Watching big-time bloggers put out books really is something else.

Case in point: yesterday, Mark Sisson, a huge paleo blogger, released a book called the 21-Day Total Body Transformation. Naturally, he was trying to hit the New York Times bestseller list, and offering bonuses for buying multiple books, etc, as many people have before. The strategy works, I don’t blame him and I wish we had done it for Trust Agents (we ended up doing “free” speaking deals instead).

So naturally, as an author, I end up looking at the reviews of this book; as an author, reading Amazon reviews is what I do when I should be working. I read other people’s reviews to give me either an inferiority or superiority complex, depending on the situation. I’m sure many of you do the same.

Anyway on Mark’s book, there they are, sitting there, all 5-star reviews, except this lone 1-star review sitting there at the bottom, voted “least useful” of all the reviews (at this point, it’s sitting at 138 “downvotes,” or 93% “unhelpful”). Then there’s the giant comment thread that accompanies it in which the reviewer is put down, insulted, etc.

Now before I continue, I’d like to mention that I read Mark’s last book, liked it, and passed it on. I’m sure this one is fine too, and I hope he hits the list (it’s sitting at #6 overall right now).

But that aside, some of the internet’s superfans are starting to drive me nuts.

I first began to notice this trend a long time ago on Gary Vee’s book Crush It, which I also read when it came out. There’s this crazy comment thread attached to a two-star review over there, which due to its inflammatory nature has been voted up to “most helpful” of all reviews. Gary (who I consider an friend/acquaintance) answers really helpfully in the thread, and then, unbeknownst to him I’m sure, all the devils in Hell are unleashed in his defense.

Here’s how it happens. First, a guy with a huge blog audience puts out a product, book, or what have you. This author probably polarizes quite effectively, leading to a number of zealots who judge him not by the quality of his content (though they could– Gary, Mark, etc. write quite well), but by who they are, leading to anyone who disagrees becoming a kind of enemy of the state, a traitor, or what have you.

The weird thing is that, often enough, the authors themselves have nothing to do with this. They don’t intentionally create cults– they’ve just helped a lot of people, and those people personally identify with the lifestyle or personality who leads them.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to be popular, and I want to hit lists as much as the next guy. But the weird part is, every author I know, even those who would recognize the insanity of this phenomenon, probably also think it’s be the best thing that could ever happen to them.

I don’t have a conclusion to this because there is none. It’s something everyone thinks is nuts, yes, but only as it regards someone else’s audience, and never theirs, because polarizing is good and helps drum up attention. However,

• It’s not good for the public.
• It ruins the trust people have in Amazon’s rating system.
• It artificially inflates the apparent popularity of books.

In short, it is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons.

Have a solution? I’m open to hearing it. I honestly don’t think there is one.

You’ll also often notice that these are often powerful-looking guys: business-types, tall maybe, expensive phones, etc. In fact, you might even have a situation in mind. I know I can think of a few.

Sometimes, these scenes go on for a long time– so long that everyone around them starts looking around at each other. Knowing glances pass between tables.

Then, everyone kind of shrugs, thinking “well, what can you do?”

Watch a scene like this sometime– you won’t have to wait long before it happens. Everyone wants to tell these guys to shut up, but nobody does. No one steps up to the plate because no one wants to be “that asshole,” or because they’re embarrassed or don’t want to be told off.

But these scenes aren’t just random acts of social violence. None of it is not a coincidence. The reason these guys have these symbols of success is because they have balls. They’re willing to do what other people aren’t, have extreme confidence, and get by because of it. It’s why these guys get where they are today, why they have the expensive clothes, the phones, and the loud voice.

They flaunt their status and ignore social cues that their behaviour is undesired. Maybe they feel they’ve earned the right to do so, I dunno.

But no one ever told them no.

This happened to me one time on the Camino de Santiago with an old German guy. He was talking on his phone really loud in a dormitory filled with about 50 people. Everyone was looking at him. They wanted to sleep, but he didn’t care.

I walked up to him in my underwear, about 60+ hours of tattoo work in full view, and gestured for him to fucking close his phone immediately.

He left the room. People started laughing. Everyone was grateful.

Please take this story to heart.

Nobody else will ever say anything, ever. It has to be you.

Have you ever thought about how difficult it is to actually hurt yourself?

I don’t mean a paper cut. I mean something that’s disgusting to look at, where you’re at risk for death. What would it take?

In this society, it’s very difficult. We are safe. And even if we are hurt, plastic surgery, free medical care (sorry, Americans), and medicine means we’ll recover instead of dying of an infection.

The only injuries we’re accustomed to in today’s society are not acute injuries, but chronic injuries caused by things like food, stress, etc.

Any world where cancer is a serious risk is extremely safe, because it means many people are living for as long as it takes to get cancer.

We’re in an eternal cradle. It’s very difficult to die, or to be seriously injured.

