Humans are wired to learn through stories and allegory. It’s been the way we’ve communicated and shared information from the beginning of time.
Why don’t more people use this fact in everything they do? Why is this not the basis of every lecture, every classroom, and even every bar room story around?
Stories help us relate and personalize information. They act as little packets of self-contained information. Give someone a list of data, and give someone else the same information contained in a story or narrative, and ask them to read it and memorize it. Guess which one is easier to remember? The story connects the dots and both creates linkages between the data points as well as provides a context, making it much easier to store in our brains, where the list does none of this. (This is why one of the more effective memory strategies is to take a list of , say, vocabulary words, and write a story containing them all-or take a list of objects, and imagine yourself placing them around a room- and you learn them faster and more accurately than you ever would off a regular list.)
Stories are more than entertainment, however. There’s meaning, examples, and lessons to be learned from these stories as well. Case studies in business and the Case method in law school all rely on being able to tell a story about what happened, and then look at what’s happened in other, similar cases, to make a decision about what should happen next in the case at hand. This complicated, graduate school level coursework is, at its essence, sharing stories. Of course, it also tells us the reasons why we have societal and business rules in place, and to help us make decisions about the course of action you should take. The “rules” we make up from the stories are there to help us avoid problems and mistakes others have made, so we can try to ensure success by trying some new way, rather than repeat past mistakes.
We love stories. This is why Us, and People and the National Inquirer sell so many copies every month. We want the next installment about the Kardashians or Paris Hilton or what LiLo has done now. We want to see where their story is going. What I think we fail to realize, and perhaps the stars fail to realize as well- is that they are in charge of their own personal story arc. They can decide what happens next in their story- they don’t have to follow the story arc the media is creating for them. Are they people or just characters in a never ending societal soap opera?
The magazines know that they have created and casted the over-arching drama and story for our entertainment- Jennifer Aniston get to be the girl next door we can’t wait to see settled down and happy. LiLo gets to play the rebellious teen and young woman who can’t seem to get her life together. Will Smith got to go from Playboy to grown up respected business man. Glen Beck gets to play everybody’s slightly loony neighbor. Pick out a character in the mainstream media world, and think of what you think you “know” about them, and you’ll see there’s a narrative and character role assigned to them by the media, who is happier to have a cast of characters to write about than to actually report facts, which are not nearly as interesting as the ongoing psychodrama.
Think about story arc as you think about your life. What are you doing with your script? How have you cast yourself? Are you ready for a break out role? Are you ready to re-write your story and become someone new? Who would that new character be? What do you have to do to start to think, act and look like that character? Just like an actor prepares to “become” someone else and live bits of their lives on screen for our entertainment, you can decide who you want to play in your own life, and then do what you need to do to become the person you want to be. You just have to be able to write the story, change the script and make it so.
Follow your own story arc. Make it something exciting to watch. Make your character something special. And make your story one we’re all dying to tell each other for years to come.
I’m in the middle of a book writing project that I’m really excited about. It’s going well so far, and like with the best projects you ever do, you learn as much as you might get or teach out of the process.
The book and thinking about how children interact with technology got me to pick up Mindstorms by Seymour Papert again today. It was originally published back in the 1980’s, but what it has to say about learning and the process of learning is priceless.
Part of the joy of the book is having heard great stories about Dr. Papert from the always fascinating Gary Stager at past Educon conferences. Before even picking up the book, I knew fascinating facts about Dr. Papert, such as he studied under Piaget; he grew up in South Africa and was good friends with Nelson Mandela; he co-founded MIT’s Artificial Intelligence and Media labs. He developed the Logo programming language which is behind Lego Mindstorms. Dr. Papert has also worked with Nicholas Negraponte on the One Laptop per Child Project, making him a little bit like the most famous man in education who no one has really ever heard of.
The idea that struck me from reading through Mindstorms is that computers, as a learning tool, open up the most possibilities when we recognize them for what they are- new language systems. We’re no longer limited to just human based languages and grammar, but there’s a whole new world kids can explore and control with computers. Moreover, because of the way programming itself is structured, kids often need to learn how to “debug” programs. Instead of just repeating the same actions over and over again, hoping for different results, “debugging” requires that we “chunk” a problem out into smaller parts (subroutines) in order to figure out where the larger problem lies, and in order to fix it. Similarly, in real life, often we need to take the same analytical, step by step view of what’s not working when we mess up a recipe, or keep slicing the golf ball, or annoy our spouse, looking for the smaller part of the equation that leads to the bigger picture failure. Being able to use all the information at our fingertips to solve problems big and small, and knowing where to start searching for the “bug” in the machine are crucial skills for every kid to have. Sure, they may not need to program in Logo for the rest of their lives or careers, but they do need to learn the problem-solving framework they learn through getting legos or graphics on a screen to do exactly what they want them to do.
Creativity and Problem Solving is the key.
Here are some great videos that will help introduce you to the magic of Dr. Papert and the way education needs to evolve and change:
Papert talking about thinking, Piaget and more- How do we see ourselves in relation to the world?
