Social Media and Psychology

Image by Tonyç via FlickrSocial medai makes sense if you understand how people are. A good insight into people helps you build genuine empathy and relationships.

But there are many ways of understanding what makes people tick.

Salespeople read books like Robert Cialdini's Influence (a good book for what it is) and learn how to press the right buttons to get what they want. It's transactional, in disguise as relational.

Screenwriters observe people for the sheer pleasure of it. Because they can't help it. There is just something about people. Then they create characters that make people go OMG! That's just like someone I know ... maybe even me!

Both study people, for different reasons.

Generation C is looking for authenticity and relationship, which makes life hard for the salesperson and very interesting for the screenwriter.

Both people live in each of us. The screenwriter comes out when our basic needs are met, when we have the leisure to be curious.

The salesperson comes out when we need results!

It comes back to the phrase, do you love things and use people, or use things and love people?

Explore the Universe online

I heard about Universe / by Jonathan Harris on Coolhunting.com.

Amazing stuff. Watch the video - he had some especially interesting stuff to say about how we convey information. "The page," he said, "is already dead." Not "soon to be dead" but already dead. Instead, he shows information in terms of networks and nodes, non-linear information where you can jump in at any point and make sense of it.

I like it; now where's the software package that helps me portray information that way? If Word and PowerPoint helped us create linear information, how do we create networks and nodes? OmniGraffle is the closest I've seen. Any other suggestions?

Bring your humanity to work

I'm loving this new office. And my mum loves it, too! (Always important)

I brought her in yesterday before taking her grocery shopping. Somewhere between breakfast cereal and coffee, an announcement came over the speakers.

It was something about free paring knives. Fantastic offer, I'm sure, but delivered in a flat monotone. It was almost comical. Hell, it was actually a real hoot!

"Attention shoppers, this is a special announcement. Any Foodtown customer over the age of twenty one can receive a high quality paring knife by coming to the stand covered in red beside aisle 18. Please come now."

As language goes, it was clear and unambiguous, but it didn't make me feel good. It made me feel slightly patronised, and not really like getting a free knife.

Sometimes we approach our work in a deadpan, flat way. It's just transactional. That was the tone of this man's voice. There was no hint of the human being that (may have) lay behind the voice.

This morning I heard Anna Farmery interview Dr Ellen Weber about many things, including Two-Footed Questions. In a nutshell, a two-footed question tackles content (eg. what constitutes good customer service) and the person (eg. and how can you improve your service to your customers?).

It was a great reminder to bring my humanity to work today, and to make my business one that helps others do the same!

The future is full of real people

It's a theme I've heard over and again - the disintermediated future means we can be ourselves.

This has implications for media, marketing, employment, everything.

In the mass media world, we presented the "one size fits all" version of ourselves. We dress conservatively, don't discuss our views on certain subjects, and maintain a general positivity.

In the niche world, which seems to be on its way, we do, be and say whatever the hell we want to. Examples:

• 42Below vodka's viral advertising
• Diggnation - watch these guys get drunk, swear gratuitously (although sometimes they say frickin' instead of the fruitier alternative) and be incredibly geeky

Okay, so that's only two examples. But I believe this is the way of the future. And it affects employment, too.

A podcast I heard yesterday from The Engaging Brand talked about incorporating emotion into the workplace. Good listening! I particularly liked what the host, Anna Farmery, does at the end of every meeting: asking each person "what are you thinking, what are you feeling about what we've just discussed?"

She also made the important point - this question needs to be asked in a context where all feelings are legitimate, ie there's not a 'correct' answer to this question.

Book reviews!

I've managed - miraculously - to finish three books at once! (Well, on the same weekend anyway)

It's particularly gratifying to finish The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood, a great mix of behind-the-scenes storytelling with thematic analysis of the films mentioned. Sundance Kids is a massive book - I think I've been reading it for six months on and off.

Every time I read this book, I want to watch more movies. And make some. It's a great read.

The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life was a very interesting read, pitting the competing views of Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis together. It's billed as a debate, but it's at the same time worse and better than that.

Worse, in that the author, Harvard Psychology professor Armand Nicholi, can only speculate about what a debate between the two would have been like. Better, in that the book compares not only the words but the lives of these two.

Since I bought this book in a Christian bookshop, I was expecting a somewhat biased view in favour of the Christian worldview. While Lewis' Christian faith does appear to come out as the lifestyle that leads to the best psychological results, the book doesn't try to force the issue, instead simply presenting each man's view and biography, and letting the reader decide.

Even then, some may decide that's ingenuous, that the author/editor has the power to subtly make each side appear right or wrong. Having not read a lot about Freud or Lewis, I don't know. But if that is the case, I would also point to other material that does the opposite - champions Freud's views without comparison to any alternative worldview.

Finally, A Tale of Two Cities. Wow. No wonder it's a classic story. I'm going to make some very basic comments because a) I'm new to reading fiction (though not to watching it) and b) this post is getting too long.

• Dickens really knows how to set up and pay off - every detail in this book is connected.
• He also uses suspense really well in a way that would be difficult or impossible on film. His particular trick is to describe someone doing something, and then reveal their identity - letting your brain put all the pieces together.
• I have heard Dickens criticised in the past for being too saccharine in his descriptions of some characters. Or at least too sentimental. His descriptions of joyous family life certainly come across a bit unreal in the cynical 21st century.
• However, in general his characters are very 3D, and hard to put into boxes. The political background to the story makes this even more so - who is on who's side? Why? And are they really what they seem.

Overall, I loved it. And I'm glad that I started on this journey of reading "great" literature. Not sure what's next, but really looking forward to it.

Memory, Loss and Value

I spent this morning putting my entire academic history into a small box.

It's part of the tortuous ongoing preparations for Marie and I to move in with my mum, for a whole bunch of reasons. It's been a great process so far.

As I sorted through the flotsam and jetsam of my school years, I thought about memory, loss and value.

Some of this stuff was vaguely in my mind, yet rediscovering it was like finding hidden treasure. Why is that?

I also found some of my old history notes. Since high school, I've found out I'm descended from royalty on both sides of my family - one legitimately, one not. I wondered to myself, "would I have paid more attention in studying, say, Charlemagne, if I knew he was my great-great-great... etc. grandfather?" Probably not.

I didn't get so passionately interested in family history until I faced a shaking of all other foundations in my life a few years ago. I needed roots, I needed some sense of belonging. And the "lostness" of the family tree information on both sides just made it all the more important to get hold of.

I heard an interview on NPR's On the Media about Life Logging, which is apparently becoming more and more do-able and affordable by the minute. Although the big challenge seems to be managing the stacks of information for easy access - which is the same problem with non-virtual memory.

It makes you think - or makes me think, anyway - about the nature of memory and whether such a function could be literally outsourced. What would happen? Would it free up our brains for something more useful? Or would it be just another machine-dependence? The NPR piece pointed out that already as a culture we don't know phone numbers anymore, we just enter them once into our mobile and never need to remember them.

Anyway my point... I think ... was that the problem, and perhaps the solution, with memory is that we forget what we know. Our short term memory just doesn't seem to have too much capacity, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe rediscovery is one of the keys to joy in life.

Or maybe I just need some sleep! :)