During it’s almost 20 year run as an open resource brought to masses of users via graphically driven web browsers, Jarvis acknowledges that the internet has transformed—not always necessarily for better—facets of life ranging from the economic, political, and corporate to the most intimate and personal. Yet Jarvis sets forth in often strident terms how the parameters of this transformation must be determined through a free flowing conversation amongst the very audience that the internet serves, that is, its public participants, i.e. the people.

While not always finding myself in agreement with Jarvis’ assertions (my inner jury is still out regarding the extent to which privacy is, or should be, truly dead), I believe his overall message (even if at times a bit crass) needs to be heard, and I congratulate him on articulating it rather eloquently and in a well-researched piece of work.

To whatever degree you live your life online, I would encourage reading Public Parts, as it is likely to widen and deepen your grasp of where this newfound openness is taking us as a global community, not only in the broad, virtual sense, but in ways that are most personal and real.

First the incredulousness and disbelief. Then the emerging dread, fear, helplessness, tears, confusion, and rage. The tense, worried phone calls with US family in the moments immediately following the NYC crashes, awaiting those in proximity to WTC to check in. The stunned faces of office colleagues. Wondering how I would travel to a funeral if it came down to it. The immense relief that my immediate US family would emerge in tact. Trying to get a handle on the horror that they experienced close up. The profound grief for those whose family members would not be coming home that night. Imagining what the death tally would be and how the US would respond. The awesome bravery of first responders, emergency services personnel, and common citizens who rushed toward extreme danger and met death attempting to rescue and attend victims. Recalling that High Holidays were only a few days away and wondering if most of us would be in too deep a shock for prayer as ‘usual.’

Waking up to a “new normal,” that maybe wasn’t so new.

Feeling fortunate to be in Israel, yet wanting desperately to stand by US family and friends. The knowledge that something cataclysmic and calamitous was taking place. Trying to figure out how I’d explain it to my kids. The belief that this was a wake-up call for America and that she would respond decisively and uninhibitedly to a direct by attempt by barbarians at undermining her civilization. The subsequent disappointment in leadership. The realization that response would be at most a measured and muted avoidance of confronting the real lessons of that horrible day. The xenophobia, the simple-minded hate. The tremendous respect for America’s warrior class, and emerging sense that they’d end up bearing the brunt of a tragically confused and misguided policy reflecting a pervasive and persistent leadership gap. The fervent hope that sooner rather than later, the civilized world would wake up to the awareness that its existence is under direct threat and that what’s needed goes far beyond tighter policing of airports and border crossings.

Thinking that there are folks with honest grievances, who disagree with you, distrust you, dislike you, and who act out of distress in ways that are annoying. With these folks you try to have dialog, listen, discuss, come together to seek understanding and common ground, and where necessary make concessions to achieve reconciliation.

And then, acknowledging that there are folks who will hate you no matter what, who are ideologically committed to your absolute annihilation and total destruction, who wish for and seek your demise regardless how often you demonstrate kindness, sensitivity, decency, and humanity. With such monsters you negotiate only at your own extreme peril, as you risk placing in jeopardy the cherished values, foundational principles, and very way of life that you hold dear. Negotiating and trying to reason with religio-sociopathic killers will never succeed. It’s been tried too many times before and it’s programmed to fail. Don’t confuse the occasional lull or period of relative quiet for an imaginary peace that we do not have. As I’ve been saying since that awful day exactly 10 years ago, some day, we’ll have a real awakening. At that time, we’ll modify our thinking and behavior accordingly and do what’s needed to defend our civilization, flawed as it might be. The question is what will it take … to what unimaginable loss will we be subjected … for us to get there?

In the time following the attacks, I recall seeing our decision to have another child as a defiant act of hope. Upon discovering that we’d be blessed with twins, expected to come into the world just about a year after those events, I regarded the obvious symbolism as a sign that hope is the only choice for people of faith.

