"This is Me" traces Rogers' personal and professional development, and the insights he gained into himself, his profession and the institutions and disciplines with which he was affiliated. Of particular relevance to me, in my own current professional context as a non-tenure track senior lecturer, is his judgment about the tenure process (based on his own context of having been hired, with tenure, at The Ohio State University):
I have often been grateful that I have never had to live through the frequently degrading competitive process of step-by-step promotion in university faculties, where individuals so frequently learn only one lesson - not to stick their necks out.
However, it is the more personal "significant learnings" that he shares that I find most inspiring (an example, perhaps, of the most personal being the most general). He is very careful to state at the outset that these learnings are true for him, and may or may not be true for others. Throughout the book, he carefully delineates data, feelings, judgments and wants, and he states each of his significant learnings with phrasing that makes the personal nature of his perspective clear. I will include the most direct statements of these learnings (with his emphasis) below, along with a few other excerpts that elaborate the learnings in ways I find personally useful.
In my relationships with persons I have found that it does not help, in the long run, to act as though I were something that I am not.
I find that I am more effective when I can listen acceptantly to myself, and can be myself ... a decidedly imperfect person ... the curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, then I can change.
I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand another person. ... understanding is risky. If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding.
I have found it enriching to open channels whereby others can communicate their feelings, their private perceptual worlds, to me.
I have found it rewarding when I can accept another person. ... it has come to seem to me that this separateness of individuals, the right o each individual to utilize his experience in his own way and to discover his own meanings in it - this is one of the most priceless potentialities of life.
The more I am open to the realities in me and in the other person, the less do I find myself wishing to rush in and "fix things."
I can trust my experience. ... when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing.
Evaluation by others is not a guide for me.
Experience is, for me, the highest authority.
I enjoy the discovering of order in experience. ... Thus I have come to see both scientific research and theory construction as being aimed toward the inward ordering of significant experience. ... I have, at times, carried on research for other reasons - to satisfy others, to convince opponents and sceptics, to get ahead professionally, to gain prestige, and for other unsavory reasons. These errors in judgment and activity have only served to convince me more deeply that there is only one sound reason for pursuing scientific activities, and that is to satisfy a need for meaning which is in me [an example, perhaps, of irritation-based innovation]
The facts are friendly. ... while I still hate to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up old ways of perceiving and conceptualizing, yet at some deeper level I have, to a considerable degree, com to realize that these painful reorganizations are what is known as learning.
What is most personal is most general. [full quote below] Somewhere here I want to bring in a learning which has been most rewarding, because it makes me feel so deeply akin to others. I can word it this way. What is most personal is most general. There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…. In these instances I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.
It has been my experience that persons have a basically positive direction. ... I have come to feel that the more fully the individual is understood and accepted, the more he tends to drop the false fronts with which he has been meeting life, and the more he tends to move in a direction which is forward.
Life, at its best, is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed. ... It is always in process of becoming.
I hope this blog, and my personal and professional life will continue to evolve in a positive direction. Meanwhile, I will surely continue to incorporate other of Rogers' insights - implicitly or explicitly - in my future thinking and writing.
Dahlia Lithwick wrote a brilliant article on A Brilliant Ruling that appeared in Slate on Wednesday, in which she reports on some of the facts and opinions that were expressed by witnesses for the plaintiffs (two same-sex couples) and the defense (the state of California and opponents of same-sex marriage) in the U.S. District Court case. After noting the likelihood of an appeal of the ruling proceeding all the way up to the Supreme Court, the carefully crafted 15 citations to 2 Supreme Court decisions written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, and commenting on the imbalance in preparation and presentation of expert testimony between the two sides in the trial, she highlights some specific findings articulated by Judge Walker that I find difficult to dispute (and I hope that Justice Kennedy and his colleagues will encounter similar difficulties in disputing the findings):
Then come the elaborate "findings of fact"—and recall that appellate courts must defer far more to a judge's findings of fact than conclusions of law. Here is where Judge Walker knits together the trial evidence, to the data, to the nerves at the very base of Justice Kennedy's brain. Among his most notable determinations of fact, Walker finds: states have long discriminated in matters of who can marry; marital status affects immigration, citizenship, tax policy, property and inheritance rules, and benefits programs; that individuals do not choose their own sexual orientation; California law encourages gay couples to become parents; domestic partnership is a second-class legal status; permitting same-sex couples to marry does not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, or otherwise screw around. He found that it benefits the children of gay parents to have them be married and that the gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment. He found that Prop 8 puts the force of law behind a social stigma and that the entirety of the Prop 8 campaign relied on instilling fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay. (Brand-new data show that the needle only really moved in favor of the Prop 8 camp when parents of young children came out in force against gay marriage in the 11th hour of the campaign.) He found that stereotypes targeting gays and lesbians have resulted in terrible disadvantages for them and that the Prop 8 campaign traded on those stereotypes.
Here are some particularly poignant passages regarding Blankenhorn's testimony, which the court concluded constitutes "inadmissible opinion testimony that should be given essentially no weight" (with a few links to items referenced directly or indirectly inserted):
During trial, Blankenhorn was presented with a study that posed an empirical question whether permitting marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples would lead to the manifestations Blankenhorn described as indicative of deinstitutionalization. After reviewing and analyzing available evidence, the study concludes that “laws permitting same-sex marriage or civil unions have no adverse effect on marriage, divorce, and abortion rates, the percent of children born out of wedlock, or the percent of households with children under 18 headed by women.” PX2898 (Laura Langbein & Mark A Yost, Jr, Same-Sex Marriage and Negative Externalities, 90 Soc Sci Q 2 (June 2009) at 305-306). Blankenhorn had not seen the study before trial and was thus unfamiliar with its methods and conclusions. Nevertheless, Blankenhorn dismissed the study and its results, reasoning that its authors “think that [the conclusion is] so self-evident that anybody who has an opposing point of view is not a rational person.”
