” Hoffman explains. “In a culture where cheap and portable video technology lets everyone play at stardom, and where America’s voyeuristic appetite for reality television seems insatiable, teenagers, like the ones in this club, see cameras as validation. ‘Most guys want to have sex with me and maybe I could meet one new guy, but if I get filmed everyone could see me,’ Bultema says. ‘If you do this, you might get noticed by somebody—to be an actress or a model.’”
• Architecture and interaction design, via adaptation and hackability: Dan Hill of cityofsound is brilliant. He’s got an amazing ability to pull together all sorts of different disciplines and spit out a coherent idea. This is actually the full text of an interview he did with Dan Saffer for his book Designing for Interaction. These were the questions posed: “Can products be made hackable, or are all products hackable? What types of things can be designed into products to make them more hackable? What are the qualities of adaptive designs? You’ve spoken on putting “creative power in the hands of non-designers.” How do interaction designers go about doing that? What can interaction designers learn about adaptability from architecture?”
• Video Explains the World’s Most Important 6-Sec Drum Loop: It’s long, and somewhat dry at times, but this 18-minute video explains the incredible history of the amen break which is the probably the most ubiquitous sample in history.
• Banksy Punks Paris: Banksy’s most famous move was putting his own art in New York City museums. In this installment Banksy droplifts a bunch of specially made Paris Hilton CDs with music by Danger Mouse and a custom-made booklet.
• Dove Evolution Commerical: Rounding out the YouTube trio is an ad of sorts. As part of the Campaign for Real Beauty Dove shows the world how our idea of beauty became so distorted. The video depicts a ‘regular’ woman going through the process of becoming a billboard model. After much makeup, stretching and shrinking the person we see at the beginning of the video is completely different than the product at the end.
• Getting Customers to Love You: This was the year of the ‘ordinary Joe’ and nowhere was this more apparent than marketing. All over the industry people are finally realizing that we’d forgotten about customers. In this article Jeanne Bliss, from Land’s End, gives 10 tips for getting customers to love you. They’re simple, but they’re great reminders to put customers first.
• The Confession of an American Jew: I can’t say I ever really considered it, but there are a whole lot of Jewish comedians. Look at the list: “he Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, George Burns, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Henny Youngman, Jackie Mason, Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Rodney Dangerfield, Lenny Bruce, Gilda Radner, Andy Kaufman, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman.” Luckily, Wayne Gladstone over at The Morning News was kind enough to think about it and offer up some amazingly amusing thoughts on the subject.
• Rethinking Every Rule of Reinvention: Who better to speak to reinventing a brand than a man who has helped both Nike and Starbucks reinvent theirs. I’m not sure there’s any single revolutionary point in here, but taken together it’s an incredible roadmap to thinking about marketing the right way.

I’ve also got two special bonus links for you . . .

• BONUS: Professional Radicals: This entry is really just a vehicle to post a 1994 book (in PDF form) from ‘iconoclastic British ad agency of the 1990s’ Howell Henry. The PDF is fantastic and I’m forever in debt to Gareth for posting.
• BONUS: I Saw NY: Last but not least is the Renegade holiday/New Year site. It’s a guide to New York City written by Renegade and friends. You can even register to contribute yourself. I’ve been unbelievably pleased with the quality of what people have added, there are about 20 places I’ve discovered on there that I want to visit. I Saw NY. For FTC purposes I do work for Renegade, however, I was not compensated for posting this link. :)

Well, that’s it. Hope everyone is having a great holiday. Just in case you missed it, go check out volume one.

December 26, 2006

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 1)

[Editor's Note: This is volume one of my favorite links of 2006. Volume two can be found here.]

This is one of my very favorite entries to write. I get to pull all the great stuff I read all year and throw it into one post for your reading enjoyment. Hopefully this will be a fun way to fill some of that extra holiday time.

So without any further ado . . .

