Enter the Flea Market. Growing up our family frequented flea markets all the time, I especially loved when we would get to spend some money on used nintendo tapes. The cartridges came without directions, but where garunteed to work. A little like trying to operate computers in a lab.

I took great pride on figuring out the games, and how they were meant to be played. I loved the challenge that they put forth. I still regret to this day that there was one game DuckTales, which I couldn’t get.

You played the game as Uncle Scrooge, you had a cane, a dapper hat, and those fun little shoes with the button covers on them. But you didn’t have a traditional weapon. You couldn’t jump on the enemies, you couldn’t whack them with your cane, unless they were tree stumps. I died countless times on that first board. Until I went over my friend robs house and he had the same game… but with the instructions. Apparently through some obtuse command system you had to BOUNCE on your your cane to hit the enemies, in fact a good deal of the game was spent pogo’ing around the worlds. Quite fun.

I took two things away from that awesome yet obtuse control system. First your content needs to be intuitive for the people you know are never going to read your instructions, and secondly you need to write very clear instructions for the few brave souls who do.

But beyond that there is a distinct problem with a good number of the users or the experiences out there. People don’t seem to be able to play the game without instructions, they don’t know how to fiddle with the controls until they get a desired result. Either that or the immediacy of the network has made the long and slow process of learning something, reading instructions or scanning an article a vanishing skill. The task befor the content producers out there is to provide immediate gratification and trick the users into reading longer articles, performing more complex tasks, and playing the game without instructions.

Either that or we need to start shopping at the  flea market a bit more often.

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler ” Albert Einstein

As a consumer, and we are all consumers at this point, every ad you see every TV show you watch is working to change your perspective. They are all lovingly crafted to showcase, in most cases, a racially diverse group of people enjoying an experience with a product.

Some products target down to specific groups they are trying to reach, others work to include people of differing abilities and disabilities into their message, still others work to make sure that not only are gender roles equal in presentation but that the women or young girls in the situation feel empowered by the position similar actors to their own perspective are experiencing on the screen.

This is the business of TV and advertising as it stands, each piece of content is filtered shifted and cajoled to be as inclusive and sensitive to the message they are sending out as possible. I’d suggest an exercise, stop tuning out when the commercials come on, start trying to pick apart the 30 second narrative they play before you, what are they trying to sell, how are they trying to make you feel? What do they want you to do?

Once you start paying attention to the commercials, and which shows they choose to be seen with, it’s pretty eye opening.

You are what search reveals about you. If it doesn’t show up in a Search Engine it probably won’t get very much traction. Reality online is very fractured right now, people have so many different points of presence it causes motion sickness trying to update them all. Cross posting solves the problem of updating multiple content streams, but how do you respond to comments and feedback from each stream without checking them all?

All of these are very valid questions i wish i had nice simple answers for you. What we need is a dashboard. A Social Dashboard that takes your content streams, weighs them as you see fit and provides feedback from each channel in one interface. Why weighted content? My twitter stream contains all manner of inane comments, i still want people to know where to find me if they would like to converse there, but in the grand scheme of things my twitter content on any normal day would snow a regular blog post under by their shear volume. This is a problem, and ultimately why platforms such as friendfeed and plaxo fail to hold my attention.

Unlike most posts where i propose an answer i don’t have one for you here, i don’t even have a place to start, but the first step in solving a problem is to bring it into the harsh light of day. Quite simply i can’t follow everyone, update everything and maintain my sanity without loosing focus on the good content out there.

They live work and play together. They react en mass, and without scruples. They have been knows to offend, console, hurt and threaten. So in short they are a people, all the good and bad that comes with that moniker. Take any population in its entirety and you find good and bad seeds, you find filler and fodder. But the overall worth of a population isn’t measured by individuals but rather what they create and leave behind when they are gone.

Defining: I hesitate to call them a Nation, there is no citizenship test, nor green card yet the Neziten can be definitively classified as they all interact in the same way with one another. The question of dual citizenship is actually a forgone conclusion, being one of this tribe does not exclude you from belonging, but rather colors the way in which you react within the group. I don’t want to classify down into subcultures at  the risk of diluting the subject further.

Identity: While there is not a uniform ID system people can be located, and usually declare their identity. One might choose to identify themselves across several different venues under the same name, or for the purpose of arguing go under a pseudonym, or anonymously. While the benefits of this haphazard system are not yet fully understood they can at one time be the bane and boon of the system. These choices seem to be made without

Public vs Private: A definign characteristic of the Neziten is their complete disregard for private vs public space. The entire culture blurs the lines between these two. Some members of the tribe are more careful than others on what they reveal but overall the population is quite open, probably without realizing that they are being so. More investigation is probably required to look into this habit.