I was surprised to see this article in Israel’s center-left “paper of record” this weekend reporting on what they relate to as an avoidance mentality pervading many in Israel’s leadership echelons, especially with regard to clear and present threats. Perhaps we’re all hard-wired to forget our nightmares, and turn a blind eye to what frightens and confuses us. And when the fear and the nightmares are collective, we avoid and forget collectively. If you learned how to smile again post-9/11—as well as after the innumerable horrors that have befallen America, Israel, and other parts of the world—that’s a good and healthy thing. The ability to experience joy is a necessary part of recovery, and essential for living life fully. But let’s not allow that laughter and joy, necessary as it may be, to slide into the tempting hypnosis of mass-amnesia.

And please, let’s never forget those who perished on September 11^th, 2001.

#9_11

[1/11] Finished reading The Big Switch, by Nicholas Carr. http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/bigswitch/ #TheBigSwitch #CloudComputing

[2/11] Informative and entertaining, though dark view of future of computers, networks, and connectivity. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[3/11] Claims Internet puts disproportionate power in hands of gov’ts, corporations & institutions.  #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[4/11] Power no longer in hands of individual end-user. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[5/11] Rejects notion that computer systems are technologies of emancipation. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[6/11] Rather, computer systems are technologies of control. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[7/11] Computer systems designed to monitor & influence human behavior. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[8/11] The more we share into databases, social networks, & cloud storage, the more vulnerable we make ourselves. #TheBigSwitch #Internet

[9/11] Consumerism long ago replaced libertarianism as prevailing ideology of online world. #9heBigSwitch #Internet

[10/11] Claims Google founders predict direct link between #brain & #Internet by 2020, i.e. physical-neural interface. #TheBigSwitch

[11/11] I’m finished tweeting on #TheBigSwitch. Enjoyed the book & recommend it. 

I came across a bulletin board that recommended disabling the fingerprint scanner via the LT’s BIOS, although no instructions were provided on the site (and thus, no link).

You can disable the fingerprint scanner without going directly into the BIOS, as follows:

1. In Windows (I’m working in WinXP), select the My Computer icon.
2. Click the right-mouse button.
3. In the pop-up menu, choose Properties.
4. In the System Properties dialog, select the Hardware tab.
5. Click the Device Manager button.
6. In the main tree, open the Biometric branch.
7. Once you’ve opened the branch, you should see an item marked AuthenTec Inc.; select it.
8. Click the right-mouse button.
9. In the pop-up menu, choose Disable.

Note that there might be a more recently released driver that solves the black-screen problem. In that case, instead of disabling it, perhaps updating to the newer driver would solve the black-screen problem without requiring a disable.

Problem

Whereas the portable devices simply display a password entry screen to facilitate connectivity, with PCs (or at least those running WinXP, like mine), it’s apparently not quite as simple.

Solution

This procedure describes how to repair PC connectivity to your wireless network, once you’ve secured the network via a password.

1. On your laptop PC, make sure your Wireless Radio hardware is turned on (usually via a switch on the side or somewhere else on the machine).
2. Open Network and Dial-up Connections > Select Wireless Network Connections. Right-click and choose View Available Wireless Networks.

   The Wireless Network Connection dialog is displayed.

3. In Wireless Network Connection, from the left-side bar, click Change Advanced Settings.
4. In the Wireless Network Connection Properties dialog, choose the Wireless Networks tab, and select the ‘Use Windows to Configure My Wireless Network Settings’ checkbox.
5. Under Preferred Networks, choose the wireless network you want to configure, and click the Properties button (or, if this is a new router connection, click Add).

   In the Properties dialog, configure your settings as follows:

• In Network Authentication, choose WPA-PSK.
• In Data Encryption, choose TKIP.
• In Network Key, enter the password that you defined in your wireless router’s firmware.
• Ditto for Confirm Network Key.

6. Click OK x2.
7. Before your PC will connect to the wireless network, you might have to repair the connection.

• Make sure your wireless radio is turned on.
• Go back to your Network Connections window (as in Step #2).
• Select Wireless Network Connection, right-click, and choose Repair.

  This step should perform authentication between the PC and the password-protected wireless network, as well as perform the IP refresh needed in order for your router to connect to your machine.

Reconnecting in the Future

Once you’ve disconnected from the wireless network and wish to reconnect, you may have to re-authenticate (i.e. perform Step #7, above) in order to before reestablishing connection.