Best Links of 2006 (vol. 1)

• The Omarosa Experiment: This is an amazing inside look at what life on reality television is really like. Beyond just talking to some former stars they speak to psychologists who help choose the participants. After all is said and done, I had a much better idea of the psychological imbalance of the people on these shows.
• Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content: I’ve found myself quoting this Design Observer article quite a bit this year. In it Michael Bierut answers some critics who complain he doesn’t write about design enough: “The great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can’t get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you’re interested in, the better your work will be.” A rule to live by.
• Cookie Monster Searches Deep Within Himself and Asks: Is Me Realy Monster?: I’m a huge Jim Henson fan. Runs in the family. In this article cookie monster asks some tough questions as he tries to deal with his monsterous tendencies. “Me thinks me have serious problem. Me thinks me addicted. But since when it acceptable to call addict monster? It affliction. It disease. It burden. But does it make me monster?”
• The Worst President in History: Lots of people have said it casually, but when a historian wonders out loud whether George W. Bush is actually the worst president in history, it’s worth listening.
• Roger Federer as Religious Experience: Every year David Foster Wallace writes an article that’s extraordinarily long and detailed about something I’ve never thought about and I find it impossible to put down. Last year it was Consider the Lobster and this year it’s this New York Times article highlighting every detail of Federer’s greatness. I’m not really a tennis fan myself and this gave me an entirely new view into the intricacies real tennis fans love.
• A Cup of Tea: As a blogger myself every so often I ask myself “what should I blog about?” Lucky for all of us, Momus uses a cup of tea as an example of five approaches to blogging about anything. The techniques include: Quotation, anecdote, binaries, politics, personal and sociology.
• The Best and the Interesting: This is actually two articles smushed into one. Reading it again, I remember why I loved it the first time: It’s inspiring and beautifully written. “My hope is, at some point in my life, I will hit such a stride, some skillset I have where the best of me just happens as a matter of course. I’m good at some stuff, bad at others, but I would love to hit some point, in a few years, where I throw out perfection as calmly as a child tosses a ball. It’s something to strive for.”

That wraps up the first half, check back for more links in the next few days. Also, if you’re not already, you can subscribe to the site by RSS or email (there’s a subscription form below the fold).

December 23, 2006

It’s All About Trust

A few months ago I let Noah crash at my apartment. It was the second time we’d met in person and I allowed him to sleep on my couch for a week.

Strangely enough I wasn’t bothered by this. Actually, I was more bothered by the fact that I wasn’t bothered at all (sorry to get all meta ya’). I found it incredibly odd that I was totally cool with this stranger staying in my home. I kept asking myself why I trusted him.

The more I thought about it, the more his website came up. Noah’s homepage has his cellphone number. He writes about his mom and dad. He exposes how many RSS readers he has to the world. That’s some serious controlled exposure (or radical transparency if you prefer Chris Anderson’s naming schema).

After cataloging all these things I realized that I was allowing him to use his reputation as a form of collateral in our trust exchange. By combining Okdork.com with the fact that we traveled in similar circles and have shared acquaintances, I was willing to give him my trust. I guess I felt like someone wouldn’t risk an, albeit micro, empire to do something bad to me.

And I turned out completely correct.

So looking back, what were the big lessons of this experience? (And I’m sure my buddies at trustmojo would have much more to say.)

1. Reputation, reputation, reputation. As my friend Ryan Anderson said, “You only have one reputation, and it’s yours to ruin.” While the value of reputation may be indirect, there’s no question it’s there (just ask the thousands of bloggers who are profiting off it) and if you lose it you’re screwed. In some way, I felt like Noah was putting that reputation on the line by staying with me.
2. Transparency breeds trust. When someone puts themselves out there for the world to see they’re vulnerable. They’re saying I’m willing to leave myself open to wounds in order to reap the benefits. Vulnerability is another form of collateral. Putting your cell phone on your website is pretty damn transparent.
3. Go with your gut. Not to get all Gladwellian on your asses, but a big part of trust is built on instincts. When you first meet someone you probably either trust them or you don’t. Now they can change that impression, but it’s pretty damn difficult. Letting him stay at my apartment seemed like the right thing to do.

I’m sure there are more, but it’s getting late and I’m tired. I also hoped to get to how this relates to brands, but I’m going to have to put that off to another day. Unless you all want to help . . .