Early Neziten history existed without bias in regards to race or creed, only linguistic barriers. As the population has become more sophisticated they have vacillated between acceptance regardless of race or preaching the most hateful speech you could imagine through the veil of anonymity.

I plan to report back on these people from tiem to time. I hope you enjoyed your glimpse into this fascinating culture.

If you don’t think so you don’t understand what bias really is. Your viewpoint changes what you see, your political affiliation, your ideological backbone, your 3rd grade english teacher. You are but a sum of your parts. Whenever you view anything you view it through the lens of that time, and who you were at that time. A second after you have finished watching, participating or ignoring an occurance you are a different person from the experiance, or lack thereof.

There are entire schools of thought within anthropology which get caught up in the bias. They would rather tell you a story about how they felt while visiting a culture than attempt to impose their world view onto what lies in front of them.  Thats all well and good but one’s belly button gets a bit boring after about 30 seconds.

In news media, in blog reading, in photo’s bias exists. It doesn’t always change drastically what is being shown, but it does effect it. Rather than rail against what will always be, people would do better just looking past the bias, understanding that its there, no matter what, and moving on.

As you read this post you are committing a grievous sin to some newspaper. Though the information it contains won’t ever be published. It would not have known the process to go through to earn the right to appear on paper. It remains as you see it, flickering at 75hz. The lone exception being when some laser printer springs to life as an office clerk deems It is worthy.

Information is no longer free it comes with a price, and that price is jobs. Industry does not need to evolve it needs to tax those that do. I am rotting your brain and letting the terrorists win all in one post. I am what is wrong with this country. This is all so new, so hard to deal with. I blog from my basement, yet I own the whole house.

This transition is hard. This is more than a transition, this is a revolution.

Printing Revolution: the democratization of literature left monks unemployed, left knowledge to the people. Literacy rates increased and the word spread. Stained glass continued to speak, but was no longer the sole source.  Adoption was slow by today’s standards, you needed to learn to read. Town criers gave their notice as The news was now fit to print. You can’t read that paper, you’ll put a crier out of work.

Industrial revolution: Out with the old in with the new, travel became faster, news spread more rapidly, and family farms dwindled. Trades evaporated. Glassblowing, replaced by bottle machines. Quality replaced by quantity. Brands were born. The criers returned to the airwaves with larger town squares and bigger audiences. The printed news barks at the idea of being eliminated.

Media Revolution: Faster cars, and moving pictures. Brands got bigger and the world opens to trade. Newsprint culled back to smaller runs, no more evening editions, the talking pictures took on the task of educating the people at night. There are no radio dramas, but daytime stories. The pace has picked up. Revolutions are happening quicker, the news spreads quickly, and daily. The town criers are now local, national and dressed well. They empathically relate the world around them to a tribe of enthralled people.

Welcome to the Digital Revolution.

There are no borders here, and we are all the criers. Newspapers decry the blogger in the basement, yet fail to realize they have never been delivered to that house. The Radio looses its luster when homogenized, and looses its audience when computers pick the play list. Personalities are shuffled off the air. TV grasps at straws as they fail to accept their declining role. Reality TV, the last gasp of air as the people yearn for stories, and the networks for ratings.

Podcasts give the personalities who never got the chance to make it to air a voice. They spread the news to their own tribe of people. Video gives life to stories that could never have been told beyond the walled frequency. We are picking up steam, this revolution is harder as the time table is condensed.

Companies that fail to evolve blame the new media on their struggles, and leave a workforce, unemployed and angered. They blame these fancy thinking boxes. They blame the kids, with their blogs and their rock music. They are right, moving forward does cause problems, it is up to this generation to find places in the new regime for the people it displaces. This is our problem, together.

We are not criminals but a crime has been committed. There is no alibi, no excuse.  You are not exempt. If people are willing to change then others must be willing to teach. This is where we are.

The old way was the “Right tool for the job.” Well the jobs have changed and the right tool now has a host of friends on the shelf with him. When asked why some tools have longer lifespans than others, and why some gadgets outdo other I usually rely on the Simple Tool Rule.

Reducing points of failure

I am not inept at working on things around the house. Some things I’m even accomplished at, other skills need some extra time in the minor leagues before I would call them up to the pros. As my normal occupation isn’t a handyman i don’t often find myself with the need to drill things. But when I do i know how to work a drill. The problem lies in the fact that i have a cordless drill, which seems like a great idea for a quick little job.