I added emphasis to the last sentence, as to highlight the irony of one purported expert summarily dismissing the work of other purported experts while accusing them of, in effect, summarily dismissing other points of view that differ from their own ... reminding me of another article I read recently about a study that suggests what you say about others says a lot about you. Judge Walker similalry noted that Blankenhorn "failed to consider evidence contrary to his view in presenting his testimony".
In my reading of the case, it appears that Blankenhorn, if anything, offered testimony that tended to support the claims of the plaintiffs (the same-sex couples), against which he had been invited to testify:
Blankenhorn’s concern that same-sex marriage poses a threat to the institution of marriage is further undermined by his testimony that same-sex marriage and opposite-sex marriage operate almost identically. During cross-examination, Blankenhorn was shown a report produced by his Institute in 2000 explaining the six dimensions of marriage: (1) legal contract; (2) financial partnership; (3) sacred promise; (4) sexual union; (5) personal bond; and (6) family-making bond. PX2879 (Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, et al, The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles (Institute for American Values 2000)). Blankenhorn agreed that same-sex marriages and opposite-sex marriages would be identical across these six dimensions. Tr 2913:8-2916:18. When referring to the sixth dimension, a family-making bond, Blankenhorn agreed that same-sex couples could “raise” children. Tr 2916:17.
Blankenhorn testified on cross-examination that studies show children of adoptive parents do as well or better than children of biological parents [possibly referring to Farr, R. H., Forssell, S. L., & Patterson, C. J. (2010). Parenting and child development in adoptive families: Does parental sexual orientation matter? Applied Developmental Science, 10, 164-178]. Tr 2794:12-2795:5. Blankenhorn agreed that children raised by same-sex couples would benefit if their parents were permitted to marry. Tr 2803:6-15. Blankenhorn also testified he wrote and agrees with the statement “I believe that today the principle of equal human dignity must apply to gay and lesbian persons. In that sense, insofar as we are a nation founded on this principle, we would be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage than we were the day before.” DIX0956 at 2; Tr 2805:6-2806:1.
Blankenhorn stated he opposes marriage for same-sex couples because it will weaken the institution of marriage, despite his recognition that at least thirteen positive consequences would flow from state recognition of marriage for same-sex couples, including: (1) by increasing the number of married couples who might be interested in adoption and foster care, same-sex marriage might well lead to fewer children growing up in state institutions and more children growing up in loving adoptive and foster families; and (2) same-sex marriage would signify greater social acceptance of homosexual love and the worth and validity of same-sex intimate relationships. Tr 2839:16-2842:25; 2847:1-2848:3; DIX0956 at 203-205.
Dana Mack, who co-authored an earlier book with Blankenhorn in 2001, The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions, wrote a spirited defense of Blankenhorn's testimony and views in her Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Friday, Now What for Marriage?. However, like her colleague, Ms. Mack appears to exhibit the same unwillingness to consider alternate perspectives:
there is simply no other way to view the age-old, universal institution of marriage than as rooted in the biological family
Also consistent with the conduct of her colleague, she makes claims without offering much scientific evidence; and while I don't mean to imply that a newspaper opinion article ought to have the exact same standards as courtroom testimony, I do believe that opinions with factual corroboration generally carry more weight ... at least among those who care about facts.
In this case, Mack claims that "there is a great deal of social-science evidence connecting marriage and the active engagement of two biological parents with child well-being", and yet only makes reference to a single statement made by anthropologist Bronislaw Molinowski without any reference to supporting studies he or others may have conducted.
I would argue that, as was the case with her colleague, she raises issues that may unintentionally serve to further support the plaintiff's case. After suggesting that the institution of marriage's "common denominator across time and cultures has been its dedication to the offices of reproduction", she goes on to report that "A recent Pew analysis of 2008 census data showed that only just over 40% of Americans consider children fundamental to marriage", a decline from 65% who expressed that view in 1990. I believe she quotes this statistic to bolster her and Blankenthorn's supposition that marriage is being "de-institutionalized"; in my reading, it suggests that the institution of marriage is being progressively re-defined rather than being undermined.
The report I believe she is referring to, Childlessness Up Among All Women; Down Among Women with Advanced Degrees, shows that the proportion of all women who end their childbearing years without bearing children has risen from 10% in 1976 to 18% in 2008; among women who have ever been married, that rate is 13%. If procreation is an essential element of a "successful" or "legal" marriage, I don't know how Mack, Blankenhorn and other opponents of same-sex marriage regard childless marriages, but I have several married friends who are childless - or childfree - by choice, and I don't believe that they see their marriages as any less legitimate than childful marriages. I certainly don't, nor do I see same-sex marriages as any less legitimate than heterosexual marriages ... and I hope the growing preponderence of facts supporting the positive aspects of same-sex marriages will help influence more opinions so that we can move beyond this controversy and devote more attention to other social, economic and political problems in dire need of resolution.
Update: Just found the full text of the ruling on Scribd; embedding below:
Consequential strangers are the people with whom we enjoy casual relationships in our neighborhoods, workplaces and third places that can be as vital to our health, wealth, wisdom and well-being as our family and closest friends (or what I like to call speed dial friends). According to a new book by Melinda Blau and Karen Fingerman, Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter ... But Really Do, these networks - or social convoys - of acquaintanceships include people who are often able to open us up to more opportunities than we may fully appreciate. Many of these people on the periphery, our weak ties, are ready, willing and able to connect us with information, jobs and other resources we need to realize our full potential.
The extensively researched and highly accessible book starts out by reviewing Mark Granovetter's seminal study on The Strength of Weak Ties, first published in the 1973 (and revisited in 1983), which demonstrated that people outside our innermost social circles were the most likely to help us find jobs and mobilize our communities. They continue on with research published in 2003 by Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman on the strength of weak ties abetted by technology in connecting and mobilizing physical communities, Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb, as well as research by Robert Wuthnow (After the Baby Boomers) that explores the different kinds of groups outside of our neighborhoods - religious, self-help and activity-oriented - in which consequential strangers seek and provide assistance to each other.