If when attempting reconnection, you get a message indicating “one or more of your preferred networks is out of range,” do as follows:

1. Click on that message; or right-click on the Wireless Network Connection glyph in your system tray, and choose View Available Networks.

   Note: Make sure your wireless radio is turned on!

2. In the Wireless Network Connection window, click Refresh Network List.
3. Double-click on the desired network.

   You’ll be prompted for password authentication.

4. If the password isn’t already typed in, retype it and click Connect.

   After a few moments, you should be reconnected.

Here’s my tweeted super-brief summary of Jeff Jarvis’ Buzz Machine article “e-G8: A discussion about sovereignty” (see tweeted links below), which presents his exploration as to what extent the Internet can change not only traditional loyalties and identities, but the very nature of how authority can be applied by governments in the first place. While the jury is still out on what direction and form this “new” authority will take, it’s certainly worth noting, especially now that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has apparently taken a keen interest in the issue.

[1/5] Liked @JeffJarvis’ description of the Internet as disruptor of authority.  http://bit.ly/kHRBT1

[2/5] Can the Internet serve as a counterweight to power & authority of gov’t?  http://bit.ly/kHRBT1

[3/5] The question as to who has sovereignty over the Internet is still being debated.  http://bit.ly/kHRBT1

[4/5] To what extent does the Internet undercut traditional loyalties?  http://bit.ly/kHRBT1

[5/5] Is Internet really akin to 8th continent? Are we dual-citizens of countries & the ‘Net?  http://bit.ly/kHRBT1

A Media Experiment

One of Jarvis’ stories that stood out powerfully for me was his retelling of a media experiment by Brian Lehrer in 2007. On Lehrer’s WNYC radio program, he prompted listeners to go to their local grocery stores and report on the price of milk and several other items. Hundreds responded, providing the station with data no single reporter could have gathered alone. WNYC plotted the data on Google Maps, demonstrating which neighborhoods were being gouged, and even being subjected to illegally high prices.

Why should this be surprising and what’s special about it? Haven’t consumers banded together for ages already, supporting the businesses, products, and services they like, while spurning those they don’t? Yes, but not with such rapidity, ease, and perhaps boldness. Could this experiment have succeeded without Google Maps? Maybe. But the point is that the Internet and a (free) Google product make the collaboration effort much easier and much faster. Furthermore, if it could happen in a few shops in several New York City neighborhoods, could this experience be scaled to a whole state, country, or industry?

Riding the Cluetrain

Jarvis is clearly a proponent of the Cluetrain Manifesto, as he refers to it with some frequency. Furthermore, his main message is very much in alignment with Cluetrain’s principles, as well as its tone. Written in 1999, Cluetrain lists 95 statements (“theses”?) on how the Internet has changed, and is continuing to change, the way the world does business. Namely, it describes how the consumer is empowered through a vast network of people sharing their stories about products and services. Marketing departments and many of the techniques they’ve employed, Jarvis says, are becoming irrelevant and are outmoded. Companies had better tune into the conversations taking place “out there” among consumers and other interested parties that could lead to potential business.

Though written in a somewhat smug tone, Cluetrain contains truths that we ought to internalize. Specifically, what are the key lessons of Cluetrain, as exemplified by Google’s success story? What can we learn here? The take-home message is that product vendors, service providers, and professional people in general—anyone wishing to remain relevant in the public sphere—must place listening to customers and responding respectfully to their input at the foundation of their organizational culture.

You’re Tweeting? So? Are You Listening?

Taking it a step further, Jarvis’ urges avoiding the delusion that having a Web site or being on Facebook or Twitter makes you customer-oriented if your basic behavioral pattern hasn’t changed. Talking down to your public is not only passé, but destructive to your business. Listening goes beyond claiming to have a customer service culture or exuding warmth in your PR campaign. What it does mean is that the products you sell and the services you provide reflect the needs, expectations, and input of your public.

On rare occasion, a product, service, or platform will come along presenting a quantitative shift in the way we do things. It could be argued, justifiably so, that revolutionary changes—mass produced automobiles, telephones, Internet, Web 2.0 applications—were so innovative that they couldn’t possibly have been invented only in response to consumer surveys. On the contrary, these innovations were truly ground-shifting, imaginative, and bold. They’re also quite rare. As consumers, we’ll know one when we see one. In the meantime, just listen.

