Thought Shrapnel

Today’s a non-work day for me but, after reviewing resource-centric social media sites as part of my Moodle work yesterday, I rediscovered the joy of StumbleUpon.

That took me to lots of interesting sites which, if you haven’t used the service before, become more relevant to your tastes as time goes on if you use the thumbs up / thumbs down tool.

I came across this Random Street View site which I’ve a sneaking suspicion I’ve seen before. Not only is it a fascinating way to ‘visit’ lesser-known parts of the world, it also shows the scale of Google’s Street View programme.

The teacher in me imagines using this as the starting point for some kind of project. It could be a writing prompt, you could use it to randomly find somewhere to do some research on, or it could even be an art project.

Great stuff.

Source: Random Street View

“To truly appreciate something, you must confine yourself to it. There’s a certain level of joy and meaning that you reach in life only when you’ve spent decades investing in a single relationship, a single craft, a single career. And you cannot achieve those decades of investment without rejecting the alternatives.”

(Mark Manson)

This post by Daniel Gross, partner in a well-known startup accelerator is written for an audience of people in tech looking to build their next company. However, I think there’s more widely-applicable takeaways from it.

Gross mentions the following:

1. If you want to make something grand, don’t start with grand ambitions
2. Focus on the repeat offenders
3. Tell your friends what you’re doing
4. Make sure you enjoy thinking about it
5. Get in the habit of simplifying
6. Validate your market
7. Launch uncomfortably quickly

To explain and unpack, point two is getting at those things that you think about every so often, those things you're curious about. Points six and seven are, of course, focused on putting products in a marketplace, but I think there's a way to think about this from a different perspective.

Take someone who’s looking for the next thing to do. Perhaps they’re dissatisfied with their current line of work, and so want to pursue opportunities in a different sector. It’s useful for them to look at what’s ‘normal’ (for example, teachers and lawyers work long hours). Once you’ve done your due diligence, it’s worth just getting started. Go and do something to set yourself on the road.

If there’s anything you remember from the post, let it be these two words: perpetual motion. Just Do It. Make little steps every day. One day that’ll add up to the next Google, Apple or Facebook.

...or, indeed, a role that you much prefer to the one you're performing now!

Source: Daniel Gross

Someone described the act of watching Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, testifying before Congress as “low level self-harm”. In this post, Joe Edelman explains why:

Zuckerberg and the politicians—they imagine privacy as if it were a software feature. They imagine a system has “good privacy” if it’s consensual and configurable; that is, if people explicitly agree to something, and understand what they agree to, that’s somehow “good for privacy”. Even usually-sophisticated-analysts like Zeynep Tufekci are missing all the nuance here.

Giving the example of a cocktail party where you're talking to a friend about something confidential and someone else you don't know comes along, Edelman introduces this definition of privacy:

Privacy, n. Maintaining a sense of what to show in each environment; Locating social spaces for aspects of yourself which aren’t ready for public display, where you can grow those parts of yourself until they can be more public.

I really like this definition, especially the part around "locating social spaces for aspects of yourself which aren't ready for public display". I think educators in particular should note this.

Referencing his HSC1 Curriculum which is the basis for workshops he runs for staff from major tech companies, Edelman includes a graphic on the structural features of privacy. I’ll type this out here for the sake of legibility:

• Relational depth (close friends / acquaintances / strangers / anonymous / mixed)
• Presentation (crafted / basic / disheveled)
• Connectivity (transient / pairwise / whole-group)
• Stakes (high / low)
• Status levels (celebrities / rank / flat)
• Reliance (interdependent / independent)
• Time together (none / brief / slow)
• Audience size (big / small / unclear)
• Audience loyalty (loyal / transient / unclear)
• Participation (invited / uninvited)
• Pretext (shared goal / shared values / shared topic / many goals (exchange) / emergent)
• Social Gestures (like / friend / follow / thank / review / comment / join / commit / request / buy)

The post is, of course, both an expert response to the zeitgeist, and a not-too-subtle hint that people should take his course. I'm sure Edelman goes into more depth about each of these structural features in his workshops.

Nevertheless, and even without attending his sessions (which I’m sure are great) there’s value in thinking through each of these elements for the work I’m doing around the MoodleNet project. I’ve probably done some thinking around 70% of these, but it’s great to have a list that helps me organise my thinking a little more.