Think of the way we treat children, versus how they were treated 20 years ago. We have all been eternally infantilized.

I thought about this the other week as I spent time in Thailand with Julie Angel, one of the top parkour documentarians in the world. Watch her videos and ask yourself whether anyone would do them in a world where they were in serious danger of dying from an injury. Stunt men are willing to do their jobs because being on fire is now reasonably safe.

Think about that.

Instead, our cultural environment creates other risks. Being broke, dying alone, not fulfilling your potential– these exist because we are no longer concerned with being devoured by predators or afraid of starving. But these are risks that are significantly less severe, and much easy to recover from.

It’s possible to seriously hurt yourself, but only if you’re alone– when people can’t come to your rescue, or won’t, because you fulfill a social role that doesn’t get help. (Drunk Japanese businessmen and the homeless, for example.)

This culture creates media like Fight Club, which is revered because people are looking for authenticity and real risk which they can’t get inside of the system. So, they go looking outside of it.

What happens in a world where you cannot die?

You risk more, because consequences are diminished.

Peaks stay high, but valleys are reduced… for those who use the valleys to their advantage.

If you think this isn’t relevant to you, because physical culture isn’t a part of your life, you’re wrong.

In this world, you cannot die in any environment.

You cannot die socially because the social fabric smoothes over most mistakes with time.

You cannot die on the web because failure is cheap and the worst that happens is obscurity.

We are in a world where the chance of permanent, uncorrectable failure has dropped to zero.

It’s time you started living accordingly.

We think failure is forever. Wrong.

We think embarrassment can’t be recovered from.

We think losing is the end of the world.

Reprogram yourself.

You can cover up a bad tattoo. You can heal a broken bone. You can get into another relationship. You can move to a new city.

Nothing is forever.

You can recover from anything. No mistake is forever and most are easier to recover from than you think they are.

Do this now.

Below, write down the first act you will take as your new self– the one that cannot die and for which failure is insignificant.

Have it be something you are seriously afraid of. Something that makes your heart beat fast.

Then, after you’ve written it down, do it.

DON’T COME BACK HERE UNTIL YOU’VE LIVED.

This post will probably be ignored. It isn’t about Twitter and it doesn’t include an infographic. It’s complex, not easy, which is why it’s kind of a mess. Skip it if you think you can’t handle it, no problem.

But first, a question.

Do you think you’re a good judge of character?

Most people do. But how would you know if you really were?

Being able to judge someone’s character is a sign of success. But it isn’t all it takes. Properly assessing someone you meet requires more: It requires being a good judge of someone’s potential. It helps you know what kind of relationship you want to have.

But how can you tell if someone can be a leader, or if they’ll be successful? How can you tell if they have initiative, or if you can trust them?

I propose that judging someone’s potential– even someone you’ve just met– is easy. It’s based on one fundamental character trait that you can develop with practice and, with it, change your life. I’ll explain below.

†

It’s clear to many of us here on the web that there is a new class emerging. Robb Wolf, a research biochemist, blogger, and New York Times bestselling author is a part of it. So are Everett Bogue, Tim Ferriss, Chris Guillebeau, and many more. You may be, too, and if you are, you already know it.

If you don’t, then it’s possible you have no idea what I’m talking about, so here it is.

Almost two years ago, Chris Brogan and I started writing a book called Trust Agents, about a set of people who were taking advantage of digital technology to grow their influence. The book would become pretty popular here on the web, and continues to sell well, which is great. I realize now, though, that the phenomenon is about more than that.

One main aspect of this new generation (who can be young or old, btw) is their understanding of systems and games and how to find workarounds (“gatejumping” or “lifehacking”). It’s clear that they don’t need a million dollars to be happy– so they figure out what they really need and find easy ways to get it.

In other words, these people have built systems around them that faciliates financial and career success. Generally, they aren’t chasing the dream of massive wealth– they know it has very little to do with happiness– so they work on new, more fulfilling goals instead.

Ev Bogue recently decided to become a yoga teacher. Tim Ferriss hacked his own muscle mass and wrote the 4-Hour Body. Guillebeau is exploiting the loopholes in air travel to visit every country in the world. I could name many more of these people, each doing it in their own way.

Whatever you decide to call it, it’s big, and it’s because of access to information and the ability to see others doing it in real time. Still, some people want this and get it– and others do not. Why? Because of this specific character trait.

This brings us back to our first point.

How do you judge someone’s character instantly, find out what kind of person they are and how likely they are to succeed? Easy.

Challenge them.

Ask them to do something unusual (like a bet). Or, question the way they’re doing things and see how they react to a totally different method of thinking.

Their reaction is based in their ability to deal with change and experimentation, and the ability to experiment is directly related to their real-life success.

