future

Allow me to inebriate some sober numbers … When we talk about Facebook and Twitter, cars and bikes, business and the arts, we are always self-referential. We think a certain way, we use something in a certain way, we believe this may occur in a certain way … and we forget that the world doesn’t always think like us. It’s a cliché, but everybody is different and just because we see something one way or use something in a particular manner, it doesn’t necessarily follow that every one else will.

I was thinking about this when I read the post, 10 Sobering Twitter Statistics. Some people see Twitter as a marketing tool, some as a tool for news, some as way to enhance their real estate business (yes, another marketing view but perhaps also organizational). And there are some who use it for non-commercial reasons and some who just use it for silliness. The tool itself has no inherent purpose beyond what each of us brings to it. For many, there is no purpose.

I was also thinking about statistics and surveys and all the data we collect. Often, maybe more often than not, the information they best provide concerns how much more we need to learn. They highlight what we don’t know. And they are usually interpreted from a particular point of view, at least at street level.

I saw a tweet, followed by a retweet, for that posting titled, 10 Sobering Twitter Statistics. Use of the word “sobering” suggests there is something not very good in these numbers. But I thought, what if there were? What if there were other ways of seeing these? So I’ve put together an alternative — 10 other ways of seeing sobering Twitter stats:

• 94% of Twitter users have under 100 followers (which may suggest quality has more meaning than quantity)

• 90% of tweeting is done by 10% of Twitter users (Which is very much like the real world: 90% don’t call radio stations, 90% don’t write letters to the editor, most don’t speak out at town halls, etc. Also, some people don’t speak because they are listening.)

• 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month (But since we don’t know who they were we have no idea whether they would have brought anything of value to the Twitter streams nor do we know why they didn’t return.)

• 50% of Twitter accounts are inactive (Haven’t tweeted in the past week) (See the previous item)

• 40% of tweets are “pointless babble” (As opposed to … TV? Blogs? The street? Boardrooms? Sounds like it reflects the real world.)

• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers (Personally, though I have loads of acquaintances, that is about how many really close friends I have. Maybe I’m tweeting for reasons other than to pitch something?)

• 21% of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders (And what would the percentage of domain names as placeholders be? Have these accounts been abandoned? Are they in place to reserve for a future presence as a company stream, a person’s stream, a campaign stream or to prevent others from getting a name that might have an impact on theirs? Do we have any idea? For all we know it could be one obsessive compulsive guy trying over and over to open one account that is “just right.”)

• 11% of Twitter users interact with brands on Twitter (The world, unfortunately, will always have a certain percentage of really stupid people. As I’ve written before, we don’t follow brands. We follow people. If you find a brand with a lot of followers I would hazard a guess that they aren’t interacting with it but with each other.)

• 9% of Twitter users don’t follow anyone at all (Maybe they have lives beyond the Internet? Maybe they have no interest – just took the name because its theirs and they didn’t want someone else to have it? Maybe they haven’t found anyone worth following? Maybe they don’t know how?)

• 3% of followers click on links tweeted (Does this include retweets? More to the point, how many links do we come across in a day – on web pages, in emails, on Facebook and so on? How many of those do we click? Is 3% about average? High? Low?)

And that’s it. Accurate assessments? Probably not. But you never know! But it’s worthwhile questioning the assumptions we bring to topics like these.

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I suppose I shouldn’t restrict this to Star Trek since it was science fiction generally that affected how I see the world. It should be stressed however, it was not any science fiction. It was the science fiction of the period when I was reading it almost exclusively, which meant authors like Clarke, Asimov, Alfred Bester, James Blish and on and on. It was also the age I was at the time when I was reading it, which was roughly speaking my teen years, a period when I think our way of seeing is most open to influence.

As far as worldviews go, as far as a way of seeing is concerned, Star Trek encapsulated it.

And what is it that Star Trek did? It made me believe in possibility. It made me believe in, “What if?”