Source: Joe Edelman

Right now, I’m splitting my time between being employed (four days per week with Moodle), my consultancy and the co-op which I co-founded (one day per week combined). In other words, I have more than one income stream, as this article suggests:

Having multiple income streams can come in handy if one income stream dries up. After two years in business, I've learned that you'll always have peaks and valleys. Sometimes everyone is paying you, and sometimes your lead pipeline can look barren. I started a marketing and PR agency and spent that first year working my startup muscles: planning, strategizing, defining markets. If I hit a slow month, I kept working those same exercises. While it helped grow my business, I sometimes needed an intellectual rest day.

People who have only ever been employed (which was me until three years ago!) wonder about the insecurity of consulting. But the truth is that every occupation these days is precarious — it's just hidden if you're employed.

This is a short article, but it's useful as both a call-to-action and to reinforce existing practices:

Developing a secondary income stream is easier than you may think. Think about how you like to spend your off hours and research potential markets. Maybe you're really good at explaining something that is a difficult concept for other people--create a course on an on-demand training site like Udemy or Skillshare.

In general, we think more people are paying attention to us than they actually are. Your first endeavour doesn't have to set the world on fire, be a smash hit, or a bestseller. The important thing is to get out there and provide something that people want.

Through volunteering, putting myself out there, and developing my network, I haven't had to apply for a job since 2010. Also, with my consultancy, it's all inbound stuff. Some call it luck but, as Thomas Edison is quoted as saying:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

I'd add that knowledge work doesn't look like work. But that's a whole other post.

Source: Inc.

Right now, I’m splitting my time between being employed (four days per week with Moodle), my consultancy and the co-op which I co-founded (one day per week combined). In other words, I have more than one income stream, as this article suggests:

Having multiple income streams can come in handy if one income stream dries up. After two years in business, I've learned that you'll always have peaks and valleys. Sometimes everyone is paying you, and sometimes your lead pipeline can look barren. I started a marketing and PR agency and spent that first year working my startup muscles: planning, strategizing, defining markets. If I hit a slow month, I kept working those same exercises. While it helped grow my business, I sometimes needed an intellectual rest day.

People who have only ever been employed (which was me until three years ago!) wonder about the insecurity of consulting. But the truth is that every occupation these days is precarious — it's just hidden if you're employed.

This is a short article, but it's useful as both a call-to-action and to reinforce existing practices:

Developing a secondary income stream is easier than you may think. Think about how you like to spend your off hours and research potential markets. Maybe you're really good at explaining something that is a difficult concept for other people--create a course on an on-demand training site like Udemy or Skillshare.

In general, we think more people are paying attention to us than they actually are. Your first endeavour doesn't have to set the world on fire, be a smash hit, or a bestseller. The important thing is to get out there and provide something that people want.

Through volunteering, putting myself out there, and developing my network, I haven't had to apply for a job since 2010. Also, with my consultancy, it's all inbound stuff. Some call it luck but, as Thomas Edison is quoted as saying:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

I'd add that knowledge work doesn't look like work. But that's a whole other post.

Source: Inc.

This richly-illustrated post uses as a touchstone the revolution in art that took place in the 17th century with Johannes Vermeer’s The Little Street. The painting (which can be seen above) moves away from epic and religious symbolism, and towards the everyday.

Unfortunately, and particularly with celebrity lifestyles on display everywhere, we seem to be moving back to pre-17th century approaches:

Today – in modern versions of epic, aristocratic, or divine art – adverts and movies continually explain to us the appeal of things like sports cars, tropical island holidays, fame, first-class air travel and expansive limestone kitchens. The attractions are often perfectly real. But the cumulative effect is to instill in us the idea that a good life is built around elements that almost no one can afford. The conclusion we too easily draw is that our lives are close to worthless.

A good life isn't one where you get everything you want; that would, in fact, that would be form of torture. Just ask King Midas. Instead, it's made up of lots of little things, as this post outlines:

There is immense skill and true nobility involved in bringing up a child to be reasonably independent and balanced; maintaining a good-enough relationship with a partner over many years despite areas of extreme difficulty; keeping a home in reasonable order; getting an early night; doing a not very exciting or well-paid job responsibly and cheerfully; listening properly to another person and, in general, not succumbing to madness or rage at the paradox and compromises involved in being alive.

As ever, a treasure trove of wisdom and I encourage you to explore further the work of the School of Life.

Source: The Book of Life

This richly-illustrated post uses as a touchstone the revolution in art that took place in the 17th century with Johannes Vermeer’s The Little Street. The painting (which can be seen above) moves away from epic and religious symbolism, and towards the everyday.