The basic difference is whether you are willing to test your environment and lead an experimental life. And it is a trait that is taught to us by our environment– by games, by seeing other people doing it, and by seeing inefficient models of reality (such as school=success) that we can choose to avoid.

Here is the simple reality of the situation.

Accept what your parents, your teachers, and your peers say, and you’ll be a slave to what they’ve said. You’ll base your decisions on what they’ve decided, instead of what you have. Your learning will slow down and much of what you want will not come true (unless you shrink your expectations).

Test everything for yourself– assume nothing– and the opposite will happen. Your results will be based in what is real. You’ll become a king. You will accelerate as you learn and your momentum will carry you past obstacles you never thought you could conquer before.

You’ll quickly learn you don’t need a job.

You’ll free up your time.

You’ll find out how boring it is to do nothing. :)

You’ll seek out other things that fascinate you.

You’ll become an expert in them, faster.

Finally, with no one to tell you what to do, you’ll be happier.

Some will say: “That’s not really my style though, I like to take it easy.” Well, I’d argue that you’re thinking too small, and that you’ve chosen that small is ok for you.

This brings me to my final point: if you want to be someone like this, you can be. All that it takes is to transform how you deal with challenges.

Do you see life as a game to experiment with, or do you see it as a series of corridors? This will change what you’re capable of.

For years, we’ve been here on the internet, blogging and talking about “lifehacking,” then returning to our dreary real jobs under the guise of “being more productive.”

I have an idea. Why don’t we apply this to our actual lives?

Some of us do, and the results have been extraordinary. You can too.

Do you live this way, or want to? Let’s talk. Leave a comment. Enter your email in the box below and press enter, we’ll figure out how together.

A family friend just called me to explain she needed a lesson in text messaging.

“My clients are younger people now,” she said, “and they text all the time. I need to learn how to do this.” She’s getting an iPhone. For communicators, it’s inevitable. They must adapt to all media in order to compete. As a real estate agent, she must learn to use an iPhone (Twitter, fb, and Quora too). More media, more subtleties, more opportunity.

Personally, I’ve been writing “lol” in emails and text messages. It came from my sister, who texts me all the time (and uses SMS like the rest of us use online chat), as well as the comments in reddit. Loling came unnaturally at first, but next thing I knew I used it spontaneously. It has become one with the laugh. If I’m at a keyboard, I write it while laughing. One inevitably follows the other.

We are all a little like Pavlov’s dog. Writing “haha,” laughing, and writing “lol” eventually become one. If you’re on one side of this fence, you find this habit annoying and infantile. On the other, it has become like shaking hands, a normal facet of everyday communication.

Your choice is either to adopt the “status quo,” and communicate in “English,” or communicate the way those who have adapted do. If you choose the former, then which English are you choosing? 20th century, 19th century, 10th or any in between? Why? If you choose the latter, then you know what you’re speaking actually is English. Isn’t it?

Lol.

(Inspired by MarshallandMe.com. Photo by Tom Coates.)

An MP3 used to be a concert. A Kindle used to be a bookstore.

Is this you? You listen to music personally on your MP3 player. You read books by yourself and watch your TV on your laptop or iPad. You eat alone at least 50% of the time, rarely go to concerts, and watch more movies at home than in theatres.

Do you recognize yourself in this profile? ;)

A side effect of the digitization and portability of cultural artifacts is that they have also been brought from the public to the private. A gramophone used to be expensive, and a community might have had only one, so they shared it. Now we all have iPods, so we have our own music collection. We can download our favourite songs privately, so we don’t have to talk to a record store clerk– or anyone, for that matter.

What was once necessarily public has become private. What used to belong to a community has become private property. This might be a normal process of commodification– food becomes affordable, so we have snack foods or protein shakes instead of feasts. Stuff get cheaper, more portable, and private.

Interestingly enough, this also leeches value out of the public domain and into the pockets of corporations. This may, or may not, be an accident. But that’s not the point. The privatization of culture is a fact, and we have to deal with it. Though it fuels a sense of personal power, if we’re not careful, it also feeds loneliness.

Collective activity is a pillar of connection inside a community, helping people laugh together and share good conversation. It fuels a sense of belonging and happiness. How much of it are you doing?

If this is a normal phase of cultural and technological evolution, then it might be unstoppable. But your personal choice will reflect your priorities and decide the kind of life you live. The more public, the better you are at conversation and the more you feel a sense of kinship with others. The more private, the less conformity, but at the expense of belonging. You are either a wolf or a sheep, but the choice often happens without your consent.

Creative Commons people and programmers tend to get this, and bloggers often do too– the more you give stuff away, the more you get back. But often we live this only in regards to the web, and miss out because of it. Dungeons and Dragons has become World of Warcraft– an impression of being public, but without the actual increase in satisfaction or happiness. It is a trompe-l’oeil that mimics depth.

My strategy to trade favourite books with people, to have weekly ‘dates,’ and to have people over for supper. These are not exciting things.