In addition to the academic research reviewed in the book, the authors include a number of other stories highlighting the importance of consequential strangers. For example, Karla Lightfoot, an enthusiastic member of the Ladies Who Launch entrepreneur network, has achieved personal and professional success due, in part, to her delight in the interactions and connections with the people she encounters in a variety of contexts. Lightfoot, who the authors describe as an acquaintanceship artist, extols (and demonstrates) the benefits of being more open to serendipitous opportunities: "It's about sharing whatever you have and people being able to ask for what they need". Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University (with over 38,000 employees and 80,000 students spanning 24 campuses), spends the first week of the school year living in a freshman dorm in order to expand his network of consequential strangers, noting that breaking down barriers can help leaders become more effective. Sue Ellen Cooper, founder of the Red Hat Society, discovered that assembling a group of consequential strangers to engage in a "small act of rebellion" - wearing purple outfits and red hats to lunch (as shown in photo to the left) - helped unleash "their most carefree, playful selves". This group of women over fifty who gather for "fun, friendship, freedom and fulfillment" has become the world's largest social networking community for women, having grown to 40,000 members in a little over ten years.
The authors cite psychological studies by Marilyn Brewer (who pioneered optimal distinctiveness theory) that differentiate between a personal self that seeks distinction, and a social self that seeks connection and belonging. They note other studies that demonstrate the power and prevalence of social mirrors, and the role of audiences and witnesses in the perception and construction of our complex selves: "We see ourselves in others' eyes". [The image to the right is a depiction of one of the earliest articulations of this concept, the "looking glass self", by Charles Cooley in 1902.] Consequential strangers help us stretch beyond the relatively rigid boxes that the people who have known us the longest - our family and close friends - often put us into. Through interacting with people who do not know us as well, we are more free to experiment with ourselves, and less likely to have our new behaviors and roles reflected back to us by people who object, "But that's not like you!".
Places and groups that offer support for redefining or extending ourselves might be thought of as self-construction zones. This support is, I suspect, a large part of the power of entrepreneur networks - where people are experimenting with new businesses - colleges and universities - where people are experimenting with new fields of learning - and social networking groups - where people are experimenting with new ways of having fun (not that I mean to imply that business, learning and fun are mutually exclusive).
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
One corollary may be that every consequential stranger represents a lab partner, and the places we interact with consequential strangers represent living laboratories.
Some of the most productive living laboratories are coffeehouses, prototypical third places where people may be especially receptive to serendipitous encounters with consequential strangers. I first encountered Blau and Fingerman's book in my research into the social aspects of coffeehouses, much of which is summarized in my earlier post on conversation, community and culture at Starbucks. The book includes an entire chapter on Being Spaces: places "where a stranger can become a consequential stranger" that feature "an atmosphere and activities that inspire us to connect". The authors do talk about coffeehouses, of course, but extend the discussion of sociable spaces to include diners, banks, supermarkets, gyms and other physical environments that are seeking to integrate communal and commercial benefits by creating "human watering holes" that promote the "linger longer effect".
Toward the end of the chapter, the authors extend the notion of being spaces from the physical world to the online world. They profile Meetup.com, a web site where people can make plans online to connect offline with others based on shared interests and activities. Throughout the book, they make references to online communities and social networking sites. Interestingly, while they make numerous references to Facebook, it seems to me that Twitter is the online platform most conducive to the transformation of strangers into consequential strangers and acquaintances.
Others have suggested that Twitter is the virtual coffeeshop ... or that Twitter is more than just an offline coffeeshop. The opportunity to "follow" people on Twitter without requiring that they reciprocate, as is the case in most other social networking platforms (e.g., the bidirectional "friends" links in Facebook and "contacts" links in LinkedIn), makes it easier for people to progress through the "initiating" and "experimenting" stages of self-disclosure. For me, at least, Facebook is a place for friends, while Twitter is a place for cultivating connections to consequential strangers.
Jason Simon (@CoffeeShopChat), a friend with whom I first established a consequential acquaintanceship via Twitter, recently sent me a link to an eBook, Twittertales, a collection of short stories by "Conversation Agent" Valeria Maltoni. Each story - which are all longer than 140 characters, but less than two pages - represents a consequential acquaintanceship established via Twitter that led to "a friendship, project, career opportunity, [or] meaningful and purposeful new something". Although Maltoni doesn't use the term, I believe these are all compelling examples of what Blau and Fingerman call consequential strangers.
I will finish off with a relevant excerpt from of one of the stories. In "Mint, the Derby and a New Friend", Michael Winn shares an exchange on Twitter which leads to the realization that a person he had thought of as a "complete stranger" was really a consequential stranger who was transformed from an online "follower" (or, more precisely, "followee") into a real world friend through a simple act of kindness:
Here is [a] series of Twitter status updates from Friday between myself (TallyDigitalBiz) and RickOpp whom I have never met in real life, but follow on Twitter:
@RickOpp 2:33 PM May 1st from web: about to go on a mint run — essential for juleps for Derby Day and mojitos for post-golf @ poolside Sunday. @TallyDigitalBiz (2:54 PM May 1st from web in reply to RickOpp):let me know where you find the mint “goods” i went to three stores and struck out, had to settle for just the mixer: @RickOpp 3:33 PM May 1st (from TwitterBerry in reply to @TallyDigitalBiz): Tharpe Publix was out & produce guy said other Pubs may b out 2. Got last 2 pkgs @ Tharpe WinnDixie. Try calling others. @TallyDigitalBiz (3:39 PM May 1st from TweetDeck): Enjoying free WiFi and a black and white at Starbucks on North Monroe @RickOpp 3:46 PM MAY 1st via Direct Message Raise ur hand & wave right now.