So What’s the Message for Technical Communicators?

Why do we as TCs need to pay attention to Jarvis’ message? Why can we not afford to ignore the communication frameworks—and the documentation models—emerging as a result of the Internet economy?

The top-down approach to documentation is rapidly becoming outmoded; many would say it’s already gone. Instead, we need to be thinking in collaborative, grassroots, “distributed,” ways. According to Jarvis’ Google Rules for media companies, “thinking distributed” means regarding your readership—i.e. your customers—not as mere consumers of your output, but as content sources themselves. This is already happening across countless support forums—Nokia, Microsoft, Adobe, travel tip sites, are just a few that come to mind. If it hasn’t reached you by now, bet that it will soon. Open up and listen.

What does this mean for us? What do we need to do? Get involved in what’s happening on the ground level. Participate in these conversations. Read what’s being written. Be open. Be responsive (not reactive). Lead discussions. Harvest the knowledge that grows from these interactions. Tag it. Curate it. Repackage and productize it. This is your documentation. This is your product, and your portfolio.

Me? Blog?

Why do people blog? Perhaps the better question is why do professionals blog? Why is it important for us to place ourselves out there before the public? Because, if done well, it conveys that message that we care and that we’re eager to engage our audience and customers face to face.

We believe this message applies to all types of social media, including—but not limited to—blogs. As such, a well-thought social media image addresses the following questions:

• What is our contribution to the “gift economy”?
• What is our value proposition?
• How do we differentiate—i.e. brand—ourselves?

Oh, and if you have to explain your value, it’s probably not as great as you think.

Old Media, New Media

According to Jarvis, Yahoo is the last “old media” company. That is, Yahoo is a portal, a Grand Central Station of online resources. Thus, Yahoo is a manifestation of what Jarvis calls the content economy, which is outmoded. Google, on the other hand, is—claims Jarvis—the first post-media company. Meaning, Google is a platform (not a portal), a network, and is decentralized and distributed. Google trusts and respects people, or at least (says Jarvis) manages to project that attitude. Google exploits the wisdom of the crowd. And what’s more, Google opens up endless choices and possibilities via search, SEO, and AdSense. Whereas Yahoo is a remaining manifestation of the content economy, Google leads the link economy.

The link economy demands that we—companies, groups, and individuals—produce unique content with clear value. Beyond that, we need to remain open so that Google can find us. That is, we’re to let Google exploit—through advertising and promotion—the links and audience that we acquire. Furthermore, we have to use those links to create new efficiencies (“do what you do best and link to the rest”), and find opportunities to create value atop our link layer. This means curate the best content, enable your links to be found, and help content creators monetize—or otherwise promote—links, and in turn, attract traffic.

Are You Drinking Google Juice?

Google juice is what we want. It gives us better ranks, more ads. It will, according to Jarvis, net us more money. To get Google Juice, you’ve got to be Googlified. Googlification of a trade or profession requires its practitioners be open and transparent. Are you Googlified? If you want to remain relevant, Jarvis says you’d better be. However, we would ask the question whether this maxim necessarily applies to all types of business.

No More Depth Thinking? Could Have Fooled Us!

Naturally, as TCs, we value our ability to communicate in an articulate way. If this means writing in long form, we appreciate having a format permitting that. Consequently, those still uninitiated into social media might resent being “forced” to fold a message into the limited space afforded by many Web applications (like micro-blogs) which might seem extreme.

Jarvis says that although it may appear that writing in short blog bursts, as opposed to lengthier articles, leads to rushed, haphazard, shallow communication, in fact, the opposite could be argued. Namely, an idea could be thought out and articulated over the span of multiple posts [even Tweets?], and take shape over the course of time. What’s more, these ideas percolate with input, challenge, and argument from many blog readers and consumers. Furthermore, ideas that don’t work, i.e. those not meriting response from the readership, get dropped. Thus, Jarvis argues that blogs provide a new and efficient means of both collaboration and peer review, which he claims “is the key product and skill of the Google age.”

