In other words: if the power of social media truly sits in its direct civilian/customer connectivity, then positioning yourself as its arbitrator is to simply become the force you sought to eliminate in the first place. Social media gurus risk becoming the very same corporate middle managers they often preach against.

It only had single page inside and was just one word long: “Practice.”

I should talk less more often.²

I am worthy of respect only to the degree that I respect my greatest critics.³

1. Original Tweet
2. Original Tweet
3. Original Tweet

While watching this phenomenon of “leaderless movements” emerge, it appears that even if you don’t call them “leaders,” the influencers still do in fact lead. The critical question becomes this: what happens when “leadership” becomes a negative word? The “leader-free” group risks leadership abuse: wherein the “leadership” of the influencers becomes disguised under cloak of “equality” (and this equality is pronounced as the group’s trademark virtue) but eventually the strongest personalities will — unintentionally or not — usurp the intentions of the weak. Equality then becomes a value that is true only in rhetoric, but fails to be manifested in practice. A friend of mine put it this way: “Apparently some of us are more equal than others.”

No matter how much you suspect, decry, or abandon offices of formal leadership, rest assured that the most cunning, manipulative, clever and dominate personalities will eventually — no matter what you call it — lead the group. Seeking to get rid of recognized, formalized positions of leadership is to ultimately shoot one’s cause in the proverbial foot. If leadership is truly synonymous with influence, then leadership will never go away. Leadership structures, despite all their flaws and drawbacks, have the power to mandate egalitarian input and opportunity for a broader range of gifts and personalities.

The role, value, and skill of leadership is beautiful, intrinsically human, and indispensable. While I appreciate the Occupy Movement’s disdain and distrust of established leaders in society, I see no way it can have any longevity unless it somehow collectively come to terms with its own eventual need for centralized leadership and governance. Yes, leaderless movements can overthrow a dictator every once in a while: but eventually they themselves must grow to reinstate leadership in the vacuums they leave behind.

Occupy must, to have any lasting impact, actually raise up leaders who will espouse and articulate the equality and solidarity pronounced by the group. To denounce leadership altogether is to merely denounce its own potential future.

Say you’re looking for a vacation destination. You can of course search the web, but what if you want to learn from the experiences your friends have had on their vacations? Just as in real life, your friends’ experiences are often so much more meaningful to you than impersonal content on the web.¹

What is the benefit of embedding this related social data into your search?

This is search that truly knows me, and gives me a result page that only I can see… I get a nice mix of personal results with results from the web…²

There has already been much commentary offered on the Googlization of everything³ and how one company’s algorithm determines what you find, and the order you find it in, determined in large part by the clicks and behaviors of others who entered similar queries to your own.

As technology continues to develop it will be all the more important for us to make a clear distinction between research and searching.

When I am searching I know the intended object of my query. (Which restaurant has best fettuccine alfredo?)

In research I am trying to determine the most critical questions to investigate. (What factors incite systemic environmental transformation?)

See the difference in this example? Searching presumes the parameter and category of the answer. Research seeks to uncover the parameters themselves.

Google, plus Search Your World has indirectly demonstrated the difference between search and research as it offers users a chance to opt in or out of viewing its socially-sourced results. It is important that the continuing development of these technologies take into consideration the importance of both streams inquiry.

In a unbelievably short time the capacity to search online has become a nearly ubiquitous utility for living and navigating the world. Like every technology we create, search technology will in turn create us.⁴ Thus it is important that we continue to develop technologies that give us unmitigated access to raw data… and not merely the link that the last ten million users clicked.

1. Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, Search, plus Your World, 1/10/2012
2. Ibid.
3. There is a great interview of Siva Vaidhyanathan by CBC’s Nora Young here: Full Interview: Siva Vaidhyanathan on the Googlization of Everything, May 2, 2011
4. James Shelley, Rewiring the Homo Sapiens, April 25, 2009

However, we ought not forget this ageless proverb: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This saying, some say, is inherited from this passage by George Santayana (read it slowly):

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.¹

Have you ever a exercised rigorous analysis of your biggest regrets? We generally try to forget and “move on” from the consequences of our worst decisions, not go back and revisit them. However, what would be the benefit of dissecting our own regrets in search of common (or casual) traits and patterns? What if we could, as Santayana said, “retain” the past? If we could breakdown our biggest regrets into manageable data sets, would we then not have a helpful tool to help avoid them in the future?

Could analyzing our past regrets be the one of the most effective way of avoiding future ones? Could our past regrets be one of our best assets for making successful future decisions?

I recently tried investigating my own regrets with this tactic in mind. My methodology wasn’t rocket science — nor were the results anything that could published in a peer-reviewed journal — it was just a simple, reflective question: what traits and parameters (if any) do my regrets have in common with each other?