At 3:46 PM on Friday May 1st while sitting in Starbucks on North Monroe, I hear a friendly voice ask; Are you Michael Winn? I reply, yes. Reaching out to shake hands, I am handed a small package of fresh mint. Stunned, I have just experienced the incredible power of connection between Twitter and real world friendships. RickOpp, who I personally know now as Rick Oppenheim, have a Twitter story that will be told over and over.
In less than 73 minutes, two complete strangers found a common interest. By the simple spirit of generosity and hospitality, two people now have a keystone to building something beyond Twitter updates, mint, and a 50 to 1 shot winning the Derby.
I am grateful for all of my circles of family and friends, offline and online, but on this day of Thanksgiving, I want to express my special appreciation for a small subset that I often call my speed dial friends: the set of my closest friends whose phone numbers I have programmed into the single-digit speed dial keys of my mobile phone (though now, with my iPhone, they are listed on the "Favorites" menu). These are the friends who I can - and do - regularly reach out to during my highest and lowest moments, who reliably help me regain a more balanced or centered perspective. They are friends who are there for me when all I need is a witness - someone will listen with empathy, and withhold judgment - or when I need an active adviser - someone who will share his or her insights, experience, strength and hope.
In some speed dial friend phone calls, I am able to discover solutions myself, simply through the act of articulating the challenge(s) I am facing, an adult version of a parent's exhortation to a toddler who is acting out to "use your words", or an oral version of the therapeutic value of writing about emotional experiences. Other times I need more active facilitation, and these friends are able to skillfully and compassionately help me elicit the hidden fears and needs that lie beneath the surface problem(s), and to separate out the data, judgments, feelings and wants. Many times, the revelation of the underlying causes of my pain shines a light on a clear path to move forward, but at other times, when the true way remains wholly lost, they are able to offer additional guidance toward the right path, or at least a path with heart.
My speed dial friends are diverse in some ways - the set includes both men and women, whose work spans different professions, and who live in different places - but most are close to my own age and socio-economic class. Many of my speed dial friends have gone through various forms of spiritual training, and all have experienced significant physical, emotional and/or spiritual crises. I suppose many people my age have experienced significant life challenges; what separates my speed dial friends may be the way they have worked through these challenges, and the wisdom they have gained through the process.
In fact, one of the common characteristics of all my speed dial friends is that they are uncommonly wise. Having recently revisited and reviewed some material on Maslow's hierarchy of needs (for my last post about Starbucks and community), I believe each of them is self-transcendent, e.g., they each "perceive unitively or sacrally" and are "much more consciously and deliberately metamotivated" and "more holistic about the world" than most of the people I encounter. I hope some of their wisdom is transmitted to me through each of our interactions.
I like to think of myself as being authentic, open and vulnerable in my face-to-face interactions as well as my online interactions with many people. I have worked out many issues simply through blogging about them, often aided by comments posted by others, and I sometimes find myself unexpectedly working out my issues while posting comments on others' blogs - a theme I blogged about in a post inspired by Don Miguel Ruiz's second agreement, don't take anything personally: commenting on commenting. I can't say, however, that I've worked out any significant issues via Twitter ... the 140-character limitation doesn't seem to allow for sufficient depth.
Speaking of depth, I feel like I've been going off the deep end on several of my recent posts, so I'm going to end this one here ... which may be a relief, and perhaps even a cause for giving thanks, for anyone who takes the time to read my blog posts. I'll note, with some sense of irony, that as far as I know, while all of my speed dial friends have mobile phones - in fact, I think nearly all of them now have iPhones - and computers, most of them don't read my blog with much regularity. So, on this day of Thanksgiving, I also want to extend my thanks to anyone who does take the time to read my posts, with special thanks to those who take the additional time to share their wisdom, insights, experience, strength and/or hope in comments on - or tweets about - the posts.
Twitter has become the ultimate (or at least current favorite) tool for addressing the fundamental human need to matter, to have a witness. The increasingly popular web service "for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of
quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" is, more than any tool before it, providing a platform through which we can all bear [and bare] witness to - or follow, in Twitter parlance - others, and others can bear witness to us. And the ability to project our witnesses and witnessees (or followers and followees) into a public sphere - the Twitterverse - adds interesting new dimensions to the satisfaction of this primal need to matter.
Naomi Pollack recently wrote a great Biznik article on Understanding Twitter: Why Twitter is Less Like Facebook and More Like Email
that generated more comments - 118, last time I checked - than any
other article I've seen on the Biznik site (I'm not sure how many
tweets it has generated). A few of those comments were mine, including one long one connecting Twittering and witnessing that prompted me to take the topic offline - or at least migrate it over to my "home" soapbox, this blog.
The comment centered on my favorite quote from the movie Shall We Dance [I just noticed the subtitle: "A new comedy about following your own lead"], uttered by the character Beverly Clark (played by Susan Sarandon):
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the
planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a
marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things,
the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it,
all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go
unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed
because I will be your witness'."
Although the quote is referring to marriage, I think the general human need to be noticed, to be witnessed, to matter, is behind much of the popularity in all social media, and is captured - or projected - most acutely in Twitter. I don't mean to equate the Twitter follower / followee relationship with marriage - indeed, with most Twitter users having multiple followers and/or followees, this would be akin to an extreme case of polygamy - but I do believe that this quote captures the spirit of the ambient intimacy afforded by Twitter (and intended by its designers).
T.S. Eliot, sums this up in a quote that is short enough to fit in a Twitter post (or "tweet"):
To be of importance to others is to be alive.
Of course, any medium that becomes sufficiently popular will have some who take it to the extreme; online social media just makes the pool of potential extremists much larger. Ashton Kutcher's recent "achievement" of gaming gaining over 1 million followers on Twitter is a noteworthy example. At first, I thought this was another example of someone becoming Internet famous (a la Julia Allison, an online[-only] variation of what I might call vacuous celebutantism - being famous for being famous - perhaps best represented by Paris Hilton). I had never heard of before - I don't follow him in social media or more traditional media - but in reading some of the reports about the 1 million Twitter follower milestone, I discovered he already enjoyed some measure of celebrity before this stunt. All the same, it strikes me as much ado about nothing.