They are not about technology. They are about people.

But if you’re part of the social web, and all you get excited about is the New Twitter, you do not see the big picture, and you are mistaken about why it matters.

Take a step back and look again.

I was checking out some graffiti in my neighbourhood the other day and thinking about gentrification.

It seems natural that those that are poor would be able to see opportunity in places (neighbourhoods) where the rich are not looking yet. This is how startups get profitable and why artists move into sketchy areas of a city.

As these same areas become profitable, though, big organizations move in and build condos, or Facebook gets into location based social software. This eventually crowds out the poor or small as the rich lean into the problem with their increased resources. Depending on laws (anti-monopoly, rent control, etc.), this may take longer, but it can’t really be stopped entirely. This is “fine” (not really), as long as there are new places to go.

When the poor of Europe took boats to America to have access to new land and to stop oppression of their people, they had to work hard in order to make it livable for their families, but their hard work was rewarded. They had more opportunity and freedom than their class normally allowed. They became rich in a new way by changing the pond they swam in.

This is all fine and good… until you run out of land.

I’m asking myself where settlers go now. When all neighbourhoods become gentrified, when all areas of business become monopolized by larger enterprise, where do the disenfranchised go to seek new opportunity? Do they have to move out to the North of Canada, the wilderness where no one really wants to be, in order to find something new for themselves?

Another question to ask yourself is where you are on the spectrum. Do you seek out opportunity by finding strange, uncomfortable places, or do you look for areas where risk is lower? This is the spectrum from angel investor > venture capitalist > shareholder in a blue chip company. Each has methods of profit but they are based on ability to understand risk. (Of course it all comes back down to this.)

Wherever you are, it seems inevitable that someone bigger will eventually come in and crowd you out. This force exerts its influence wherever you are on the chain.

So, everyone must become a settler again in order to find better land. Best that we adjust to discomfort now and find new ways to increase our liberty and profit– before the tides turn.

Voting, food, career, spending, success– all of these and more are political acts.

We don’t realize it while we’re doing them, but all are meaningful in terms of who they help– ourselves, our families and communities, or the world at large. The mere act of paying rent to the stranger who owns your apartment building, for example, is a behaviour that enriches someone you don’t know instead of you and your loved ones. This is the same for every dollar we spend or every minute we pay attention to something.

We all live in a web of relationships and attention that include friends, family, and co-workers, but you also choose the web you live in, and the ones you decide to help. Every time you choose one web over another, it can change your quality of life for the better.

By deciding to optimize your health by eating at home, for example, you are already deciding not to participate in the McDonald’s and Olive Gardens of the world, choose better quality food for yourself, all while increasing your own competence. By taking part in a farmer’s co-op you are enriching your own neighbourhoods instead of the Wallmarts and Carrefours of the world who would rather shut down stores than allow unions.

Every time you take part in a scheme that favours the rich, you also increase their power over the poor. This also happens every time you talk about Twilight over some other (less popular) movie. Even more important: If you are part of the attention- or capital-poor class, you’re also impoverishing yourself.

Making the choice to be healthy only benefits you and those around you. But if you choose not to care, you take part in a massive web of insurance companies, take out restaurants, and doctors who count on your apathy to profit. Then, the choice of what to do is theirs, not yours.

All acts of purposeful ignorance or negligence enrich others instead of yourself. All acts of learning empower you and those you care about. This is why you should learn to read more, be more crafty, and know how to fix your own car and bike. The sense of competence it comes with is like gold, and you will wonder why it took you so long to get it.

I know I did.

All the inmates want to escape. Of course the guard does not. He stands up on a wall with a rifle and fires at anyone trying to climb it to take him down. If one prisoner tries it, he fails and dies. If they all do, they win.

This is the essence of web businesses. Low startup costs increase reduce the cost of failure, break down barriers to entry and provide opportunity to many more people than previously possible. This reduction in friction leaves you more of a chance, with your stronger opponent being taken from all sides.

So, all that is required to destroy monopolies and hierarchy is for more people to allowed to try. That’s because it doesn’t matter if YOU succeed, as long as they do not.

You can apply this to any circumstance: social coercion, politics, writing, or art. In all cases low cost of failure reduces risk and makes trying plausible. This distributes success more widely across the population (though outliers will still exist).

Here’s what I’m thinking: the society (or individual) who makes the cost of failure the lowest, while retaining the ability to reap rewards, gets the greatest increase in productivity and living quality. In a sense, this increases the biodiversity of a society and therefore, its ability to survive disasters.

This quality could be defined, by your society or yourself, as a right to play, and it’s probably the most important thing you can allow yourself, as a creative person in the web age. Google does this with their 20% time, paying employees for what may result in nothing but could also result in huge hits. They make this viable by defending their cash cow (defense, or the game of the old) while embracing innovation (offense, or the game of the young).