Looking back, I get the sense that most of my regrets are strongly correlated with certain choice scenarios:

Choices made with limited input or based on faulty sources. Trusting the wrong inputs or failing to follow due diligence to verify assumed knowledge has landed me in more than a few situations that I would have rather avoided in hindsight. This reiterates the old adage about assumptions and a donkey’s anus. Failing to ask myself how I know what I “know” has often been costly.²

Choices made with minimal reflection. By reflection I mean something more than merely charting a cost/benefit analysis of an action (although reflection might certainly include this). For me, reflection entails considering a choice or situation beyond the surface of my first gut reaction (we could call this my IER — Initial Emotive Response). Reacting on the basis of my IER seems all-too-often associated with regretted decisions, far too consistently to be a coincidence. (Of course, some of my best best decisions have been driven by my IER, but virtually all of my bad ones have too. It’s complicated.)

Like I said, this is clearly not the stuff of higher academia. However, being cognizant and aware of these correlations might go a long way to avoiding future regrets. If, for instance, I realize that my regrets are more often than not accompanied by a lack of input and reflection, then disciplining myself to apply some knowledge verification and contemplation practice to future decision-making might avoid the kind of decisions I have hitherto regretted the most.

Bad decisions have been given a bad rap — usually deserved, of course, because of their negative consequences — but their importance is grossly abused when we try to repress them altogether. You see, bad choices are good: not only are they a necessary part of life, they’re experiments through which we learn.

Life is a laboratory. In life, as in science, it is important for us to recall, respect, and learn from our negative results.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Your biggest regrets contain a storehouse of wisdom — perhaps some of your most important discoveries — yet you still must dare to explore them.

1. George Santayana, The Life of Reason or, The Phases of Human Progress (London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., 1906) p. 284, emphasis mine
2. I personally believe this realization ought to foster a disciplined accounting for one’s assertions, as highlighted in the recent post entitled, Cite the Source

On November 11, 2011, I presented a talk at a local Ignite event entitled, Compassion is an Exit Strategy.¹ While some of the data points are already out of date,² the main point of the presentation remains: we need to consider more systemic responses to poverty rather than simply adding more social services.

Would you be willing to take a few minutes to practically respond to some of these issues regarding our social assistance programs? I am working with a group of citizens to formulate and submit policy recommendations to our municipality and province drawn from our collective input. We have setup a website to elicit this community feedback.³ Please invest some mental energy at this site to contribute your voice.

1. Watch on YouTube; the audio of this presentation is also available on my podcast.
2. In the video I state at the maximum Ontario Works support level is $585/month, it is now $592/month. Also, in the presentation I assert that Ontario Works’ exit-to-employment ratio is 11.9% to 14.1%. This figure is taken from Julie Castonguay, Benchmarking Carrots and Sticks: developing a model for the evaluation of work-based employment programs (Amsterdam University Press, 2009-10-20), p. 295. Since delivering this presentation, municipal administrators of Ontario Works have informed that the exit-to-employment ratio is actually closer to 22%. I have not personally seen official or internal documentation to verify this figure as the current exit-to-employment ratio.
3. Please contribute your input at londonpolicyresponse.com. Deadline for input is January 28, 2012.

It’s the viscerally wrenching incapacity to decipher your own thoughts into alphabetic form.

It’s the writhing, agonizing frustration that comes from not being able to render or abstract your mind’s vision to a transferable medium.

It’s the brink of enlightenment.

The Master said, ‘I never enlighten anyone who has not been driven to distraction by trying to understand a difficulty or who has not got into a frenzy trying to put his ideas into words.’¹ (Confucius)

It brings to mind the words of German novelist Thomas Mann: “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”²

1. Confucius, The Analects (trans. D.C. Lau, Penguin Classics) 7.8, p. 86
2. Thomas Mann, from Essays of Three Decades, cited in Writing Well: The Essential Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 10

At issue: an American company (Caterpillar) who owns a local locomotive plant (Electro-Motive Diesel) has locked out the unionized (Canadian Auto Workers) workforce who voted to strike if necessary⁴ against a renewed labor contract that would cut the worker’s wage in half and eliminate their pensions.⁵ Caterpillar asserts that the current wage levels are not “sufficiently flexible and cost competitive in the global marketplace.“⁶ The union argues that Caterpillar is highly profitable, with sales up 30% in the past three months⁷ — not to mention CEO Douglas R. Oberhelman’s compensation of $10,550,300.00 last year.⁸ But according to Caterpillar, the cost of wages and benefits at the plant here are already double the amount at the company’s facility in Illinois.⁹ Some union representatives are suggesting that Caterpillar’s plan is to simply move operations out of Canada altogether and into cheaper labor markets in the United States.¹⁰

In short: it’s the perfect recipe for a very bitter dispute.

It’s also a perfect recipe for churning up some juicy political rhetoric. When so many jobs are on the line in a fragile local economy (9.6% jobless rate¹¹ in December) tempers tend to bare their political stripes quite clearly.