A description of Papert’s life and constructivism:
My friend, Justin Kownacki, wrote a great piece about Philadelphia’s recent ruling about making Bloggers living in the City apply for a business license, like any other business. Justin pointed out that people in new media have longed to be taken seriously, and certainly, this ruling along with the FTC guidelines about disclosures of endorsements on blogs, that went into effect in December, 2009, shows that blogging is becoming a profession. Not everyone may be making money from it, and certainly many who do make some money don’t make very much, but none the less- it is (or can be) a legitimate business. Taken in any other context, just because you do or don’t make money is not the threshold of whether you have a business- tons of people are simply bad at business and lose money, but we don’t tell them they aren’t a business as a result.
The real issue with the yearly or lifetime business license requirements for those with virtual businesses is a legal one. Traditionally, municipalities required businesses to have a license to do business within their borders because the individual businesses gained a benefit from doing business within the City- they had access to customers, parking, public transport- things you might not find if you had the same business way out in the rural areas around the City. The City helped your business through police patrols, parking enforcement, and all sorts of ways, and besides a tax on sales or wage taxes, you helped pay for these services through your business license. When you do business within an area, you also become subject to their laws and regulations, including those that protect you, and those requiring you to collect and pay sales tax on sales. There’s an impact of every business on the City, pro and con, and the Business License is part of that, at least traditionally.
Bloggers and other people who work primarily on the web may be different than traditional business people. They can work as digital nomads, and don;t have any one particular workplace. They can work at a coffee shop, in a co-working space, from their bedroom, from the library- it’s all academic to them. Physical space is an afterthought after wifi, as are boundaries of municipalities and political districts. This lack of physical home base makes it much more difficult to identify both what portion of a blogger’s work and income is attributable to any particular political entity, as well as what costs and benefits they confer to the local economy as well. Certainly, telecommuters spend money at local shops and restaurants and help boost the local economy when they work all over the place, but what burden do they place on the local economy? What benefit do they reap by being in Philly, say, versus the outlying suburbs, where the business license is not applicable?
From a legal perspective, much of the first year of Civil Procedure involves studying cases that involve the Choice of Law- with 50 states, if you don’t have a case that comes under the Federal Court’s jurisdiction, which State’s law should govern a business transaction between residents of different States? If you live in California and you’re doing business with someone in Maine and a deal goes south, should you have to litigate the matter in Maine, or in California? There’s a whole line of cases people study that involves such chestnuts as “International Shoe v. Washington” and “Burger King v. Rudzewicz” and “Carnival Cruise v. Shute” that involve when it’s fair and when it’s not to be held to the law of another State, and whether your actions allow you to have “sufficient contacts” there, making it fair game to be sued in that State. (This is why you will often see Forum Selection clauses in contracts.)
Courts, so far, have held that forum selection clauses are enough to confer jurisdiction (CoStar Realty v. Field), but unlike terms of service agreements, or even Ebay Auctions, does a blogger, who writes and posts to a blog from within a City, from outside the City, in multiple States and locales- when does the level of activity become “enough” to require a business license? Is it a question of income? Is it a question or apportionment? Could bloggers that live within a City avoid having to pay for a business license if they submit posts from outside the City limits? Why should people surfing through coffee shops and wifi hot spots have different licensing requirements than people who take up an office share with other digital nomads in a coworking space within a municipality? Should the coworking space need a license and all participants are more like gym members rather than business owners renting a stall at a flea market?
The internet poses new challenges to municipalities who need to collect revenue. Bloggers don’t always see how the business license benefits them, since their work is often low impact and location is not crucial or even relevant in their work. The bottom line is it’s going to take some time to sort out these matters, and it’s going to take people willing to litigate these matters. This in and of itself will be challenging, since most Bloggers are in the beer money income bracket, and don’t have the time, money or patience to pursue this matter far enough to get a meaningful ruling. It’s easier to shut a blog than litigate whether a $300 license fee is fair and equitable.
I can’t say that any answer is likely soon.
I’ve been through this myself as well. I started working in a coworking space in Wilmington, DE, but compliance with City business licenses, let alone determining which license would apply to my work, is onerous. No one in City Government seems prepared to tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do, and all will readily admit the difference between my working within City Limits and working in a coffee shop outside of City Limits is largely geographic only, and that it’s clearly cheaper for me to stay out of the City.
While it seems to me that everyone loses in this scenario, including the parking fees the City might collect otherwise, or the businesses I would frequent if I were downtown, it’s immediately clear it’s just easier if I write from the comfort of my own home or local coffee shops that are no where near the City limits. Besides this, it’s not always clear to the digital nomad when they have entered the “taxation/license zone” and when they are outside the long reach of the law. This makes the business license requirement for municipalities seem arbitrary and capricious to those bloggers and telecommuters being asked to pay, because what’s inside and outside the zone is not clear. And let’s face it- no one likes taxes and license fees, but we’ll generally comply when it seems fair, and we generally balk when it seems silly or administrative or simply onerous and unfair.
