Twitter and why it is not stupid

So, here is the thing...communications is about sharing. We humans are “wired” to communicate. I read once (albeit about 10 years ago) that about 67% of what people talk about on mobile handsets is what they call “gossip.”
Call it what you want; gossip is communicating and everyone participates in it.

Hear me out. Take “THE media”, the big, scary media, they communicate to us inane things that we really don’t care about but yet they do such a good job of imbedding us with it via the many outlets that even people like me, totally devoid of any interest whatsoever in Tiger Woods and much less Golf, have me talking and writing about it.

So there, gossip IS communications.

So, back to Twitter; Twitter is about a new way to communicate and document. It is a new way to share with the World and a new tool for us to use judiciously. At first I was not seeing the value of Twitter but then I immersed myself in its potential and discovered that it was up to us – the human race - to use it in away that can add value to the world of ideas and maybe, just maybe, people will benefit from it, laugh at it, whatever.

With that in mind I realized that it is a wonderful tool for capturing the prevailing zeitgeist AND documenting it for future use for whomever and whatever. Secondly - being an amateur futurist- I thought, what a wonderful tool to capture insights and shared them with my community and whomever finds value on what I have to say as I go about reflecting on this thing called life and awareness. The beauty of Twitter is that you can “follow” only those that inspire you and that motivate you, etc…It is akin to the radio dial of old- you don’t like it: turn it off or go to the next station.

Twitter is not stupid: Twitter is just another communications tool much as talking, gesturing, body language, email, flirting, texting, reading, sharing, etc…IS.

"The Innovator's DNA"..sweet affirmation....

Reflecting back on some of my writings about how Innovators have a distinct set of skills that are very different from what our MBA culture promotes, here comes affirmation of these thoughts from the December 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review and Mr. Christensen himself and his associates. The title of the piece is: “The Innovator’s DNA.” Yep, discovery skills are important and distinct and they are: Observing, associating, questioning, experimenting, networking.

So, smash together Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole new Mind” + Frans Johansson’s book “The Medici Effect” + Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and you get the same insights. ( A lot more work of course, but fun!)

Proof yet again that new ideas are nothing but packed vectors emerging from the greater collective ethos and there really are no “pure” ideas. Perhaps, that is, for the wheel J