Strategically, I think this means you’re supposed to look for a big hit, then move it into your portfolio when it’s maxed out and look for another blue ocean.

This is turning into one of those posts where I just seem to be rambling, so I’m just going to stop here. Hope this makes sense to you.

Children have two ways of discovering how the universe works: one is to experiment, and the other is to ask “why.” The result is a complex series of if-then conditions that tell a child what can be done, and what can’t, creating flags that are used later to navigate the environment.

We’ve already talked about the first type– now let’s talk about the second.

Children don’t ask why to be careful with a knife if they’ve already cut themselves– they only ask with something that is outside their experience, that is abstract. This is the evolution of because, an if-then condition that is outside of experience, and that we don’t really understand.

The danger of because is that we take things on faith because it comes from an authority. As time goes on and our understanding advances, more of our questions now have actual answers, but the because remains anyway.

God is because. Zeus is why the lightning strikes and good people die but God has a plan for them.

Science can be because. We have faith in doctors who reflexively prescribe medicine instead of get to the root cause, and don’t get second opinions.

Dogma and rules are because. Gay is wrong because it is against nature, and you need to eat breakfast because it’s the most important meal of the day.

Everytime we don’t understand something, because takes its place and we stop there instead of testing. We have faith in the system, even though its purpose is to sustain itself, not to help you.

This is a way that the social system has protected itself since the beginning of time, ensuring that we can work together to build a better world. This works for the system that we live in and can make our lives better, but if you don’t want to be a middle manager, it may leave you feeling incomplete. It isn’t the only way.

You can be outside the system, and you can live well doing it. But your first step will be to ignore because… and to start asking why again.

• Think we can own the world
• Want to destroy institutions
• Fall in love with love
• Join radical movements

But when we grow old, we will change.

• We will talk about what’s been lost
• Enjoy convenience
• Want things a certain way
• Protect what we have built

Are all of these things inevitable? I don’t know. But the shock rockers of old world have become the reality television stars of the new, the hippies have become oligarchs, and the champions of the many have become the advocates of the few. Things change.

In every one of us there is a part that wants every one of the above. One side is always stronger, but we can sometimes feel the other breaking through. We feel it when we clutch our purse in the subway or when we feel outrage at what a government is doing. Open and closed are opposite trends but neither will ever die.

Every day we get to choose a side. Every day we embrace the new, we get younger. Every day we aren’t willing to abandon what came before, we get older.

Somewhere in the middle, I’m guessing there’s a sweet spot. Right?

I was very easily embarrassed as a child, so this is the kind of thing my mother used to say often. When she talked to strangers, I pretended I didn’t know her, and she’d remind me again not to be so self-conscious. As I got older, I realized she was right.

Teenagers are rebellious, but it’s pretty interesting to note that they’re rebellious only in certain pre-accepted ways. Most of the time, they don’t want to stand out in a different way, because it’s too much of a risk. Only the edge is acceptable, not what is too far out.

What happens when you step out of accepted boundaries? There are usually only a few responses, and you will fit into a few of them.

Eccentric

My girlfriend and I had a few drinks with an eccentric guy last week, who would just say wild stuff to make us laugh, but was otherwise pretty conventional. Eccentric is the easiest category to be in, and in some ways everyone fits into it, just a little, by having some interest that diverges from the norm. It’s fashionable to be geeky so in a way, eccentric is part of the edge, not the chasm.

Iconoclast

Another one but a bit further out than eccentric, the iconoclast is different in many small ways that are obvious. He is edgy in multiple different directions, enough that someone thinks they are on the bleeding edge of things or have a keen eye and care enough to follow that eye. You can become an iconoclast doing things your way (instead of just talking, which probably makes you eccentric).

Ambitious

This is a good one. Most people eventually get lazy or just become fine with where they are. Being more ambitious than that puts you on the edge, too, and you can get there just by trying harder than anyone, having grander plans than seem reasonable, or having an unusual career choice (or none).

Visionary

If you are ambitious, see something happening ahead of time and act on it, you may become a visionary if what you did becomes a big deal. Even if you’re ambitious and a failure multiple times, that’s ok as long as one of your things becomes successful– you then become a visionary.

†

Ok, so you should now be noticing that many of these ways of being different are actually good, and that most are just ways of being labelled instead of being true measures of your identity. But there are bad ones too– here are a few of them.

Asshole

Social convention is strongly tied to acceptable ways of speaking or behaving that follow the common good and that don’t create too many ripples and allow or smooth interactions… and this is truer in English-speaking culture than many others, btw. Anyway the asshole doesn’t care what people think of what he says and he is often willing to say things other people are thinking, but would never say in polite company.

Loner

If you don’t go out, are always seen out by yourself, or reject offers to do things too often, you become a loner, or maybe just a loser (if you do nothing else). Loners don’t choose their label but they do prefer their company to that of others.

