The Quadrants of Discernment

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Passion is a frequent theme in Seth Godin’s latest book, Linchpin. He also spends a good bit of time on discernment. The ability to see things they way they really are. Each corner of the illustration below represents a different kind of per and the way he responds to situations at work.

“In the bottom right is the Fundamentalist Zealot. He is attached to the world as he sees it. There is no prajna her, no discernment. Change is a threat. Curiosity is a threat. Competition is a threat. As a result, it’s difficult for him to see the world as it is,because he insists on the the world being the way he imagines it. At the same time, he has huge reservoirs of effort to invest in maintaining his worldview. Fundamentalist zealots always manage to make the world smaller, poorer, and meaner.

The top left belongs to the Bureaucrat. He’s certainly not attached to the outcome of events, and he definitely won’t be exerting any additional effort,regardless. The bureaucrat is a passionless rules follower, indifferent to external events and gliding through the day. The clear at the post office and the exhausted VP at General Motors are both bureaucrats.

The bottom left is the corner for the Whiner. The whiner has no passion, but is extremely attached to the worldview he’s bought into. Living life in fear of change, the whiner can’t muster the effort to make things better,but is extremely focused on wishing that things stay as they are. I’d put most people int he newspaper industry in this corner. They stood by for years, watching the industry crumble while they resolutely did nothing except whine about unfairness. Almost all the positive change in this industry (like The Huffington Post and YouTube) is coming from outsiders.

And that leaves the top right, the quadrant of the Linchpin. The linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry customer is not about me, that this change in government policy is not a personal attack,that this job is not guaranteed for life. At the same time, the linchpin brings passion to the job. She knows from experience that the right effort in the right place can change the outcome, and she reserves her effort for doing just that.

Here’s another way to describe the two axes: One asks, Can you see it? The other wonders, Do you care?

The art of the tweet

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From a thoughtful –and useful– post by Tammy Erickson (@tammyerickson) on how to make Twitter fun for your followers:

  1. Don’t report banal details. Unless you’re observing a true breaking news event (and note: this term does not include what you or your child ate for lunch), skip it.
  2. Do interpret your experiences. How do they make you feel? What do they mean to you?
  3. Do share the oddities you observe. Look for things that seem unusual, out-of-place, surprising.
  4. Do share things you love – quotes, phrases, descriptions of events that brought joy to your day.

Her conclusion:

“Slow down, enjoy. Listen to the world’s music. Share the best of your experiences, but remember, 140 characters is a unique format — more like poetry or Haiku than news reporting.”

Lady Gaga meets Pattern Recognition?

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Okay, this post is for William Gibson fans only. Specifically, fans of his novel, Pattern Recognition. Here’s a grossly over-simplified plot summary. Actually it’s not even that, but I had to provide some context, so…

“…a cult-like group of Internet obsessives strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called “the footage,” let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source.”

This morning on his Twitter feed, Gibson posted:

“That putative Lady Gaga virus is as seriously Footage-y as anything I’ve seen on YouTube.”

Curious, I found my way to this video:

UPDATE: There were a couple of videos on YouTube to which I had linked but they’ve been pulled. Very suspicious.

1984: “The true past”

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I read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in high school. I need to read it again but it scared me back then and is sure to be even more frightening today. Nightly news reports on our distant wars in Iraq and Afghanastan feel an awful lot like the “telescreen” updates on the war between “Oceania” and “Eurasia.”

Wikipedia: “At the Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), Winston (Smith) is an editor responsible for the historical revisionism concording the past to the Party’s contemporary official version of the past; thus is the Oceania government omniscient. As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as unpersons; the original document is incinerated in a memory hole. Despite enjoying the intellectual challenge of historical revisionism, he is fascinated by the true past, and eagerly tries to learn more about it.”

“…fascinated by the true past.” Me too.

Stephen Fry on the iPad

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British wit and tech daddy-o, Stephen Fry, on the iPad (just a couple of snippits from lengthy but excellent review):

“Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.”

“How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.”

Ahem. I confess to all but the dribble. I try not to dribble.