I don't know what it means to be ambiently intimate with over a million people. In a quick perusal of Ashton Kutcher's tweetstream, I see that he discusses Paula Abdul, going trap shooting, going to dinner, riding horses drunk and forgetting things when he leaves the house ... nothing particularly remarkable (or retweetable) ... with the possible exception of this, somewhat ironic, tweet:
“Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.” -unknown
I'm reminded of the million dollar homepage, created by an enterprising 21-year-old college student (purportedly to help pay for his education), on which people could purchase any number of its 1 million pixels for $1 each. It was an interesting idea, and the million pixels were all sold, but I don't know how the money was actually used ... or how anyone else benefited from this achievement. I'm also reminded of Stephen Colbert's Wikipedia stunt, in which
he urged his viewers [/ witnesses / followers?] to edit the Wikipedia
entry to say that the population of elephants had tripled in the last 6
months. Of course, Stephen Colbert also engages his followers in many, more positive - or at least more benign (and definitely more amusing) - ways, e.g., offering his perspective on the "912 project" initiated by Glenn Beck of Fox News (what I would call a fear projection program ... and network), and urging his followers to join with him on his own "scare and balanced" 10.31 project. I wonder what great ideas Ashton Kutcher will rally his followers around.
My point? Just that the utopian rhetoric of social-networking aside,
the lesson of media history is that, regardless of the rise and fall of
media conglomerates, media is almost always about The Few profiting at
the expense of The Many's attention. To put that another way, The Many
are actually investing their mind share -- their currency in the
Attention Economy -- in a way that leads, for the most part, to the
enrichment of The Few. To put it rather cynically, a certain portion of
The Many are getting ripped off -- deprived of more and more of their
mind share for little or no gain (or possibly a big loss).
There's a parallel, of course, to the housing bubble. At some point it
suddenly dawns on millions of people that they've paid way too much for
way too little actual value. (If you're one of the people who has read
every one of Mr. Kutcher's more than 1,400 Twitter updates ... well,
just realize that you'll never, ever get that time back.)
The first time I went tango dancing I was too intimidated to get out on
the floor. I remembered another time I had stayed on the sidelines,
when the dancing began after a village wedding on the Greek island of
Crete. The fancy footwork confused me. “Don’t make a fool of yourself,”
I thought. “Just watch.”
Reading my mind, an older woman dropped out of the dance, sat down
beside me, and said, “If you join the dancing, you will feel foolish.
If you do not, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance?”
And, she said she had a secret for me. She whispered, “If you do not
dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think
well of you for trying.”
I was listening to NPR's Fresh Air this week, where Terry Gross was interviewing Gabriel Byrne who plays a psychoanalyst on the HBO series In Treatment, about the art of listening. Terry suggests that his character, Dr. Paul Weston, has "heroicized the act of listening". Byrne has some interesting insights to share on listening (a form of witnessing ... and, as noted in the StoryCorps series broadcast on NPR, an act of love):
We have a real need now, in these times, to be listened to. And I think when people identify with these characters, or reject them, they feel connected in a way that sometimes they don't in these fractured communities that we live in. ... Listening is one of the most profound compliments you can pay to another person - to truly listen - and to feel that you're heard is deeply fulfilling in a deep human way. ... Really, truly, profoundly listening is to be unaware of your self at a deep level.
I don't think anyone would accuse a Twitter user - especially one with an unnaturally large number of followers - as being "unaware of your self at a deep level" ... at least not in the context of posting a tweet (although another recent NPR story, Your Brain on Twitter, reported on a brain-computer interface that may eventually allow people to directly post tweets based on neural activity). In fact, I suspect deep listening - or deep thinking, reading or writing ... or depth of any kind - is the antithesis of the ambient intimacy promoted by Twitter.
I suspect that's what bothers me the most about Twitter and other manifestations of snack culture - the embrace and celebration of shallowness. I recognize that there as many uses
of Twitter as there are users, and that it really does represent a social media
platform for the masses ... unlike blogs. One of the reasons I think there are so many "dead blogs" is that so
few people are willing - or able - to take the time to write in much
depth ... and, as Nicholas Carr pointed out in his great Atlantic Monthly article on "Is Google Making Us Stupid?",
"the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle"
for him, and a growing proportion of other "readers". But, hey, anyone
can write - or read - a 140-character tweet!
In the interest of full disclosure [on this topic], I will note, in closing, that I am a Twitter user (@gumption). I was an early adopter of Twitter, and wrote about it in the context of attention, inattention, appreciation and depreciation at Foo Camp 2007. However, I soon grew weary of reading about what my ambient intimates were wearing, eating or thinking. It's not that I didn't care about the people I was following - in fact, I deeply cared (and still care) for some of them - I just didn't (and don't) care all that much about their activities of daily living. I stopped using Twitter entirely for about a year, but re-engaged with the tool during the closing months of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, when I was obsessed with staying on top of the latest developments in the most exciting political contest of my adult life. During the campaign, I wrote a few politically-oriented blog posts, but given my penchant for depth (or, at least, length) in posting blog entries, I wanted another platform for processing my thoughts, feelings and judgments about some of the actions taken by the candidates and their supporters ... a platform that I could use for shorter, more frequent venting. Twitter was just the ticket. I also started following some newly found (and appreciated) sources for news, such as NPR Politics, The Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo and Think Progress.
Since the end of the election, I've shifted my use of Twitter to [mostly] posting inspiring quotes that I encounter in my reading and listening (very few of which, I might add, are retweets, i.e., Twitter is not currently a major source of inspiration). I've added a Twitter widget to my blog (in the right column), and my primary motivation in using Twitter is to have the 5 most inspiring quotes I've encountered (interspersed with occasional short rants) appear on my blog. This helps compensate for the depressingly decreasing frequency of new blog entries. I've been surprised to learn that several people have recently begun following me (or, more properly, my tweets). I hope they are not offended by my lack of reciprocity: it's nothing personal, I just generally don't like following people on Twitter (for reasons noted above). In addition to not following people, I hardly ever check for replies (tweets with "@gumption").