The creator and creative force behind Star Trek, until his death, was Gene Roddenberry. It was his way of seeing, a way I was wide open to. It was wildly optimistic, though not exclusively.

It should also be pointed out that, essentially, Star Trek was romance, though of a masculine kind. In other words, it was a western with phasers instead of six shooters, starships instead of horses.

Captain Kirk was a cowboy.

At its heart Star Trek was about a universe to be discovered (just as in western, the “old west” was a place to be discovered). It was a universe where anything could be done. If you could think it, dream it, it could be. It might take some work, but it could. You just had to ask, “What if …?” It was about problems and creative solutions.

Of course, that way of seeing faded from the world and we, as a group, became enamoured with a universe of threat and conspiracy and doubt. Sometimes, I blame that on the Borg. They were so good as bad guys, the universe they represented was so threatening in such an inveigling way, we embraced it happily.

But it never influenced me the way the first articulation of Star Trek did. Any job I’ve ever had has only been interesting if it involved learning (discovery) and, “What if …” Politically, I can be either Liberal or Conservative, left or right. It’s more interesting trying to see it from both sides and seeing what merits both have and then asking, “What if …?”

The recent economic debacle … Awful as it is, I can’t help thinking, “What if …?” I can’t help wondering about what opportunities are out there waiting to be discovered if we just looked and imagined.

I see a lot of focus today on communities, online and in the real world, which are often less communities than enclaves of similar people (race, thinking, politics, religious beliefs, economic status etc.) trying to isolate themselves from the rest of “the mob.” Gated communities, in a sense. Whereas I can’t help but wonder, “If we brought these other people into the mix, what could we come up with?”

I have loads of stupid ideas. Impractical ideas. But I can’t help thinking, so what? Stupid ideas are still ideas and someone, somewhere will look at them and say, “Yeah, that’s dumb, but … if you did this, and approached it this way instead …” And suddenly the stupid idea is transformed into something new, practical and workable.

I believe, in the Star Trek world, that’s the kind of thing Mr. Spock did: take a stupid idea and make it a good one.

These days, I’m caught up with social media, Twitter in particular. It’s not because I think it’s wonderful or that everyone should use it or that I think it means, “… The world has changed forever!” It’s because I’m fascinated by its possibilities, the experimentation going on with it and the way that different people use it in different ways. I’m fascinated by all the “What if …?” surrounding it. I find myself depressed by those people, like Maureen O’Dowd, whose imagination seems so limited that they can’t see past the most trivial aspects of such a tool and see what else it might do.

Blame it on Star Trek. Blame it on Gene Roddenberry. I simply can’t help looking at the world and asking, “What if …?”

Everything is possible in a Star Trek world. You just have to, “Make it so.”

(Apologies to Captain Picard.)

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As I read Nicholas Carr’s The Big Switch I wonder, as I have before, are we making ourselves redundant? By “we,” I mean us. Human beings. As computerization does so many wonderful things for us, one of those wonderful things is the elimination of loads of work. And that’s not quite so wonderful since it means eliminating jobs. When jobs are eliminated, the economy goes in the crapper. When that happens, no one is left to use (meaning “buy”) all those wonderful things … yada yada, blah blah blah.

You’ve heard all that before. But to continue …

While I don’t expect to see it tomorrow, I think we’ll sooner or later develop software that can pretty much replicate human creativity. When that happens, we really will be in the crapper. We’ll have eliminated the last remaining reason for keeping humans around.

You take away creativity and we, as a species, are a pain in the ass. Should they ever get together, perhaps for a three day brainstorming conference, machines and nature are sure to come to the conclusion that everything, and I mean everything, would be better served if humans weren’t around to screw up the works. (Who but a human would drive a Hummer? Would own five houses? Would kill an elephant for the tusk? It’s not like you can eat it.)

Well, that’s the dark view of where we may be headed with our brilliance.

What would the sunny view be?

I should add …

I’ve got loads of technology. I love technology. So the musing above … I’m just wonderin’.

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