Brain Dump

Over the last few months, I’ve written long essays in my morning notes and never got around to publishing them. Once I had them written, they mostly moved out of my interest (publishing seems to be optional for some reason) The key here is “mostly moved” out – but not entirely. So here’s a short form version of every one of those essays. I need to get them out of my thinking so I can move onto other things.

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I’m intrigued with how utterly destructive US politics really are. Tearing down is more effective as a strategy than building positively. The strategy works no matter how awful people think it is. Canadian politics is following in these footsteps to my dismay.

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I read a great deal about the thinking behind the US Supreme Court’s decision to grant “rights” to corporations in the same way that people have rights. Can’t understand it and the effects are as expected in the point above.

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I’m intrigued with the research that suggests people who think in conservative ways have brains that are hard-wired differently than those who think in liberal ways (having to do with the inability to deal with uncertainty). Now we know that hard-wiring changes with use – can we change a hard-wired conservative thinker into accepting more uncertaintly?

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The Internet-genie is out of the bottle and no amount of stuffing is going to put it back. Welcome to a world of uncertainty.

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Most writers can’t figure out the power of the Net. Canalization problems I suspect or are many writers conservative in their outlooks?

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Risk is critical to success. Few people are willing to bet the farm like I did.

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It’s safer to do what you know, what everybody else is doing. Even if it doesn’t work really well any more.

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Succeeding today using yesterday’s tools is increasingly unlikely. Conversely, figuring out which tools to use means taking risks and killing losers as quickly as possible.

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Everybody is talking on social media – nobody is listening. Makes it easy to get off that boat.

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Speaking of social media, it doesn’t scale and I have no idea how that really is supposed to work and still write and make a living

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Starting an online magazine – using outdated, no-longer-supported software and a print format seems like a waste of time and energy to me. The concept of “magazine” belongs in print just as the concept of “book” belongs in print. We can do better/different online than replicating something that doesn’t take advantage of the power of the Net.

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In the last four months, I’ve read a dozen print books ranging from O’Connor to Gibson to Isaacson. Also a dozen or so ebooks. Writers who don’t consume books out of their genre have no sense of comparison about what’s good. No standard against which to measure their progress.

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I love the notion of disintermediation and I apologize formally to all my garden writer friends in advance.

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The walls are going up across the Net and understanding the rules in “walled gardens” is critical for success. I’m not sure we can keep the walls down, rather doubt it given the money and stakes involved. Yes, that means dealing with Amazon is different than dealing with Google or Youtube or ?? (name your own poison here)

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As I said, this is a brain dump and summary of a bunch of essays. Far easier to write and read than the originals and that too is part of the power and failure of the Net.

Damn, but life is a giggle