Perhaps it’s the way my brain is wired, but I can’t help but see synergies everywhere. In this case, it’s in some of the books I’ve been reading and how they include nuggets that seem to speak to other stuff I’m doing.
Take, for example, “Thuderstruck ” by Erik Larson. Part of the story is about Marconi and the development of a functional wireless communication system. While I have to admit I haven’t cross-checked the facts in the book, Larson lays out an interesting interplay between the “practical” and “theoretical” research into the technology.
The connection I see is in the playing out of a similar debate within the Data Portability camps. On the one hand there’s the theory of portability from the semantic web, linked data and identity groups. They are similar to Sir Oliver Lodge and his research into wireless from a physicist’s perspective. On the other hand are the members of the DataPortability Project who are working toward a practical solution using existing research. It’s by no means a perfect comparison, but interesting to read about history and consider how aspects of it could be applicable to understanding what’s happening today.
The other book, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow, talks about the action happening within the context of a future culture of adhocracies. The story is a hilarious discussion of how open, collaborative development can be taken to extremes (along with some amusing lines like “The first time I died, it was not long after my sixtieth birthday.”). While reading it I couldn’t help but imagine how the DataPortability Project would fare under this light.
BTW - It was while reading “Thunderstruck” that I was able to put the labels “practical” and “theoretical” physics in context as they were similarly applied to the term “magic” in “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell“. Great use by Susanna Clarke of contemporary terms being applied to historical fantasy.
NOTE:Even though the links to “Down and Out” above are to Amazon.com (for you wanna’ buy it now junkies), you can also download free versions Doctorow’s site.
This video might not be new to you… but given conversations I’ve had recently with folks deep in the tagging space, I thought it made sense to resurrect it.
Ya’ gotta’ love the “Pandora Like” checkout scene.
Those of you who know me already know the reasons for my current fascination with things in space. For those of you outside the loop, check out the Wikipedia entry for my friend Sunita.
For some reason, today I almost fell while walking down the hall thinking about 1G (ie. one gravity) reactions we take for granted. I don’t know what neurons fired in my head, but whatever combinations they were made me consciously think about my next step. While thinking about it, then, I almost missed where to place my next foot. Weird.
The moral of this post, I suppose, is not to take gravity for granted (or otherwise, forget about it totally and move on).
I turned up an interesting video clip while researching the behavior of spiders the other day. I was pleasantly surprised by it, depsite the fact it wasn’t precisely the type of content I was hunting.
This got me thinking about pleasure and surprise. It seems that the two concepts are joined in that pleasure is often derived from surprise. Good jokes, for example, seem to be based on the fact that the punch line is unexpected. On the other end of pleasure, horror movies (primarily of the twitch-flick) also capitalize on pleasing the surprised audience. Then there’s the increased enjoyment of a book or movie about which you had no prior expectations (as opposed to one that’s hyped to the gills and fails to hit the mark… but you would have enjoyed had you found it yourself).
Many marketing campaigns also seem to use the surprise/pleasure combo to grab the interest of customers. A number of TV ads draw the viewer into a story, while the advertised product is only revealed at the end. This balance must be carefully managed, though, to hit the right mode without spoiling the feeling of it’s customers discovering the product themselves (feeling like they’re in on the joke). Since active discovery seems to run counter to genuine surprise, the marketer needs to carefully seed their message with all the pieces while encouraging the consumer to (easily) complete the puzzle. The trick is setting the expectations to preserve the pleasure of surprise, while not making it so difficult as to confuse the audience (like so many ads that leave the viewer wondering what product was on offer).
If this post was a fable, perhaps the moral would be: “Never underestimate the pleasure of surprise… but beware its cousin: confusion.” Then again, perhaps the surprise of this post is that it’s totally devoid of any deeper meaning beyond my random thoughts. Let the audience be the judge.
