We often use optical illusions in Edgeware presentations. They break the ice, and they are a good leader into our position that the way we see the world is the way the world becomes.
There’s as interesting, three-stage process to remark : first, you can’t see; second, there’s an ‘Aha!’ moment, a moment of insight and ‘knowing’; and third, there’s the state of knowing where you instantly recognise the image. Particularly remarkable is the fact that once you’ve seen the image, you can’t un-see it and return to stage one. The world has changed.
At Edgeware we have a sneaking suspicion that Twitter is going to turn out to be much more than the kind of life streaming’ we see going on right now. It has to do with the conciseness and simplicity of the medium (text only, 140 characters), its ease of use on mobile platforms, and its capacity to multicast very quickly. A recent case in point: yesterday Yollana Shore, one of my Twitter ‘followers’ (who I hasten to add, I also ‘follow’, as the result of a Twitter intro from a member of each of our Twitter networks), tweeted that she was looking for ideas about dealing with a negative mood. I recalled a teaching from the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who says that negative attitudes like anger and anxiety should be treated like an ‘errant little sister’, a pesky kid who gets on your wick but who you nevertheless love (she’s part of you, right?), so you should consider taking her by the hand, talking calmly to her, soothing her, walking with her, treating her gently until her anger subsides. I replied to Yollana, who liked it and RT’d (re-tweeted) immediately to her network of ‘followers’. One such, Isabel Grant, who I’ve never met, RT’d in turn to her followers, and one of them, Nancy Gray, RT’d it to hers. (I know this because they included my Twitter tag in the messages - goodness knows how much further it went if someone stripped out the tag!) Then, as icing on the cake, Yollana blogged on the experience, and now here we are in this blog, right now. The wisdom of that little monk just focused, multiplied, circled, spiralled and homed in to where it was needed.
A little compassion, it seems, can go a long way.
When you are involved in a pleasurable social learning experience, your brain is stimulated by a series of natural chemicals - dopamine, adrenalin and endorphins - often associated with the high experienced using drugs such as cocaine. Human beings have an organic electro-chemical reward system geared to learning, evolved from the days when the smarter guys and gals were the ones who ended up passing down their genes (and way before unpleasurable experiences such as schools, where the reward for learning is usually not even remotely related to a ‘high’). And it’s a high that keeps on keeping on, without a hangover, as learning progresses and the rewards of learning being apparent. We experience the ‘firing of dopaminergic neurons’ as a pleasure/reward, which increases the motivation for more of the same. Learn > reward > high > more learning > more reward > higher.
For more highs, check out Flaherty, A.W, (2005). “Frontotemporal and dopaminergic control of idea generation and creative drive”. Journal of Comparative Neurology 493 (1): 147–153
It’s sometimes said amongst crusty old cynics that youth is wasted on the young, meaning, we assume, that the benefits of youthfulness - health, energy, optimism, idealism - are something that the crusty old cynics themselves can more sensibly deal with and deploy. They’re wrong. Youth is a time for not knowing what you don’t know. Like KaosPilot trainee Michael Nybrandt, who in 2001 didn’t know you can’t just knock on the door of the Dalai Lama and ask him if you can help start up the first Tibetan National Football Association. As it happens, he got the green light (he didn’t know that he wouldn’t) and the team has been a source of pride to the world’s Tibetans and their supporters, and a thorn in China’s side, ever since. And don’t forget the world’s oldest child, the Dalai Lama himself, a source of constant inspiration and good humour who refuses to ‘know’ that the battle to save the culture of his country is without hope.
Youth is not wasted on the young; cynicism is superfluous in the old.
Interesting to hear the increasing use of the word ‘touch’ in marketing: how many times, and in what way, does your product message and brand ‘touch’ your customers?
Daniel Pink says that products and services of the ‘concept economy’ focus on high touch and high concept. High Touch means intimate, personal, authentic, real. High Concept - a term borrowed from the film world - means imaginative, affective, succinct, compelling.
For Pink, low touch and low concept goods and services have become the domain of emerging economies, or they have been automated. Pink’s excellent book, A Whole New Mind, sets out this premise clearly and compellingly.
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