Update (12/21/06): Thinking about it again this morning, the most interesting part of this for me is the trust process. Transparency helps build reputation which can be used as colatteral in a trust exchange. This is possible because reputation has real value and can be used in lieu of things like diamonds or money. Not that I wouldn’t have accepted either of those.

December 21, 2006

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Just this morning I was trying to decide what in the world I would write about today. There’s this funny feeling of obligation to write when you have a blog. It’s not that anyone else is actually saying, “hey Noah, you haven’t posted in a while,” but every few days this little thing goes off in my head that says just that.

Lucky for me Amber at Big Secret Pizza Party went ahead and gave me something to write about. She ‘tagged’ me with this ‘five things’ meme and wrote something extraordinarily flattering to boot (which I appreciate very much). Anyhow, I thought about starting this post with a diatribe about how I usually don’t take part in these kinds of meme, but then I realized I was full of shit and the only reason is because I’ve never actually made it into the loop. (After finishing this sentence I got an email from David Berkowitz informing me he had also tagged me, so I guess I really have no choice.)

So, without any further ado . . .

Five things you probably don’t know about me.

1. I used to hate olives and then one day, about four years ago, I decided to change that. Every three months I would eat an olive until I finally broke and began to actually enjoy them. It was well worth the pain.
2. I really suck at spelling sentence. I always try to spell it ‘sentance’. I also used to be bad at calendar, but I’ve gotten better.
3. My list of things I want to do in my life (yes I have one of those) includes start my own business.
4. Deep down I believe that starting this site was the best decision I ever made.
5. I built my first website in 1995 and it was about my life as an aardvark. I’m not entirely sure why. The second website I ever built was called ‘eat some cheese’, again I don’t know what I was thinking. There seems to be no evidence of their existence and that saddens me a bit.

That about wraps it up, I will return to regularly scheduled posting in the near future. Hope this wasn’t too painful.

Also, rather than tagging anyone in particular, what if I just left it open for anyone who feels like commenting to add their five things (or a link to their site that lists them). It couldn’t hurt for us all to get to know each other a little better.

Update (12/18/06): It seems that Scott has tagged me too. I’m starting to feel slightly guilty for not passing this on . . .

Update (12/18/06): After feeling an extraordinary guilt for not tagging anyone, I’ve decided to pass this along to five fellow Renegades: Charles, Michael, Adrian, Adam and Jason you’re up.

December 18, 2006

The ‘Yes, and . . .’ Rule

In improv comedy there’s a rule called ‘Yes, and . . . ‘. Basically, anytime anyone says anything you reply by building saying yes.

“Is that a cobra stuck in your teeth?”
“Yes, and blah blah blah blah blah . . .” (I couldn’t come up with anything clever.)

You get the point. What that does is continue the energy and flow of the sketch. A ‘no’ is like derailing a train: Everything you’ve worked for up to that moment needs to change immediately.

In brainstorms the same rules apply. Even if you think someone’s idea is terrible you say yes and build off it rather than shoot it down. That’s because big ideas don’t hatch, they grow. That small and seemingly ridiculous idea can often grow into something amazing. In a brainstorm every idea gets its time.

It wasn’t until recently, however, that I started to realize ‘Yes, and . . .’ applies almost everywhere.

A few weeks ago I was at Russel’s NYC coffee morning and someone sat down for a few minutes who I didn’t know. He was only in New York for one more day and asked what he should do. I jumped in to suggest walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, which I think is one of the most amazing experiences NYC has to offer. His immediate response was “no, I’d rather take a cab.” BAM! Conversation over.

Now I totally respect that answer, and actually agree in most circumstances. What stood out for me most, though, was how obviously conversation-ending that comment was. A “interesting, but . . . ” or “that sounds cool, how about . . .” would have allowed talk to continue. However, at that moment the only other option was to change topics or offer up more free and friendly suggestions with the knowledge that they might be blatantly shot down.

Since then every time someone’s come to me with an idea I’ve tried to build on it instead of shooting it down. It’s not like I don’t critique things, but I try to do it with a yes instead of a no.

It keeps people disarmed and a little happier. Aint nothing wrong with that.