Although many people seem to see and/or use Twitter as a platform for conversation, for me it's primarily a soapbox, a broadcasting narrowcasting platform. I prefer in-depth conversations ... like the kind I enjoy through the comments on this blog. In an earlier post, commenting on commenting, I noted that my blog posts and the comments people post on them represent projections of sorts (and, in so doing, I suspect I may have discouraged some comments - and commenters - that I very much enjoy). In a subsequent post, commenting on validation / validating comments, I admitted that "I really do appreciate (and feel validated by) comments from people who are in some way moved by what I write". In a way, those comments represent a public witnessing to what I've written (and my comments responding to others' comments represent a witnessing to what they've written).
So, it's not that I'm against witnessing or even the projection of witnessing ... it's just that I believe in depth and meaning ... and, frankly, I just don't find - or project - much of that on Twitter.
[Update, 11 May 2009: Prompted by Praveen's comment, I finally re-found a blog entry that danah boyd had posted a while back (December 2007) about valuing inefficiencies and unreliability that effectively elucidates my concern about depth in Twitter. It is the very ease with which anyone can post a tweet that diminishes the meaning of the medium.
The more efficient a means of communication is, the less it is valued. ... Social technologies that make things more efficient reduce the cost of
action. Yet, that cost is often an important signal. We want
communication to cost something because that cost signals that we value
the other person, that we value them enough to spare our time and
attention. Cost does not have to be about money. One of the things that
I've found to be consistently true with teens of rich and powerful
parents is that they'd give up many of the material goods in their
world to actually get some time and attention from their overly
scheduled parents. Time and attention are rare commodities in modern
life. Spending time with someone is a valuable signal that you care.
We launched our new proactive display application at Nokia Research Center Palo Alto two weeks ago. The application - provisionally called the Context, Content and Community Collage - situates online content in a shared physical context to foster a greater sense of community, representing a convergence of the core themes of our Context, Content and Community project and earlier instantiations of proactive displays. The content currently consists of photos that are slowly and semi-randomly distributed across one [or more] of the eight HyTek 46" LCD touchcomputers we've deployed around the lab.
We call these proactive displays because they sense who is nearby - in this case, via Bluetooth phone IDs - and respond - by selecting photos from public Flickr profiles that people have explicitly associated with those Bluetooth IDs. Although the displays support interactivity (people can move the photos or delete them via the touchscreen), their primary mode of "use" is for the system to proactively select and show photos when people draw near, without requiring any kind of direct interaction by those people.
This work extends earlier work on proactive displays in interesting and [hopefully] useful ways. An earlier installation of proactive displays at UbiComp 2003 used RFID tags and readers to sense who was nearby, drew content primarily from specially-created web-based profiles, and were only in use for three days (during the conference). The new proactive displays use Bluetooth phones for sensing, draw content from other sources such as Flickr, and will
be in use, well, for the foreseeable future (I hope (!)).
At the two week mark now, early responses - by people to the displays - is very encouraging, and our short term challenges are how to keep up with all the cool new features people are suggesting ... and how to effectively evaluate the impact these displays have on the people here. It's hard to believe the interns will only be here another few weeks, but I'm confident we'll [continue to] make good progress. Meanwhile, I posted some slides I presented at a workshop a few weeks ago at Communities & Technologies 2007 that outline some of our initial plans and goals, and will be posting some new slides after my upcoming talk at Yahoo! Research Berkeley Brain Jam on August 17.
[Update: Jeff Johnson posted a video he took of a proactive display in action during a recent visit to the NRC Palo Alto site, embedded below.]
We celebrated Jukka Soikkeli's 20+ years at Nokia Research Center at Cafe Fino in Palo Alto last night. Besides learning about Jukka's penchant for Corvettes, and some of his tangible and intangible contributions to (and through) Nokia, it was noted that Jukka is a prototypical Finn: a man of few words, the wisdom of which often becomes evident well after they are uttered. In keeping with this tradition, Jukka gave a rather short speech, although the wisdom (for me) was immediately apparent. One of the things he emphasized was the importance of passion as the key ingredient behind successes he'd witnessed (and promoted) in his years at Nokia. He encouraged those of us who will be continuing on with the firm to not pay so much attention to what people further up the chain are saying [I'm suddenly struck by the multiple interpretations one might associate with the "chains of command(s)"], but to follow our instincts when we're on to something we truly believe is important. [I've posted a separate entry on following my instincts in sharing my passion for Amarone last night on my wine blog]
The topic(s) of passion, instincts and authority provided an undercurrent to many of the discussions I had throughout the rest of the evening with several of my colleagues here at Nokia Research Center Palo Alto. I believe everyone believes in the power of passion, but some of the people who have been with NRC for a long period of time have experienced or witnessed changes that I've heard variously described with terms ranging from gentle breezes to earthquakes. While we are regularly encouraged to take risks here, it's very challenging to take risks in an environment that is not perceived as offering a high level of trust and support. NRC Palo Alto is a new lab, and as such we are co-creating a new culture; as we develop and apply our skills in technical areas, we need to consciously cultivate the kinds of social and community support that will offer the scaffolding needed for bold[er] actions ... and to recognize that we are all leaders in this effort.
I wrote recently about how I feel I'm really coming alive again, after having lived and worked through some winds of change and groundshaking experiences myself (in both the personal and professional dimensions). I still feel very much the new kid on the block, having been here just
over 6 months, and coupled with my natural naivete and unbridled
optimism, I have high hopes about our prospects for creating a high
trust environment that will encourage the kinds of risks we'll need to
take in order to succeed.
Mashing up the wisdom of Jukka with a quote often attributed to Harold Thurman Whitman:
Don’t ask yourself what the world Nokia needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world Nokia needs is people who have come alive.