Reject

Finally, the reject. The more valuable it is to be on the inside of the circle, the more stringent the social requirements are for membership and the easier it is to be ejected. The more of the circle you spend your time is, the more horrible this is. In high school I was probably really close to this, and I hated it until I realized there was a big world outside of my school. Then, I didn’t give a damn, and now, I get congratulations from these same people for having co-written a bestselling book. Hmmmmm…

I forget why I started mentioning these, but I realize now that I could make a chart out of them if I wanted. That might be useful.

Anyway, all of these are labels that are attached to you if you behave differently. Do you recognize yourself if any of them? If not, you should be worried, because you are probably boring as hell.

What happens when someone judges you is based on how many of the positive traits you have as well as the negative. Asshole +funny or + ambitious might be acceptable, but asshole by itself is not. Visionary +loner works too. Interesting right?

In social environments where you’ll never see people again, none of this matters. When you do see them again, you just need to replace what you’ve done with something acceptable for a while. This doesn’t work as well if you’re an asshole from the start, but this means that everything is basically changeable.

What is the logical conclusion to this? Do whatever you want, no one cares if you change unless it hurts them, and most of the time, they won’t even remember. Become who you want to be– most of the labels for being out there are good, not bad. If you get a bad one, just remember to add something edgy into it, and you’re back into good territory.

In other words, chill the fuck out.

The web is a delivery technology. So is the US Postal Service. So are text messages, and so is language. All of culture passes through these methods. It cannot exist without them.

Culture is restricted by business models. The album is not the ideal packaging for music, but it was the only one available that would help people make a living, so it holds on even now, when it is obvious that it’s obsolete.

Friction in delivery technology is inversely proportional to its ability to support an industry. Therefore the better delivery gets, the less we need an industry to support it.

The ideal environment for culture is one in which business cannot make any money from it. Then culture naturally flows rather than being about what can be made money with (the Canadian art grant structure comes to mind).

There is a theoretical future where ideas take as long as they need to get explained. They don’t take 250-300 pages, which is an artifact of the publishing industry. Most ideas can be explained briefly, so they will be. Packaging will naturally move to what is most appropriate for the idea/meme in question.

Existing businesses will do as much as they can to prevent this from happening, because they need the model to support themselves.

It’s possible that the end game to this is ubiquitous information, on every device, in every location, instantly available when it is created. When this happens we have reduced the infrastructure and its cost to the bare minimum, and almost all commerce becomes part of the long tail.

But in the meantime, relic industries are important to you because they provide credibility and mainstream attention. This is why bloggers publish books– because not everyone can (that’s admittedly different these days).

This means you use what people believe in (the past) to support your goals (the future). But you cannot ever believe in the methods of the past. Once you do, you’re maintaining (eventual) residual infrastructure in order to support yourself.

This is bad because that is the point at which you stop growing and start becoming a relic yourself. I don’t want that, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

Young = Flexible = Growth = Life

Old = Rigid = Contraction = Death

Become any of these, in either equation, and you will become the others.

A simple metaphor for an important phenomenon. I’ll explain.

Cop bots are the enforcers. Google is an organizing algorithm but, more importantly, it’s also an exclusion robot. It says “you’re in,” and “you’re out.” It has to be very good at this, or it makes no money, and the robot gets shut down.

Spammers are infamous for sending millions of emails. These are robber bots. They find new ways around systems and exploit loopholes in the cop bots to give profit to their masters.

Both the cop and robber bots are massively leveraged. Both of them work extremely fast, but there’s one element that’s missing: humans.

Humans are currently sophisticated enough to detect most robber bots. We know when we’re on a splog instead of a real blog, and we know when a spam comment is real or not. But if you have a blog, especially one that gets a fair amount of traffic, you’ll notice it’s taking you longer than before to see what comments are real. Robber bots are getting smarter.

As time goes on, robber bots will get better and better at confusing us, just the same way game bots are getting better than humans at chess and Jeopardy. The cop bots accelerate too, but they need us to triage the grey areas, which is why there are “moderated” comments and CAPTCHAs that require human intervention.

This means humans will have to spend more and more time in the grey area, detecting robber bots. In other words, the robber robots are accelerating. Humans are not.

This is exacerbated by the problem that more and more existing information is going online and becoming spammable, where detection is more difficult due to restriction in trust signals (ie humans can detect each other easier in person).

I hypothesize that the inevitable endgame to this is a 100% non-anonymous internet, which has already begun with Google Accounts, Facebook, and Verified Twitter accounts. I’m not sure I like this idea, but I have a feeling that there is no way to avoid it, because it is the only way to ensure that someone is human, thus giving us our time back (especially since content creators are often moderators, too).

It is highly possible that there are gaps in my logic. If so, please poke holes in them, I’d be more than happy about it.