December 12, 2006

Creating an Innovative Environment

How do you create an environment where innovation flourishes?

There are lots of people getting paid lots of money to answer that question. Companies are creating VPs of innovation and BusinessWeek thought it was a hot enough topic to devote a magazine to the subject.

Personally, it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. Working at an idea factory as I do, it’s hard to analyze where innovative thinking comes from.

After digging through what I’ve read, what I’ve experienced and the rest of the random thoughts in my head, I’ve more of less landed on two core criteria for creating an innovative environment.

1. Create a place where people want to bring great ideas.
2. Teach people how to think better.

Now I think the first one is pretty obvious. One goal of an organization focused on innovation should be to inspire their employees to bring their innovative ideas to the office rather than leaving them at home. Lots of successful companies and products have come from a few employees within another organization. So why did they decide to take their idea with them instead of building it inside? How do you create a culture where people want to bring you their ideas.

One option is Google’s 20 percent time, where you give you engineers the flexibility to follow their passions for 1/5 of their week. Clearly this incentive has paid off, leading to Google News, Google Suggest and AdSense for Content to name a few.

There are certainly other incentives companies can dream up, but I’m going to leave number one on the table and jump to the second core criteria for creating an innovative environment.

Teach people how to think better.

This one is big and I think most often overlooked. It’s not about corporate training it’s about learning. As John Hagel put it, “When companies do focus on developing talent, they often emphasize formal training programs. While these programs certainly have a role in talent development, they pale in comparison to the rapid learning that occurs when employees are put in situations that challenge them to get better faster on a daily basis.” Bottom line is that there is a big difference between teaching people how to do and teaching people how to think.

You can help people think better. You can help them understand that the world is full of inspiration and learning can be fun. You can teach them to open their minds to unexpected places and follow whatever path it leads them down. You can teach them how to interpret things. That way instead of relying on a limited few in some R&D lab, you can open up the process. In turn you will create more value for both the company and the employees.

I’ve been meaning to write this for a long time, but was waiting for the right piece of motivation. Funnily enough, today it came in a New York Magazine article about the possibility of Mike Bloomberg running for President. Towards the end of the article when talking about what Bloomberg might do next, his unique take on philanthropy comes up:

But Bloomberg tells me he has another concept brewing. “There’s the area of, how do you encourage more democracy,� he says. “Whether it’s getting good people to go into public service, or finding ways for the public to measure the people they elect and whether they deliver what they promise.�

You’re talking about merging your politics to your philanthropy, I say.

“Yes, but you’ve got to distinguish between what I’m talking about and what George Soros is trying to do. Soros uses his money to push his views. I’d be more inclined to use my money to give people the ability to make up their own minds and express themselves.�

That sealed it for me. The common approach is to use your money or power to get people to make the decisions you want. What Bloomberg is trying to do is use those same things to get people to make the decisions they want.

That, to me, is how innovation happens. It’s when people stop making the decisions they think their boss wants and start thinking for themselves: Bringing their own ideas to the table.

December 10, 2006

Attention-casting

I’ve been trying to write intelligently about the idea of ‘data-blogging’ for a while, but haven’t been able to articulate it all that well up to this point. In “Blog Everything”, I wrote “as a result of digital technology and the metadata it creates, we are able to share parts of our lives in much more fluid ways.” I then proceeded to go into the example of exposing your Netflix queue to your friends and the social implications of the whole thing.

Disregarding the social stuff for the moment, the bigger point is that we now have tools to broadcast our attention. As a result, attention is now media.

If you visit my homepage, you’ll see the Sidenotes in the right-hand column. That is an ever-changing list of links I find interesting. In my mind, the Sidenotes are an equal member of this site with my original entries. As I wrote a while back, “I decided to add the links as content because I believe that’s just what they are: Content. What I tend to do here is annotate/comment on other media. I read things and link to them with my own thoughts and opinions. While that’s not the entirety of the site, it is probably the majority. So with that in mind, why should the links themselves not be given equal real estate?”

Essentially the Sidenotes are a running log of what websites I’m paying attention to. They are a peak into my mind and can spur conversation. In a similar way, I am broadcasting my movies to friends through Netflix, my music through last.fm and my clickstream through Root.