I was talking with some colleagues this morning about recognizing and resolving misunderstandings and [other] conflicts. I mentioned a few different perspectives and processes that I've used, and sent along some references. I've blogged about two of them before: the four agreements and love and logic. I was surprised to discover I'd never blogged about a third process, nor could I discover any other references for it on the web. It is the clearing process I learned as part of the Mankind Project.
The core of the process is distinguishing between data, judgments, feelings and wants, and recognizing that each person is simply a mirror for me (and I am simply a mirror for others). When I feel a "charge" about something that someone has said (or not said) or done (or not done), I can clear that charge by recognizing, articulating and processing four dimensions of the energy I'm feeling about the [in]action:
Data: what are the observable facts involved in the situation: things that have been said or done (or not said or not done), by me or the other person(s)?
Judgments: what inferences do I draw from those data, e.g., how do I judge the other(s), and/or how do I judge that he/she/they judge me?
Feelings: how do I feel about those judgments and data, i.e., glad, sad, mad or afraid?
Wants: given these feelings, judgments and data, what is it I really want (for myself)?
Learning how to distinguish effectively between data and judgments is a challenging (and ongoing) process. I often think of negative judgments such as "you don't respect me" or "you don't take me seriously" as data, but increasingly recognize them as judgments. Getting clear about the actual feelings is also challenging, as the surface level anger I sometimes feel is often a mask for fear. Early on, my wants often revolved around what I wanted from another person (e.g., "I want you to love me") and it is only with persistent practice that I can better realize the value of focusing on wants for myself ("I want to love myself ... regardless of whether I judge that anyone else loves me").
I've omitted a step from the list above, in which I may reflect on how the charge I feel is really about me (radical personal responsibility), and [when appropriate] to go back to the first time I felt the feelings and judgments that are creating the charge. This often occurs between the feelings and wants steps, but I can't think of a good one-word description for this step. It typically results in yet another example of "lessons are repeated as often as necessary".
The framework is powerful, and I've often applied it outside of MKP contexts. I was surprised that googling for "data judgments feelings wants" did not turn up anything I recognized as relevant to MKP (and hope that I'm not violating some principle in revealing the process here). However, the search turned up some interesting items, e.g.,
The Four Preferences: Do we rely on our five senses and want concrete, practical data to work with? ... Most decisions involve some Thinking and some Feeling. ...
ISTJ Personal Growth: An ISTJ's feeling of success depends upon being able to use their ... Their hyper-vigilant judgments about the rationality and competence of others may be a ...
As I've noted before, I'm an ENFP ... and although I haven't noted it before, my wife, Amy, is an ISTJ, and so this google-based serendipitous discovery of potential differences in perspectives regarding judgments, feelings and wants is rather illuminating (in my judgment).
There appears to be rising indignation in Digg nation over the perception that some users have undue influence in the ranking of articles posted in this popular "user driven social content website" (cf. articles at InformationWeek, Wired Blog, and Wikipedia, the last of which also notes that "diggnation" was one of the names originally considered for the site). Any registered Digg user can add an article to the Digg news pool, and any Digg user can rate that article: digg it, which increases the rank of that article in the pool, or bury it (along with the justification: duplicate, spam, wrong topic, inaccurate, or lame), which decreases it's rank. Articles that receive enough diggs appear on the front page, and their placement on the page is based, in part, on Digg user rankings (other, undisclosed, elements are included in the Digg ranking, presumably including recency of votes). Users can also blog about, email or comment on articles, as well as rate others' comments with a thumbs up or thumbs down (and the ranking algorithm may also take some of these factors into account). And, users are encouraged to invite their friends to join ... which is, in part, the source of the current controversy.
In a recent blog post, Digg the rigged?, jp shared some observations, statistics and analysis about how a small group of Digg users was responsible for a large number of front page articles (Jacob Gower had earlier raised similar issues on ForeverGeek). jp reports patterns of digging by a small group of friends that quickly promote articles up the front page, and while he acknowledges that Digg is a "true democracy", he notes that, in practice, a "small aristocracy" appears to wield disproportionate influence over the system.
The Digg user interface includes a summary of friends' activity over the past 48 hours, including counts of the stories friends have dugg, agreed on (stories that more than one friend dugg), dugg upcoming, commented on and submitted. [The screenshot from the left is from Wikipedia -- I don't have any [Digg] friends.] It's easy to imagine how friends might naturally check to see what their friends have dugg, and if they share similar interests, they would be likely to digg the same articles, so this disproportionate influence may simply be an innocent instance of the network effect ... or, more specifically, Metcalfe's law, which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its members.
However, it's also to imagine how a group of friends may intentionally "game" the system. I'm reminded of an incredibly insightful presentation on Putting the Fun in Functional, given at eTech 2006 by Amy Jo Kim, Creative Director at Shufflebrain, that I read about at we-make-money-not-art. Amy Jo highlights five key elements that can make online games engaging to the point of addiction -- collecting, earning points, feedback, exchanges and customization -- and notes how many online social networking services (e.g., MySpace), exhibit all of these elements ... and thus may be considered games, broadly speaking (contributing to my own sense of the growing pervasiveness and permeability of games worlds). Digg exhibits these five elements, and so it would hardly be surprising if some users -- and groups of users -- would make a game of promoting news and infotainment.
Kevin Rose recently announced some changes in the Digg ranking algorithm that are intended to promote diversity, through differential weighting of diggers' influence based on how diverse their diggs appear to be. I see this as an attempt to shift from a pure democracy to something more of a meritocracy, where behavior deemed undesireable is penalized, whether that behavior is intentional or uninentional. This shift may address some of the concerns, however, I suspect that if the gaming is, indeed, intentional, then the gamers will find a way to accommodate this -- perhaps a network of networks of friends that can help each other diversify via pseudo-random diggs.