The Internet might not make us more creative. But it does provide a platform enabling what we create to be “seen, heard, and used,” i.e. shared. In particular, the Internet enables every creator to “find a public, the [one] s/he merits.” What’s more, it levels the playing field of creativity. As Jarvis puts it, in the Google age, to “stand out, one must rise on worth—as defined by the public, rather than the priests, [where] the reward is attention.”

Us Worry?

What will coalesce in place of the institutions losing influence as a result of the Internet and Google? Or, as we’d put it, those failing to adapt and respond strategically to these forces. According to Jarvis, this applies not only to media organizations, businesses and individuals, but to governments and even religions (though there’s still some speculation as to how that would work).

Disaggregation

Will we have anarchy or a new form of organization? The Internet, says Jarvis, is disaggregating the elements that have historically defined us humans. These definitions—liberal, conservative, libertarian—are breaking apart to form new expressions that are more nuanced. As a result, new loyalties are forming from the grassroots, replacing traditional allegiances.

Generation G

Advertising execs, public relations folk, and social media pundits like invoking Generation X (ambitious and family centered) and Generation Y (independent, expecting instant gratification) as supposedly well-understood demographic groups. In WWGD, Jarvis introduces us to Generation G, that is, the Google generation. Gen G has not only grown up in the computer age, but came of age by the time Google was already synonymous with Internet search. Beyond being characterized as independent, Gen G is possessed of a strong individualism, which could end up manifesting as empowerment [good], or as entitlement [bad].

Watch Gen G. Listen to Gen G. Understand how Gen G thinks, works, shops, [and we would add, reads]. Only thus can we have any hope of surviving, let alone thriving, over the coming decades.

Where Do We Take it Now?

Some critical reviews of WWGD urge that we disregard Jarvis’ prescription for Google-age success based on the assertion that Jarvis rambles on in an arrogant tone, doing little more than smugly dropping names and making scary generalizations. While we could agree that Jarvis presents himself as erudite and professorial, this hardly presents justification for rejecting what he prescribes, especially if his basic position is valid (and we believe it is).

What’s the upshot for TCs? We’re told that we need to not only innovate, but make innovation part of the culture where we work. What does that mean practically speaking? For one thing, we need to unlearn many of the practices that have taken us thus far in life and in our careers.

We need to Googlifiy ourselves. Googlification of our profession requires us to be open and transparent. While most of us are “out there” on a social network somewhere, many of us either aren’t ready to exploit the full potential of those networks, or worse, refuse (usually on “privacy” grounds) to participate. Concerning privacy, Vint Cerf, acclaimed as one of the fathers of the Internet, has written “There isn’t any privacy. Get over it.” Jarvis adds clarity to this statement by asserting that privacy is no longer the issue, control is. We do in fact have the right to control our personal information, whether it’s made public, and to whom. So decide upon a security policy that meets your needs, and get yourself out there.

There’s also the issue of intimacy. Participating in a social or business network does not mean laying it all bare for the world to see. Actually, showing us parts of your life to which we’d rather not be exposed would not win you the attention you should be seeking. But we do need to acclimate ourselves to what Leisa Reichelt calls “ambient intimacy.” This refers to the sense of closeness you have with folks as a result of social media; folks with whom you’d otherwise not have nearly as close a relationship, maybe even not know at all.

We should learn, Jarvis says, to think like kids, because once you’re thinking [too much] like an adult, you’re probably not innovating.

Special thank you to Jonny Gold for his input and thoughts.

Display of Power provides an autobiographical sketch of how Hollis, Queens native Daymond John, along with a few trusted friends from the ‘hood (and a host of advisors and financial backers) launched FUBU (For Us, By Us), one of the premiere African American-owned fashion outfits in North America, and a globally recognized super-brand.

John advocates what I would call a true hands-on management style, based on keeping his ear constantly close to the ground. Essentially, this means listening actively and persistently, and showing no hubris towards one’s customers and critics. Listen not to your gaggle of yes-men, but to your harshest detractors.