Unfortunately, and particularly with celebrity lifestyles on display everywhere, we seem to be moving back to pre-17th century approaches:

Today – in modern versions of epic, aristocratic, or divine art – adverts and movies continually explain to us the appeal of things like sports cars, tropical island holidays, fame, first-class air travel and expansive limestone kitchens. The attractions are often perfectly real. But the cumulative effect is to instill in us the idea that a good life is built around elements that almost no one can afford. The conclusion we too easily draw is that our lives are close to worthless.

A good life isn't one where you get everything you want; that would, in fact, that would be form of torture. Just ask King Midas. Instead, it's made up of lots of little things, as this post outlines:

There is immense skill and true nobility involved in bringing up a child to be reasonably independent and balanced; maintaining a good-enough relationship with a partner over many years despite areas of extreme difficulty; keeping a home in reasonable order; getting an early night; doing a not very exciting or well-paid job responsibly and cheerfully; listening properly to another person and, in general, not succumbing to madness or rage at the paradox and compromises involved in being alive.

As ever, a treasure trove of wisdom and I encourage you to explore further the work of the School of Life.

Source: The Book of Life

The latest issue of the newsletter hit inboxes earlier today!

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The latest issue of the newsletter hit inboxes earlier today!

💥 Read

🔗 Subscribe

“The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour — your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.”
(Karl Marx)

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king."

(J.R.R. Tolkien)

Benedict Evans is a venture capitalist who focuses on technology companies. He’s a smart guy with some important insights, and I thought his recent post about the ‘death of the newsfeed’ on social networks was particularly useful.

He points out that it’s pretty inevitable that the average person will, over the course of a few years, add a few hundred ‘friends’ to their connections on any given social network. Let’s say you’re connected with 300 people, and they all share five things each day. That’s 1,500 things you’ll be bombarded with, unless the social network does something about it.

This overload means it now makes little sense to ask for the ‘chronological feed’ back. If you have 1,500 or 3,000 items a day, then the chronological feed is actually just the items you can be bothered to scroll through before giving up, which can only be 10% or 20% of what’s actually there. This will be sorted by no logical order at all except whether your friends happened to post them within the last hour. It’s not so much chronological in any useful sense as a random sample, where the randomizer is simply whatever time you yourself happen to open the app. ’What did any of the 300 people that I friended in the last 5 years post between 16:32 and 17:03?’ Meanwhile, giving us detailed manual controls and filters makes little more sense - the entire history of the tech industry tells us that actual normal people would never use them, even if they worked. People don't file.

So we end up with algorithmic feeds, which is an attempt by social networks to ensure that you see the stuff that you deem important. It is, of course, an almost impossible mission.

[T]here are a bunch of problems around getting the algorithmic newsfeed sample ‘right’, most of which have been discussed at length in the last few years. There are lots of incentives for people (Russians, game developers) to try to manipulate the feed. Using signals of what people seem to want to see risks over-fitting, circularity and filter bubbles. People’s desires change, and they get bored of things, so Facebook has to keep changing the mix to try to reflect that, and this has made it an unreliable partner for everyone from Zynga to newspapers. Facebook has to make subjective judgements about what it seems that people want, and about what metrics seem to capture that, and none of this is static or even in in principle perfectible. Facebook surfs user behaviour.

Evans then goes on to raise the problem of what you want to see may be different from what your friends want you to see. So people solve the problem of algorithmic feeds not showing them what they really want by using messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram to interact individually with people or small groups.

The problem with that, though?

The catch is that though these systems look like they reduce sharing overload, you really want group chats. And lots of groups. And when you have 10 WhatsApp groups with 50 people in each, then people will share to them pretty freely. And then you think ‘maybe there should be a screen with a feed of the new posts in all of my groups. You could call it a ‘news feed’. And maybe it should get some intelligence, to show the posts you care about most...

So, to Evans mind (and I'm tempted to agree with him) we're in a never-ending spiral. The only way I can see out of it is user education, particularly around owning one's own data and IndieWeb approaches.

Source: Benedict Evans

Leadership is a funny thing. There’s lots written about it, but, at the end of the day, it’s all about relationships.

I’ve worked for some great leaders, and some shitty managers. This Harvard Business Review article describes the usual three ways those in positions of power get things wrong:

The key derailment characteristics of bad managers are well documented and fall into three broad behavioral categories: (1) “moving away behaviors,” which create distance from others through hyper-emotionality, diminished communication, and skepticism that erodes trust; (2) “moving against behaviors,” which overpower and manipulate people while aggrandizing the self; and (3) “moving toward behaviors,” which include being ingratiating, overly conforming, and reluctant to take chances or stand up for one’s team.