Drills are complex, gears grinding, chucks need tightening, and the correct bits need selecting, these are all givens. An extra Point of failure is now the battery needs to be charged which it never is, see above were i don’t work on these things often, and there is no way for the model that I have to be tethered and function. The simplest tool for the job is a regular old drill.

Swiss Army Knives are great to carry with you when you need tons of different features, but each one of the features is slightly degraded by the inclusion into a multitool. The Swiss Army Knife, and by proxy the workman equivalent, the Leatherman are great tools for the on the go tech, but when it comes down to the greatest functionality for any one task a simple tool is always better. Increase the number of tasks you need to accomplish and the tool’s complexity grows. So there are a host of tasks which a multitool is the best option.

Online Life is Complicated:

This is an easy concept to grasp when working in the physical realm, at what point does the creeping featureism get in the way of the simple jobs the tool is supposed to do? When dealing with your digital life we are still finding our way. Ping.fm is a great tool to broadcast status messages to multiple venues, but the point of failure is the limitations each different service places on the text. If you post to twitter the message gets cut off after 140 chars, ect.

There are three services i use to reduce my workload when it comes to keeping up online presence in different areas.

Ping.fm: Post to twitter, facebook, and pretty much everywereelse via email or sms.

Twitxr.com: From a standard phone i can snap a picture and via email or SMS have it uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and post a message to twitter about it.

Evernote: With multiple points of entry into the system I can drop notes to myself from my work desktop, home desktop, take pictures from my phone and have the text in them searchable, email reminders and ideas from my phone, a mobile email client, or even my pocket PC with a doodle on the screen and get them all collected into one searchable database.

Without these three services I spend a ton more time doing things which should be simple. The constant in my life is my phone, i have it with me everywhere, its not overly fancy as phones go but it does a great job keeping the digital me updated and reminded all through plugin systems elsewhere.

What are your Digital Tool that follow the Simple Tool Rule?

Social media is what you make of it. I am happy to share my experiences with you and tell you how i went about creating blogs, designing logos when i get a chance or whatever. but the true dirty little secret is that there is no right way to do it.

First A bit of demystifying for consumable Media. Twitter is a social network where you can either produce or consume just as easily and in the same page. People need to ignore the “experts” if you don’t feel like sharing “What You are doing” then you don’t have to. I would suggest it would be more fun and entertaining if you did but i won’t fault you for not wanting to join into the discussion.

I often times feel that I am on the outside of a discussion and that I sit waiting for a way into the dialog happening. Its one of the reasons I’m not as active as i used to be in any forums or email lists. I feel that I miss too much in my travels to add meaningful content. But with twitter, and so much else this is a bad attitude. No matter who you are you have something to add to the discussion, you aren’t interrupting if you interject one tweet a month, even if it is about a fantastic tuna sandwich you just had. You are adding to the larger lunch/dinner narrative, no one has the right to judge your culinary adventures. One of my biggest problems is a lack on confidence in my own information, or the value of the content i produce.

The only reason I share that little thought is because i think there are a lot of other people out there with the same fear. We can face it down together.

The one thing that the Internet doesn’t lack for is people willing to sit and pontificate on ANYTHING. once you get me started on a topic I can run for days, but my biggest hurdle is fitting it into the discussion at large. When do i stop talking, when should i add extra detail. Take anyone who considers themselves an expert with a grain of salt.

“I’m an Expert Witness because I say I am” Don Henley ~ Garden Of Allah

When it comes to producing content such as blogs and podcasts i am a firm believer that if you are going to do it you should try to do so with style. So any guides or posts i put forth for your consideration should be taken in that light. Podcasts should be easy to listen to, and blogs should be easy to read. They don’t have to be as a rule but if you want others to appreciate the effort you put into making the post / episode what it is then you need to consider ways of improving those areas.

hopefully this post found someone out there who may have been reticent in posting, producing or recording. Please let me know if you start doing so so I can check it out as well.

Consider this, before I started my podcast I hated the sound of my own voice when recorded, I just finished episode 317 of my podcast, it takes time to get over your fears.

Be fearless and have fun!

Digital Natives, or those who grew up using higher end technology as an integral part of their education brings with it two very real problems. As generations are removed from the invention of a technology the mystery behind how it actually works deepens, people on whole do not care how a telephone works, it is a tool. They use the object for what it was intended. You don’t have to know how the network was built to use it effectively. However without knowing anything about the network it is also quite easy to gloss over the value of the basics.