Get out of your office. Party with your customers, even those who’ve left your brand. Show that you care about them and they’ll come back. Avoid ivory tower thinking and behavior. Don’t surround yourself with sycophants, lackeys and favor seekers who tell you only what you want to hear. Treat your employees like gold (if you don’t, they’ll anyway vent their resentment on your customers).

So what does this have to do with Knowledge Sharing (KS)? In a word: everything.

Display of Power intersects with KS at so many points. For starters, it provides an excellent example of how a successful business and global brand were built from the grassroots. I have found, almost without exception, that KS initiatives, in order to succeed, require tapping into the energies, talents, and enthusiasm of a cadre of experts who identify with your overall vision, and the goals you’ve established for a KS venture. Making it work can entail going at it day-to-day over the course of years. But it all starts with that groundswell of key supporters.

Some of John’s most strongly emphasized points include:

• Community building and basing a brand on a communal identity;
• Listening to consumer conversations and participating in those discussions as an equal partner;
• Developing frameworks for exchanging usable information (in FUBU’s case, linking its business model to goings on in the hip-hop and rap scene);
• Making success (at least on the manufacturing and distribution side) a series of repeatable and predictable processes;
• Bringing about a coalescence of vision where beyond buying a product, people feel themselves participating in a venture greater than themselves;
• Assembling a staff that’s amazingly talented and smart, takes initiative and works well together, and demonstrates a group identity that extends beyond “conditional” loyalty

In his chapter on hands-on management, John expresses his admiration for (now former) JetBlue CEO David Neeleman, who ran his airline in a way so contradictory to the “cold, impersonal” norm of the major US carriers. John tells how Neeleman made a point of riding at least one JetBlue flight per week. But don’t imagine that Needleman just went along for a joy ride, avoiding contact with fellow passengers. On the contrary, Neeleman, along with his (then) President and COO David Barger, would work the ticket counter, handle baggage, give out snacks, fluff pillows, and walk the aisles chatting with passengers. This “getting the hands dirty” goes almost unimaginably beyond the expectation of “ordinary” business leaders, putting JetBlue management in such close contact with their customers it would be very difficult to ever lose touch.

I enjoyed Display of Power because unlike so many books written by business founders this one was “unplugged,” in the sense that John pulls no punches when it comes to self-criticism and describing openly how he learned from his mistakes, on the business as well as personal level. You can have an ego, as long as you know when to efface it, reach into your heart, and eat some humble pie. I found this book filled with those lessons, told by John through his compelling and entertaining stories about his life and FUBU.

I also particularly liked John’s chapters on personnel management (you’ve got a two-week grace period from the time you hire someone to win their loyalty by showing your care about them), and his tips on running a company whose environment is quite multi-cultural (tells it straight, acknowledging the tensions, though mixing it with humor).

Some further business tips …

Constantly revitalize your brand and keep it contemporary, as doing so is essential to your business’ survival.

Look at how your kids are spending your money. When they’re putting it in someone else’s pocket, if that someone is operating in technologies and products related to your own, take that as a sign that there’s probably something you ought to be doing differently.

While John describes many frustrating—even despairing—moments, on the whole, he and his team seem to have a lot of fun in their careers at FUBU and derive great fulfillment doing what they do. While the kind of music video atmosphere and hip-hop party jaunts that John takes as a routine part of his work probably aren’t applicable to all of us, his overall message remains valid. Stay open and be in love with what you’re doing; and if you can’t, do something else.

This book, Conversation and Community, represents a snapshot in time. The author, Anne Gentle, does her job well, which is to inform today’s technical communicator (TC) what to do in order to better ensure continued relevance in an already disrupted work culture, especially with regard to the role of the communicator.

Yesterday’s top-down approach to documentation needs to be abandoned, or at least seriously reconsidered. In his forward to the book, Andy Oram of O’Reilly Media calls this the “oracular view” of information, and says it’s already becoming passé. This means that if you’re still thinking exclusively in terms of preparing manuals or Helps for consumers (inside or outside your firm) then your days are numbered. Documentation today is the result of a conversation taking place among users, consumers, and adopters of technology. Often, that conversation involves those developing, selling, and supporting the tool. Other times, it does not. The big question is how do we as TCs not only tap into that conversation in ways that benefit our organizations, but actually facilitate those discussions so as to best harness, cultivate, and reuse the knowledge stemming from that interaction?