But there's another, potentially even worse, category:

Absentee leaders are people in leadership roles who are psychologically absent from them. They were promoted into management, and enjoy the privileges and rewards of a leadership role, but avoid meaningful involvement with their teams. Absentee leadership resembles the concept of rent-seeking in economics — taking value out of an organization without putting value in. As such, they represent a special case of laissez-faire leadership, but one that is distinguished by its destructiveness.

The problem with absentee leaders, as the article explains, is that they rarely get weeded out. There's always more pressing problems to deal with. So the people who report to them exist in a professional feedback vacuum.

The chances are good, however, that your organization is unaware of its absentee leaders, because they specialize in flying under the radar by not doing anything that attracts attention. Nonetheless, the adhesiveness of their negative impact may be slowly harming the company.

If leadership is about relationships, then the worst leaders are those who show poor emotional intelligence, don't invest in building trust, and provide little constructive feedback. If you're in a position of leadership, it's worth thinking about this from the point of view of others who interact with you on a regular basis...

Source: Harvard Business Review

It’s good to see Cal Newport, whose book Deep Work I found unexpectedly great last year, add a bit more nuance to his position on social media:

The young progressives grew up in a time when platform monopolies like Facebook were so dominant that they seemed inextricably intertwined into the fabric of the internet. To criticize social media, therefore, was to criticize the internet’s general ability to do useful things like connect people, spread information, and support activism and expression.

The older progressives, however, remember the internet before the platform monopolies. They were concerned to observe a small number of companies attempt to consolidate much of the internet into their for-profit, walled gardens.

To them, social media is not the internet. It was instead a force that was co-opting the internet — including the powerful capabilities listed above — in ways that would almost certainly lead to trouble.

Newport has started talking about the difference between ‘social media’ and the ‘social internet’:

The social internet describes the general ways in which the global communication network and open protocols known as “the internet” enable good things like connecting people, spreading information, and supporting expression and activism.

Social media, by contrast, describes the attempt to privatize these capabilities by large companies within the newly emerged algorithmic attention economy, a particularly virulent strain of the attention sector that leverages personal data and sophisticated algorithms to ruthlessly siphon users’ cognitive capital.

If you’d asked people in 2005, they would have said that there was no way that people would leave MySpace in favour of a different platform.

People like Facebook. But if you could offer them a similar alternative that stripped away the most unsavory elements of Zuckerberg’s empire (perhaps funded by a Wikipedia-style nonprofit collective, or a modest subscription fee), many would happily jump ship.

Indeed.

Following up with another this post this week, Newport writes:

My argument is that you can embrace the social internet without having to become a “gadget” inside the algorithmic attention economy machinations of the social media conglomerates. As noted previously, I think this is the right answer for those who are fed up with the dehumanizing aspects of social media, but are reluctant to give up altogether on the potential of the internet to bring people together.

He suggests several ways for this to happen:

• Approach #1: The Slow Social Media Philosophy
• Approach #2: Own Your Own Domain

This is, in effect, the IndieWeb approach. However, I still think that Newport and others who work in universities may a special case. As Austin Kleon notes, there's already built-in ways for your career to advance in academia. Others have to show their work...

What I don’t see being discussed is that as we collectively mature in our use of social media is that we’re likely to use different networks for different purposes. Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like try to force us into a single online identity. It’s OK to look and act differently when you’re around different people in different environments.

Source: Cal Newport (On Social Media and Its Discontents / Beyond #DeleteFacebook: More Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media)

It’s good to see Cal Newport, whose book Deep Work I found unexpectedly great last year, add a bit more nuance to his position on social media:

The young progressives grew up in a time when platform monopolies like Facebook were so dominant that they seemed inextricably intertwined into the fabric of the internet. To criticize social media, therefore, was to criticize the internet’s general ability to do useful things like connect people, spread information, and support activism and expression.

The older progressives, however, remember the internet before the platform monopolies. They were concerned to observe a small number of companies attempt to consolidate much of the internet into their for-profit, walled gardens.

To them, social media is not the internet. It was instead a force that was co-opting the internet — including the powerful capabilities listed above — in ways that would almost certainly lead to trouble.

Newport has started talking about the difference between ‘social media’ and the ‘social internet’:

The social internet describes the general ways in which the global communication network and open protocols known as “the internet” enable good things like connecting people, spreading information, and supporting expression and activism.