The second problem is that people take certain aspects of the operation of the network or technology for granted, and there are fewer people who understand how to fix it. The more complex a system gets the harder it is for one person to know it in its entirety. Specialization breeds disorganization and a dilution of ideas and a much less cohesive vision for where the technology is headed.

Think of it this way. In terms of an older Generations networks. Eisenhower and his administration envisioned a network of high capacity highways crossing the country to facilitate  interstate traffic, and build a quick network to be used in defense of the country. In the simplest sense this network was designed and built over the course of very few years, it was one of the largest public works projects ever conceived and completed. The system 50 years after its inception covers almost 50,000 miles of road. The problem with this system now is that the traffic patterns are changing as population centers shift, and areas of industry go through changes. In the Philadelphia area there are a large collection of exists close to previous centers of industry, which now lie fallow for the most part. The areas of higher population density become crowded and jammed routinely causing delays.

The network has grown in usefulness and necessity far beyond what was envisioned over 50 years ago, and by its usefulness it is also impossible to simply tear a highway down and build a new one, things are incrementally more difficult to maintain when they are in high use.

It is much easier to build a new system than it is to maintain an older one, if you weren’t the architect.  Europe has mastered the art of City planning having continuous population centers for over a thousand years in some parts, ever changing and every shifting. The United states on the other hand is still going through growing pains in that area.

Take this allegory on put it onto Computer networks the Internet was designed about 30 years ago and came into its own a little over 15 years ago at this point, the speed of adoption has slowed recently but more people are online now than ever. Countries originally left out of the plan are now making up large slices of the traffic. Lucky for us the network is not a permanent thing such as the highways but rather a constantly vacillating enterprise all its own. The network has grown beyond the ability of one person or one company to manage. By its decentralized nature the network was never designed to go through one hub of decision making, and this is a constant source of irritation to the country that built the network in the first place.

The United States grew up with the Internet, but the people who designed the network are a slowly dwindling resource. Yes the kids today who hope online and facebook, and twitter without a second thought are building new networks and exploring new terrain, but they lack an understanding of how the network is built so they don’t understand the dangers of the network.

System admins know that there is no such thing as anonymous traffic, The designers of the network knew this. However ask any 15 year old kid on any social network if they are anonymous when they are online and you are apt to get a positive response. This is a dangerous thing, When the network grows beyond the understanding of the drones who use it it starts to lend itself to serve those who strive to understand it, and use the data streams for profit. How long before the mindless video watching, twittering and status updates all feed into the coffers of unseen data mines?

Its already here, Big Brother is no longer watching, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Technorati Profile

It has a lot to do with the way they were introduced to it during their lifetime. Think about this,  Someone who today is 60 was born during a time when color TV was in its infancy, you couldn’t dial long distance phone numbers without talking to an operator and the first computer had only recently been turned on. If the person is 40 today then they grew up in a world still dominated by black and white television, lacked video games and  had tethered land lines. If the person is 20 years old today think of the wonders that they take for granted. Space while still mysterious has been traveled, cell phones are replacing land lines at a steady rate. Soon Analog transmissions of TV will be a distant memory.

Digital Divide:

This term is commonly used to describe the gap in economic penetration of computer access. But it also can explain the generational gap seen in computer use. the younger you are introduced to technology the closer you get to fluency in its language. I’m not talking about understanding command line interfaces, or programming languages, but there are certain skills that need to be developed in a person before you can sit them down at an unfamiliar piece of technology and have them begin to approach it. Call it the tinkering gene or machine fluency, those skilled in the art of playing around with things seem to find themselves at an advantage when confronted with new technology. This skill needs to be developed.

Language and Technology

More than any other discipline linguistics lends itself to understanding how people approach technology. Populations with no common language will begin to develop a pidgin version of a new language when grouped together.  This pidgin is an attempt to find commonality to communicate with other people.  The second generation of people born into the community take the pidgin further, adding in new grammatical constructs, filling in nuances expression. The advances are primarily in language use and rules governing new word creation and content explanation.

If you are reading this blog the chances are that you understand Technical Pidgin to a certain extent.  Depending on how old you are and how immersed you have been in technology you can understand how things go together and begin to approach new gadgets gizmos and toys with reckless abandon. Each passing generation becomes digitally aware at an earlier age, moving further away from the pidgin to fluency. But at what point does the learning stabilize?

Digital Natives

Digital native do not know of a time when things were not digital. The network has always been there for them. This is a nebulous concept and ever changing target on the road. Technology is unlike language  in that there is no steady state, but rather a continued expansion of tools and tricks needed to keep your head above the binary waves. To be a true digital native you need to conquer that which has not been invented yet.