Years ago, my colleagues and I at Accenture Technology Labs confronted similar issues regarding how best to allocate influence over a shared resource. We were designing a system, MusicFX, to enable people to influence the music played in the fitness center while they were exercising. The system offered fitness center members the opportunity to create a profile of their musical preferences based on a 5-point scale, indicating whether they love, like, don't care, dislike or hate each of 91 different genres of music (via DMX). As each person entered the fitness center to workout, they badged in to identify themselves, and their preferences were added to the pool from which the "best" music would be selected.
We witnessed some gaming of the system shortly after deploying the system at the Accenture Technology Park fitness center (where it continued to run daily for over 4 years, until Accenture sold the building in 2001). On the first day, one user used the interface kiosk we setup in the center to change his rating of the genre that was currently selected from "don't care" to "hate" (similar to the "bury it" rating in Digg). This had the effect of a veto, given the way we had configured the algorithm weights at the time, and the station was immediately changed. The user repeated this process a few more times until he had vetoed the stations he didn't like, and the algorithm had settled on a station he did like; then he went back to working out again. That night, we changed the settings to ensure that no one could wield veto power. The next day, this user called his friends in the fitness center over to demonstrate his new-found veto power, and was rather chagrined to discover that the system no longer responded so instantly and dramatically to his preference changes.
We considered a variety of elaborate weighting schemes to try to achieve greater diversity, both respect to the different musical preferences of the members and the variety in music genres selected. We setlled on simply introducing a weighted random selection operator that would select one of the most popular genres, but not [always] the top rated one; this provided greater diversity without the additional complexity in the algorithm -- or in the models users had about how the system worked. At one point, in our near-obsessive concern over fairness, we went so far as to design a market-based version of MusicFX, where we setup virtual emotional bank accounts for each user, and devised a system through which virtual money would be transferred from the accounts of users who liked or loved the music that was being played to the accounts of users who disliked or hated the music being played. We instituted regular bidding cycles in which virtual agents for the users would bid on music genres, where the cost of the genre was based on its popularity; over time, people who had outlier preferences would eventually accrue enough capital to outbid the people with more "normal" preferences, and get to hear their music. In simulations, we found that the market-based version resulted in a more equitable distribution of "wealth" (where wealth = listening to music you like or love) as compared to the non-randomized regular version, but when the smidgen of randomness was added to the regular version, there was not much difference in equitability. When we considered the potential negative impact on the overall fitness center population to occasionally hearing genres that most people hated, we decided not to implement a real-life trial of the market-based system ... the trade-off between conducting good science and maintaining good service (for a deployed system).
Anyhow, I mention all of this, not only because MusicFX was one of my favorite projects (I could spend pages and pages telling more stories about our experiences with the system), but also because I think some of those lessons may apply to the current challenges Digg faces in reallocating influence among its population of users. I think that if they overly complicate the model, it may turn off some of their regular users, who won't know why their diggs don't seem to count for much anymore, and anyone who is intent on gaming the system will find a way to do so. The changes run the risk of harming the "innocent" without accomplishing the goal of effectively deterring the "enemy", though Digg nation would certainly not be the only nation in which ineffective overreactions to low probability threats are taking place.
A healthy community is like a dance, with different dancers stepping forward to take the lead at different times, and others following those leads. Even followers are leaders, as we lead ourselves along paths or sequences illuminated by those who we consciously or unconsciously agree to allow lead us. A leader creates a safe space within which others can more effectively recognize and express their magnificence.
These are some of the insights that emerged for me over the weekend, as I participated in a leadership training course (LT1) offered by the Mankind Project. As with other MKP trainings in which I've participated, I don't want to reveal the specifics of any of the exercises -- as that may diminish the impact for any future trainees -- but will elaborate further on some of the results (for me).
The notion of leadership as a dance arose as I noticed that all of the participants are leaders[-in-training], and recognized that if none of us was willing to step back at times -- and allow others to step forward -- little would be accomplished. As I became more conscious of this dance, and who was stepping forward in different contexts, I ruminated on what distinguishes a leader, and wanted to be able to encompass a range of leaders from Ghandi to Hitler. I arrived at the following definition of leadership:
Leadership is the modeling and communication of passionate commitment to an inspiring goal, principle or path.
In the Prelude to Oriah's book, The Dance, she asks some provocative and insightful questions, including:
What if it truly doesn't matter what you do but how you do whatever you do?
What if you knew that the impulse to move in a way that creates beauty in the world will arise from deep within and guide you every time you simply pay attention and wait?
These help me remember that it doesn't necessarily matter whether I am leading others, but that in leading my self, I stay fully conscious and true to my self, and that it is in trusting my own instincts that I can lead my self -- and others -- most authentically.
I've written about Dee Hock's inspiring principles on Chaordic Leadership before. His insights into power, listening and judgment repeatedly came to mind over the weekend, and his prescription for leadership was resonating deeply for me:
Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.
I also had occasion to practice his advice for recognizing, admitting, correcting, learning from and rising above mistakes over the weekend, as I became painfully aware of how much of my father's patterns of leadership in marriage and parenthood I have adopted. Although my father had many wonderful and admirable qualities -- many of which I hope I am perpetuating -- there are other characteristic that I have unconsciously adopted. I renewed my commitment to making mistakes wakefully.
Dan Oestreich, an inspiring leadership coach (and friend), has shared many insights into the gold and shadows of leadership in his Unfolding Leadership blog. Many of them were reverberating through me during the weekend. Perhaps most poignantly, I was ever more aware of the path on which he has helped me embark toward my unfolding radiance. I will invoke yet another element of Oestreichian inspiration, and apply the representation of a möbius strip, which I first used in ruminating on preaching what I want to practice, to the paradox of leadership (and followership):
There were other sources of wisdom invoked by the leaders of the leadership training, including
For the moment, however, I am content to follow the beat of my own, inner drummer, dancing with the shadows and gold that were illuminated for me over the course of the weekend.
There appears to be rising indignation in 
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