How can experts and non-experts alike learn to collaborate so as to produce not only the documentation that the system providers think the masses need, but what they actually want? To take it a step further, can those who develop, integrate, document, and market products learn from this dialog in ways that will make those products—and their documentation—better?

Make no mistake. As Andy Oram intimates, our future as TC professionals lies in our becoming part of this conversation, as key participants and as facilitators. In that spirit, recently, Jonny Gold (@JonnyGold) and I co-presented at MEGAComm, a conference of Israel-based TWs, marcoms writers, documentation managers, and allied professionals (e.g. folks specializing in localization, usability, human factors, etc). Our topic, Making Teams Smarter, focused on implementing Wiki as a Knowledge Sharing (KS) methodology. We offered a strategy whereby organizations can harvest the knowledge that’s too-often concealed amongst the individuals constituting its professional teams, and put that information to practical and profitable use. At the same time, through the very act of serving as catalyst in facilitating this conversation, the TC plays a central and vital role in putting knowledge to work in ways that make the organization function better. This is reflected in the improved communication that leads to processes becoming repeatable and predictable, implementation becoming less haphazard, resources (tools, code, documents, etc) being more available and relevant, time scales shorter, and interruptions fewer.

Getting back to Anne’s book, note that it’s aptly sub-titled The Social Web for Documentation. That’s because its focus and emphasis are on how you can embrace collaborative forums to prompt and to guide technical conversations in ways that lead to enhanced communication and better documentation. As I see it, there is a variety of roles the TC can play, requiring development and application of several key competencies, interpersonal, technical, and otherwise. These include, for instance, the ability to innovatively devise new tools and forums, adapt to the various work practices of different groups while encouraging and guiding its KS contributors, proactively undertaking KS initiatives, persuasively “evangelizing” KS strategies, and so on. Essentially, performing the activities that maximize your success as what Scott Abel so appropriately calls a “content wrangler.”

My view is that you do not have to master—or even use—most of the tools mentioned in Anne’s book, which covers a rather wide range of social media apps, including several that just didn’t take off (like Google Wave, for instance). I believe what’s important is that you internalize the overall mindset conveyed by the book, that is, to position yourself—in the context of your organization’s culture and norms—to serve as a KS catalyst. If those norms don’t exist, then work to cultivate them through collegial persuasion and a demonstrated willingness to tackle projects on a “volunteer” basis, showing the decision-makers and resource allocators the benefits of KS and how supporting those efforts is a profitable proposition.

This article is my attempt at summarizing the salient points of Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains[1], a book that I found stimulating, thought provoking, and an enjoyable read overall. In terms of this review, there were some bits and pieces that missed summarizing. One that comes to mind is Carr’s chapter titled The Church of Google. While I thoroughly enjoyed Carr’s treatment of Google’s impact on our nervous system and value system, I skipped taking notes on it, and thus, its content isn’t covered here.

Carr’s main hypothesis is that while the Internet and its gaggle of resources give us access to vast stores of information our ancestors could hardly have dreamed of, the very ease and nature of that availability actually serve to reduce our brain’s capacity to retain information and acquire knowledge in the long term.

‘The Shallows’ is not, by any means, a treatise on how the Internet makes us stupid; and Carr never refers to it as evil (though he quotes some who do). On the contrary, ‘The Shallows’ is rife with praise for the Web and how it places in our hands access to just about any field of knowledge ever known to humankind. The catch is to avoid the trap of allowing that quick and unfettered access to turn us into information vacuum cleaners bereft of the ability to deliberate, analyze, and think deeply about what we’ve read (or watched or heard).

The remainder of this review touches on several of Carr’s points that impressed me or otherwise caused me to stop and think about my own online habits, my relationship to (and with) electronic devices, and my information gatherings practices, namely how they’ve changed since my (pre-Internet) youth.