One of the things I feel like I’m always quoting here is Kottke’s 2005 entry on “The fundamental unit of the web”. In it he writes that the web is shrinking: From sites, to pages, posts/permalinks and finally to links. To me, single bits of attention data is the obvious next step (is attentron the appropriate term Seth?).

All it took to turn millions of people into bloggers was a simple interface for posting to the web. Who is to say that Netflix and last.fm aren’t the same thing? Both allow you to broadcast yourself to the world. But even more than that, all these tools cut down the levels of mediation between people. Blogs are so revolutionary because it’s a fairly unfiltered look at people. Linklogs are even less filtered because they contain the ideas behind the ideas. Now imagine if I exposed every click to you, now you know the path behind the ideas that make the ideas (sorry for that).

I guess the question is do you want all that? It’s fun to spy on your friends movie-watching habits, but how deep to you really need to go? (I really don’t know the answer to this, need to give it more though.)

December 6, 2006

Fear of Efficiency

I’ve been wondering for a while when it became socially acceptable to meet people from the online world in meat space. Way beyond the small likemind and coffee morning gatherings are 40 million Americans engaging in online dating. Ten years ago if I told someone I was going to meet an online friend they’d have thought I was nuts, now they only thing I’m a bit mad. That’s progress folks.

But why? What’s caused this change?

I’m going to use some of the comments from the last post to guide the discussion (and highlight again how much I appreciate the brilliant comments). This is an experiment in post writing, so please bear with me.

. . . the way that we interact with each other – both with our friends and with strangers – is completely changing. There are hardly any lines anymore between what’s virtual and what’s real, what’s digital and what’s physical. (Orli)

Our points of access into the online world are expanding. We are becoming more comfortable with the communication that happens there and better able to judge the authenticity of the voice we are reading/hearing. (On a side note, I can’t help but wonder if it’s just a coincidence that the upswing in my social contact as a result of this blog is directly related to me adding my photo to the homepage.)

But there’s another side:

. . . it seems every day the internet is finding new ways to distance people – noah’s likemind group not withstanding. It’s making people lazy – physically, emotionally, mentally. (Jeff)

A common concern, but as an avid user of social media, Chet responded:

I don’t see distancing and lazyness. Personally, MySpace has expanded the surface area of my social life immensely, in a way that has helped me become friends, and see in person, way more people than before (and more interesting people, usually). For example, I just moved to new york, and I instantly had quite a few friends – because of a few connections that were strengthened through the site. This was entirely enabled by MySpace (and as it happens, the job i got here was enabled by blogging). I am also able to stay in contact with my friends in Toronto to a much greater degree. Hell, before I moved, I sent out a bulletin about selling all my stuff, and the next day, all my friends came over to my house (they had seen the photos on Flickr, too). It was a great time. I think that’s efficient, not lazy. (Chet Gulland)

And here we come to one of the great dilemmas of social media and the internet: How much efficiency is good? Take online dating, for instance. It’s hard not to feel like a bit of serendipity has left the world of dating when you choose someone via profile. The thing is, how often do people actually meet at a bar for the first time? Meeting people is a difficult task and I would guess the majority of relationships are set up in one way or another. So how different is online dating?

A lot of the fear of the internet comes with the idea that when people open their browser they lose their ability to think critically or make decisions on their own accord. I’m not quite sure why this is, but it’s not new. I remember being in school and having teachers tell me that there was a limit of internet sources I could cite. Their argument was twofold: Firstly, books are inherently more trustworthy because they’ve been printed (which is total bullshit). Secondly, I would be lazy and just pull up whatever it was that showed up in Google and use that to support my thesis. Of course there is absolutely no reason I couldn’t do the same thing in a library, but that never seemed to register.

At the bottom of all this is a fear of efficiency. We don’t like the idea of people working smarter, not harder. Why do something in 15 minutes that could take three hours? I guess it can feel less ‘human’ to be efficient, but it’s not like a human didn’t build that efficiency tool in the first place.

We are evolving. I would guess our brains are quite literally changing.

And we’re building it as we go . . .

December 5, 2006