Social media, by contrast, describes the attempt to privatize these capabilities by large companies within the newly emerged algorithmic attention economy, a particularly virulent strain of the attention sector that leverages personal data and sophisticated algorithms to ruthlessly siphon users’ cognitive capital.

If you’d asked people in 2005, they would have said that there was no way that people would leave MySpace in favour of a different platform.

People like Facebook. But if you could offer them a similar alternative that stripped away the most unsavory elements of Zuckerberg’s empire (perhaps funded by a Wikipedia-style nonprofit collective, or a modest subscription fee), many would happily jump ship.

Indeed.

Following up with another this post this week, Newport writes:

My argument is that you can embrace the social internet without having to become a “gadget” inside the algorithmic attention economy machinations of the social media conglomerates. As noted previously, I think this is the right answer for those who are fed up with the dehumanizing aspects of social media, but are reluctant to give up altogether on the potential of the internet to bring people together.

He suggests several ways for this to happen:

• Approach #1: The Slow Social Media Philosophy
• Approach #2: Own Your Own Domain

This is, in effect, the IndieWeb approach. However, I still think that Newport and others who work in universities may a special case. As Austin Kleon notes, there's already built-in ways for your career to advance in academia. Others have to show their work...

What I don’t see being discussed is that as we collectively mature in our use of social media is that we’re likely to use different networks for different purposes. Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like try to force us into a single online identity. It’s OK to look and act differently when you’re around different people in different environments.

Source: Cal Newport (On Social Media and Its Discontents / Beyond #DeleteFacebook: More Thoughts on Embracing the Social Internet Over Social Media)

I subscribe to the free version of Stowe Boyd’s Work Futures newsletter. He’s jumped around platforms a bit when I think he’d be better off charging a smaller amount for a larger audience on Patreon.

Boyd’s latest post talks about how he approaches his work, a subject I find endlessly fascinating.

I basically employ three styles of work journaling:

1. On a daily basis, I plan and track my work with the ‘1, 2, 3′ technique.
2. On a weekly basis, I plan and track using the ‘must, should, might’ technique.
3. On ‘agenda’ projects, I plan and track using the ‘do, do, do’ technique. I use the term ‘agenda’ to distinguish with the short-range calendar orientation of daily and weekly projects. This will make more sense, later on.

Breaking down that '1, 2, 3' technique, he notes that (like me) he's realised there's only a certain amount you can sustainably get done in one day:

Specifically, I have learned that I can do the following:

1. One major activity, such as working for a few hours on client research, or writing for a few hours. This is the ‘1′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.
2. Two medium sized activities, like a 45 minute phone call, or doing an hour-long webinar. This is the ‘2′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.
3. Three short activities, taking less than 45 minutes. This is the ‘3′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.

I'm not sure how many hours per day Boyd works, but I bet it varies. What I like about this approach is that having a 'major activity' that you check off each day makes you feel like you've achieved something. A day full of short and medium-sized activities feels somewhat wasted.

Source: Work Futures

I subscribe to the free version of Stowe Boyd’s Work Futures newsletter. He’s jumped around platforms a bit when I think he’d be better off charging a smaller amount for a larger audience on Patreon.

Boyd’s latest post talks about how he approaches his work, a subject I find endlessly fascinating.

I basically employ three styles of work journaling:

1. On a daily basis, I plan and track my work with the ‘1, 2, 3′ technique.
2. On a weekly basis, I plan and track using the ‘must, should, might’ technique.
3. On ‘agenda’ projects, I plan and track using the ‘do, do, do’ technique. I use the term ‘agenda’ to distinguish with the short-range calendar orientation of daily and weekly projects. This will make more sense, later on.

Breaking down that '1, 2, 3' technique, he notes that (like me) he's realised there's only a certain amount you can sustainably get done in one day:

Specifically, I have learned that I can do the following:

1. One major activity, such as working for a few hours on client research, or writing for a few hours. This is the ‘1′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.
2. Two medium sized activities, like a 45 minute phone call, or doing an hour-long webinar. This is the ‘2′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.
3. Three short activities, taking less than 45 minutes. This is the ‘3′ in the ‘1, 2, 3′.

I'm not sure how many hours per day Boyd works, but I bet it varies. What I like about this approach is that having a 'major activity' that you check off each day makes you feel like you've achieved something. A day full of short and medium-sized activities feels somewhat wasted.

Source: Work Futures

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

(Mark Twain)

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

(Mark Twain)