The standard Conservative message from the federal government, as articulated by MP Susan Truppe: “We don’t have jurisdiction over this…Because this is a private company, it falls between the company and the union.“¹²

Not so fast, says NDP MP Irene Mathyssen: “It was only three years ago Stephen Harper used this very plant as a backdrop to announce a $5 million federal tax break for this already profitable company.” ¹³

Well, yes, but that was different, replies Harper spokesman Carl Vallée: “The Prime Minister’s [2008] announcement related to the government’s tax policies for all companies. A low tax environment is the best way to ensure job creators come to Canada and stay in Canada, as proven by the nearly 600,000 jobs created in Canada since July 2009.”¹⁴

The Conservatives have a double-standard, says Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union.: “The federal government certainly had no problem interfering in bargaining between Air Canada and the CAW last year,” What’s more, “Caterpillar declared a gain of $1.3 billion in assets on its books following the takeover of EMC. The federal government now says that the takeover did not meet the threshold of $299 million for a full review, or to seek legally-binding commitments to Canada.“¹⁵

Frustrated? No matter what your political predispositions are, you found an argument above to support your case. Whether you think corporate tax cuts are positive or negative, whether you tend toward protectionism or wide open markets, whether you are for or against unions, whether you want a hands-off government or a governing mediator — whatever lens you look through — you’ll see this whole dispute through your ideological filter.

And damn it, this whole debacle just goes to prove your point, doesn’t it?

So is there really such a thing as objectivity? I hope there is, but I can’t imagine any other way to find this allusive perspective apart from sitting together in issue-centric, non-personal, mutually respectful arenas of discourse… and I don’t see many people doing this in the civic sphere. Federally, provincially, municipally, we all seem to have our minds made up already. We do not have arenas of discourse, tragically — but we seem to have quite a few arenas of dogma, wherein predetermined ideologies pummel each other like moral inquisitions.

At the root of democracy there must be a space where we are allowed to change our minds, alter our opinions, and try out some new lenses on the world. If we lose this space to experiment and learn then we are left with no option than to polarize and attack one another.

Somewhere between proselytizing our assured ideas and excusing ourselves for our flippant uncertainty is a sacred middle ground.

I still choose to believe we can go there together.

I am still a dogmatic moderate.¹⁶

1. Caterpillar Locks Out Workers in Canada, By Ian Austen, New York Times, January 2, 2012
2. CAW seeks strike OK at Caterpillar plant, Lynn Adler, Reuters, Thu, 29 Dec, 2011
3. Caterpillar, Rio Initiate Lockouts in Canada, Wall Street Journal, James R. Hagerty, Caroline Van Hasselt, January 3, 2012
4. CAW Members at Caterpillar vote 97 per cent in Favour of Strike Action, if Necessary, CAW, December 30, 2011
5. Unions face new fiscal reality, Scott Taylor, The London Free Press, January 6, 2012; also see: CAW seeks strike OK at Caterpillar plant, Lynn Adler, Reuters, Thu, 29 Dec, 2011
6. EMC Update page, accessed on January 7, 2012, at 12:09 a.m.
7. Caterpillar’s three-month global sales rise 30%, Bob Tita, MarketWatch, Dec. 19, 2011, 11:05 a.m. EST
8. Douglas R. Oberhelman Forbes Profile
9. EMC Update page, accessed on January 7, 2012, at 12:47 a.m.
10. UPDATE 1-Caterpillar unit rejects CAW contract extension request, Reuters, Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:56pm EST
11. Jobless rate drops but …, Hank Daniszewski, London Free Press, January 6, 2012
12. On the political hot seat, Scott Taylor, London Free Press, January 5, 2012
13. CATERPILLAR LOCKOUT REQUIRES GOVERNMENT ACTION NDP MPs SAY, 2012 01 06, Irene Mathyssen
14. Tories mum on lockout at plant Harper used to tout corporate tax cuts, Globe & Mail, Bruce Cheadle, Wednesday, Jan. 04, 2012
15. CAW Questions Government Claims Regarding Electro-Motive Assets, Calls for Full Disclosure of Sale, Canada NewsWire, Jan. 5, 2012
16. James Shelley, Creed of the Dogmatic Moderate, April 25, 2011

The problem is we cannot see what we cannot see. We cannot unbundle our neurons. We cannot unstreamline our neural pathways. We cannot un-habituate ourselves to our own habits all by ourselves. We need calculated disruption—what some people would call, on an attentional level, distraction—before we can begin deep learning of our most basic patterns, the ones we don’t even see but that govern much of what we do see and understand about our world.¹ (Cathy Davidson)

Cathy Davidson’s thesis is that attention blindness is our biggest enemy and the way to break it is to strategically allow our focus to be interrupted by new stimuli. Distracted multitasking isn’t so bad after all, apparently.²

Of course, the next thing I did was commence a Google search to see if Cathy Davidson and Nicholas Carr³ had ever sat on a panel together or engaged in a debate. And yes, they have.⁴ It’s worth watching.

1. Cathy Davidson, Are We Born Racist? Paying Attention in a World of Difference, January 2, 2012
2. I came across the work of Cathy Davidson via her interview on the Harvard Business Review Ideacast, The Myth of Monotasking, November 23, 2011
3. Nicholas Carr is the author of The Shadows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, he blogs at Rough Type
4. Milkin Institute Global Conference, Tuesday, May 3, 2011, The Attention Deficit Society: What Technology Is Doing to Our Brains, along with Clifford Nass and Sherry Turkle. As an aside, I also heard Sherry Turkle on American Public Media’s On Being back in April, Alive Enough?