Theory: The more you can find out about your culture, the more you’re capable of moving upward. This is buffered by risk, which prevents people from acting based on potential repercussions.

Huge mouthful, I know. Let’s break it down so it makes a bit more sense.

Imagine you’re a serf in a kingdom 600 years ago. You know of the king, you may even have seen him, but you have no idea how to get up there. How does someone become a king, a duke, or even a court jester? You have no idea, because this information is not available to you. You know no one that can get you anywhere close to the king so you can find out. You’re stuck.

Compare that to your favourite CEO, maybe Steve Jobs or Richard Branson. They have biographies (sometimes many of them) and Wikipedia pages. Their stories are well known. You know how they made computers or built their companies, and you know where they’re going from here based on their quarterly reports and by reading message boards like The Motley Fool.

In one case, you know nothing about how to get where you’re going. In the other, you know much more. Naturally, you are more capable of getting there. So far, so good.

This means that a transparent society is naturally a more democratic one, where you see people around you capable of doing great things so you’re more prone to want to do them yourself. But risk prevents this. It has to seem as if you’re not going to be hurting yourself for potential gain.

Here’s another interesting part of the equation. Risk is increased by debt. Since I teach people about taking risks when I do speaking events, this was a huge breakthrough for me. I picked it up from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, who we wrote about in Trust Agents and happens to be paleo. Here’s a video of him talking about it:

The argument is simple and can be explained by an easy analogy: If you have kids, that is debt in the form of future food and housing. If you have a house, that is debt in the form of future mortgage payments. Both of these decrease the chance you’ll quit your job and start your own company. Risk increases your acceptance of the status quo.

I’m unsure whether health care helps people become entrepreneurs or vice-versa. There is a huge startup culture in Silicon Valley but I’m not sure that means anything. Quebec has a huge portion of small companies contributing to its GDP but has a culture of submitting to hierarchy, so who knows. Maybe even a more collective-based culture (naturally submits to hierarchy) is also prone to giving health care, while a highly individualistic one is less so. But I know I feel safer doing many things based on the fact that my basic needs are taken care of by a support network of friends/family/government.

The reason you’d want upward mobility in the first place is because it’s the opposite of debt– it’s like putting money in the bank in the sense that your future self is (or your children are) in a better position. And this, in turn, is better because you have control over your own time, which leads to more self-actualization (hopefully).

Anyway, this is a real reason why you’d want to prevent debt and/or live in a transparent society, of which the web is a prime example. The more you can find out about everything around you, the more you’re capable of finding a good path for yourself. Btw, this is totally different from school, which IMHO rarely teaches you actual success skills and is devalued by it being the most commonly taken path.

Again, sorry if it’s not entirely making sense yet. But I’m pretty sure that, if you read this blog, you can keep up.

Comments appreciated.

1. Kevin Spacey
2. Benicio del Toro
3. ???
4. ???
5. ???

When was the last time you had an argument about what actors were in what movie? Do they still happen with your friends? They don’t happen as much with mine. We have smartphones, so the web makes them irrelevant.

Let’s say I gave you the answer to the above. Would you remember it? I’m guessing it’s more like “Cool, I can get that answer from IMDB later if I need it.”

This is what we meant in Trust Agents when we said “memory is becoming obsolete.” Basically, the web remembers for you, so you don’t need to… almost for anything.

We don’t need to explain cool commercials anymore because we can just say “I’ll send it to you later.” We don’t make bets about who has the most home runs because it’s accessible to us immediately.

We use memory instead for remembering where something is, instead of what something is. It’s like we’re remembering the pointer instead of the actual data.

What I’m wondering is if it’s something I should be upset about.

Am I right that what it seems to do is cut off conversations? Because that’s a little how it feels. Instead of a discussion there is an interrupt as someone looks it up on Wikipedia.

Basically it’s like a gameshow where to ask Google instead of Alex Trebek.

Somehow not as fun, though.

So of course I’m on a plane this morning and the guy next to me is doing the elbow thing.

You know what I’m talking about. He’s leaning into the armrest with his elbow and it’s clearly touching mine, but he doesn’t care. I, on the other hand, am deeply disturbed.

I always wondered how this battle begins, but the way it ends (for me) is always like this continuous game of chicken where each person is like deliberately leaning into the armrest, more and more, trying to assert their control over this meagre collective area for a measly hour, until finally, one of them gives up.

It becomes a matter of pride. It’s a game of will.

I wonder what makes people feel this way. I’m guilty of it too. I get very protective of that space. Is the other guy is aware of what he’s doing?

How many spaces are there in America/Canada where this would happen? These people would never sit at your table at a restaurant. They might shove you in the subway, though or take up two seats on a packed bus.

It’s almost like we become scarcity-obsessed. We wouldn’t care if the other guy didn’t want it so much– but because he’s imposing, *I* want to impose on *him*!