Carr stresses that most of us who spend a significant chunk of our social and occupational lives online exist in a state of mental fragmentation, attention disruption, and—to some extent—personal disconnection. He often draws comparisons to the advent of mechanical time measurement so long ago, suggesting that when standing clocks and eventually portable time pieces arrived on the scene, our very concept of “time,” namely that it would from here onward be structured and managed, impacted human behavior profoundly and irrevocably.

While Carr doesn’t use the term “spiritual,” he does refer quite a bit to the 19^th century “transcendentalist” calls for a return to what is natural, simple, and in deeper touch with our more thoughtful and sensitive selves. If not always stated explicitly, Carr does seem to urge us toward—if not embracing—at least not completely neglecting this perhaps more mystical human faculty.

Discussing the Google-Wikipedia continuum and harking back to the propagation of the Web as a common household tool, Carr says that in “the digital marketplace, publication becomes an ongoing process rather than a discrete event, and revision can go on indefinitely.” This is rapidly replacing the book paradigm, an institution since the advent of the Gutenberg printing press in the 15^th century, where an author publishes and the public consumes, waiting perhaps years before a new edition replaces the old one, if it ever does at all. This reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague close to ten years ago, who observed that “news” was then becoming as much a function of reader talk-backs as the (online) paper itself.

Carr spends some time delving into the synaptic processes inherent to the neurology underlying how our brains translate experiences into short-term memories and these in turn, into longer-term memories. While Carr writes that since “neurons that fire together wire together,” today, a “cacophony of stimuli” is short-circuiting our conscious as well as unconscious thought processes, consigning age-old human memory forming abilities to a state of deterioration, if not outright atrophy.

Whereas yesterday we spoke of multimedia, Carr claims that what we’ve got today should really be called “hypermedia,” that is, an overabundance of resources, online and otherwise, vying for our attention. It’s up to us to discern whether the content being pushed to us by those outlets is worthy of our (limited) attention spans. The strain on our cognitive abilities is already tremendous, limiting our ability to internalize the information we acquire. Drawing attention to our evermore limited ability to maintain focus, Carr sites a German study which claims that most of us, upon landing on a Web page via a search, spend on average less than 10 seconds on that page. Carr says that this is probably a high figure.

In the first century of the Common Era, the Stoic philosopher Seneca said that to be everywhere is to be nowhere. This reminds me of the Hebrew adage “תפסת מרובה לא תפסת”, which roughly translates as “if you grabbed it all, you’ve grabbed nothing.” Carr suggests this view as an analogy for how we find ourselves inundated with information; even if we’ve acquired a great deal of knowledge, it’s in such overabundance, we’re not sure how to begin processing it, let alone retain it.

The “velocity of data” refers to how the constant updating of web pages has replaced relatively static HTML—the Internet model of the pre-Web 2.0 1990’s—as the normative condition. Our need to constantly refresh information is best illustrated by the algorithms that govern search engine returns. Although application of SEO techniques can result in better ranking of pages in a search, Carr observes that newer pages tend to get better rankings than older ones. The number of links to a specific page—which one might think would provide a major indicator of a page’s perceived quality, or at least popularity—is only one of about 200 criteria that Google’s search engine uses to determine rank. So, for those with an economic, social, or personal interest in keeping their pages highly ranked, the pressure to accelerate updating is intense and constant. What’s more, the flourishing of social networks adds a whole new dimension to this need for immediacy, and the imperative to keep up the flow of content is unrelenting. Yesterday’s information is, if not already stale, at minimum pushed out of the top returns.

Carr writes that computers “mediate how we learn, think, and socialize.” My particular interest is in the thinking part of this statement, as much of The Shallows focuses on the brain’s declining ability to transform stimuli and short-term memory into long-term memory, and how it is hampered by the rapid pace at which we’re expected to acquire and analyze information.

Carr introduces the term “infovores,” a word describing those adept at acquiring information from multiple sources simultaneously. I like this term, and here’s where I feel the book speaks in a more optimistic voice. Carr concludes by putting forth the hopeful possibility that in the face of the fragmentation, disruption, and distraction caused by the Internet and the plethora of new media, we will ultimately develop new cognitive abilities as an evolutionary compensation [read: survival strategy], replacing the “old” knowledge acquisition and retention abilities that we’ve lost.