Anyway, this is ridiculous, maybe not even worth a post. But I find it amazing what happens to us when we feel imposed upon like that. Almost like Jekyll and Hyde.

Think about it. How are men better than women, and how are women better than men?

If we work from stereotype:

• Men are stronger
• Men have more mathematically-oriented minds

These two things above can be taken care of by machines and/or society. Anything heavy that needs to be lifted, or any way that women need to be defended by men is long gone and is replaced by a system of justice or by the ability for technology to lift heavy things, etc.

Let’s continue with the stereotypes:

• Men are more driven and ambitious
• Men are “big picture” thinkers

Even if the above is true (it’s questionable, but whatever), these are societal things that will equalize over time, so they’re temporary. Over our lifetime we can probably assume that we’ll begin to equalize out– women and men becoming closer to each other in terms of ambition, etc as both genders come to be brought up in much similar manners.

Now, what do the stereotypes tell us about women?

• Women are attuned to emotions
• Women understand social dynamics
• Women are more patient
• Women are organized

As mechanization and technology takes over most of the stuff men are “naturally” good at, it’s the stuff that can’t be mechanized that will become valuable. Guess what? These are the things women are good at. They will always be valuable (possibly even more valuable) while men’s supposed natural attributes dwindle.

The only problem that I can think of right now is that women currently have a tendency to cut each other down in a way that men do not. All my evidence for this is anecdotal, but I have a feeling that a lot of women reading this would agree (and I’d invite you to speak up if so). Honestly, I think it’s the only thing keeping women down right now. If there was a kind of team attitude going on like what men have, the only thing stopping women from taking over would be the tenuous grasp that old white men have on power right now.

I don’t think this argument can be refuted (except maybe the last paragraph, which is kind of conjecture). But then again, this is the internet, so anything goes. Is it possible to disagree with this? How?

What is the filter ladder?

I came up with this concept while talking to a Harvard professor I met at the airport the other day. He asked how I dealt with information overload and, as I explained it to him, I realized that his filters were higher than mine.

In other words, I was willing to read more crap than him. I’m willing to go through more bad books, more bad blog posts, and vote them up/down on things like Reddit, Digg, etc.

Basically his Slashdot comment threshold is set to 4 or 5. Mine is set to 2 or 3.

The result of this is a filter ladder, where you informally decide what level of crap you’re willing to deal with in order to receive information first, based on your personality, tolerance, patience, etc.

What does this mean for both of us? By definition, it means more orthodox ideas reach him and less crap. He only pays attention to reputed sources.

For me, it means I waste a lot of time, but I may see interesting ideas first. So I’ll find out before him about a big news event, maybe, but he won’t waste time sorting through stuff that’s not worth looking at.

Both of us benefit in different ways from what we decide on. He wastes less time, while I see edgier stuff. Know what I mean?

Another metaphor for this is “7 Layers of Heaven/9 Layers of Hell” theory of information filtration. If you think about it that way, it could go like this:

At the bottom are the demons (ie robots/daemons ;) ) in the bottom level of Hell that go through the spam, then people that go through the new sections of recommendation engines, where there’s still a ton of crap to sort through.

Then there’s people that read blogs, then newspapers, etc. An we can follow this all the way up to the top academics that only read the papers the PhD students write (the highest level of “heaven”). This wasn’t where Thomas was, but I think you see my point.

Do you know what level are you at? Where are most of your friends? Do you see a big difference in results from being where you are?

If you’re like me, you’ve been plagued with computer problems your whole life– just not yours.

I bought my parents a Mac Mini a few years back. It was a stop-loss mechanism to help me spend more time with them. It worked. Now I hang out and have supper instead of fixing their computer problems– everybody’s happy.

When it comes to computers, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those that try, and those that read the manual.

If you experiment, that means that when you’re in a new program, trying to save a document or something, you click around: “Let’s see, how about ‘Edit’? Nope… maybe ‘File’? Ah, there it is! Save.” Then you save the document. See, it took a while, but you figured it out.

If you read the manual, it’s the opposite. You don’t know how to do something and you kind of freeze, call somebody for tech support, or you might reach for the manual. If this happens enough, the manual might even be dog-eared from use, who knows.

With cooking, I read the manual. But I think I’m slowly starting to become the first type. I recently began buying random food from the market and trying it out– different cuts of meat, veggies I usually never eat, etc. It works out great and I feel kind of empowered about it.

That’s the thing– the first type empowers you to learn for yourself, while the second leaves you dependent on outside resources. You tend to read the manual when you’re a beginner, but the trick is to remember to force yourself to experiment, instead of just becoming a cookbook expert.

I think that, back in the day with computers (and before the web), we were forced to learn through experimentation. Now, computers are simpler, so many people never get that way with their machines. They depend on Google for answers but may never truly learn for themselves.

I’m wondering if this is making us more compliant in general– what do you think?