This means all Cities and municipalities are going to have to start to consider the underlying reason and purpose of the business license or tax is, and how it should apply to digital nomads. When is this fair? What can you do to make it easy to comply? Do we need “wifi” meters like we have parking meters, and Cities can collect fees based on data transfer instead?
There’s no easy answer for any of this, but at least I hope this helps explain why the issue at hand is thorny both for the bloggers and the Cities. Hopefully this will not lead to mid-day raids of local Starbucks looking for telecommuters just trying to get out of the house for a bit, searching for business licenses and unpaid taxes, but in an era of budget deficits, I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes to that.
For a long time, we could only buy music as a package deal. Sure, there were some singles available, but by and large, if you liked one or two songs, you would have to buy the whole CD or album. Then along comes iTunes and we can buy only the bits and pieces we want. On the whole, this “disaggregation” lets us choose what we like, but in the process, we lose the chance to explore things that might grow on us over time- things that are an acquired taste, so to speak. It also limits the way an artist might decide to craft albums or CD’s in the future- it’s less about creating a group of songs with a cadence or storyline or other thought that links the pieces together, but instead encourages one offs and more episodic than serialized content to be created.
I’m curious to how this trend will shake out in the publishing industry. Fast Company reported that Barnes and Nobel’s new iphone and ipad apps are a further play to make electronic books device-agnostic. It won’t matter what device you own, you’ll still be able to buy and read content on whatever you have. Another bookstore in Canada is experimenting in being able to buy books by the chapter rather than having to buy the whole thing, which would be a boon to college students and knowledge junkies everywhere, but perhaps not so great for novelists, who may find that people really only do read the first four chapters of the book and never finish.
Recently, I was in a bookstore while on vacation, looking at the content and trying to decide whether or not to buy a couple books. I was concerned about buying too many books, since the weight can be a burden with baggage weight restrictions on planes these days. So I used my iPhone to take pictures of covers of books I was interested in, and looked at whether or not several of the titles were available on iBooks or Amazon Kindle. A few were, so instead of buying the hardcover, I opted for the digital book instead. I simply downloaded them on my iPad and I was ready to go.
While this works well for novels, I still prefer hardcovers for books I use for business or reference. This just tends to be a better tool to pull off the shelf to refresh my knowledge from time to time, but not every reference book is created equally, either.
There are plenty of things I would like to learn more about, and would be happy to buy chapters of texts on esoteric subjects, if I could just get my hands on them without having to buy a $300 textbook. For example, I have kids with ADHD, and buying chapters out of text books that my doctors might read would be fantastic, since there may only be three or four chapters in a book that are of importance to me, and this information may not be readily available through any other source. I’d love to learn more about coding, about working memory, and all sorts of other topics, filling in the blanks in my own knowledge base, but reluctant to commit the finances to buy full textbooks on a whim.
As text books and other published content becomes available digitally, I wonder when the process will allow disaggregation in the same way iTunes did. And I wonder if that will lead to people publishing shorter works as a result. Or, will it push all novelists to construct stories that pull in readers and keep their appetites wedded all the way to the end of the story, in order to get people to buy each chapter? (Mystery novelists will clearly have to charge double for the last few chapters that reveal all the secrets and clues to the impatient). And I worry what this will do to our patience and attention span, if all of life continues to become about instant and easy gratification but nothing will make us work very hard or stick to something difficult for very long.
I’m ambivalent about the benefits and burdens of disaggregation of written content- what do you think? Clearly publishers are becoming all about providing information and content, and are looking past their own devices in favor of delivering content on demand to any device you have. But does that mean disaggregation of written content is just one step behind?
On a recent trip to Vermont, I started to realize how isolated a lot of people and places are. Living in the heart of the “Boswash” corridor, it’s easy to forget how much of America does not live adjacent to I-95.
Vermont is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. It’s gorgeous- mountains and skies that are simply breathtaking. Cities, towns and villages are far away from each other, and the population of the whole state- 679,000, is less than that of Delaware, yet its landmass is much larger by far. There’s not a lot of cell signal in many places, and the roadside rest stops actually provide free wifi to travelers.
While in Vermont, I spent time trying to geolocate businesses on Foursquare and Gowalla, in part so I remembered them as well as had the ability to share them with other friends. Some places, like Weston VT, home of the quirky and fun Vermont Country Store, have no signal whatsoever for AT&T down in this valley between mountains. As far as cool geolocation tools like foursquare are concerned, places like the Vermont Country Store becomes “unplottable”- sort of like Hogwarts… Yet other places, like the Ben & Jerry’s factory, actually have deals available on Foursquare if you check in there.
Small and unique places like those in small town Vermont depend on tourism mixed with locals. They have to have a locally viable business, because Vermont has a good case of “you can’t get there from here”, meaning it’s a bit of a drive and a haul to get from one town to another, and if you’re off the beaten path, you have to really work to get people to come to your establishment. We accidentally happened upon the Brandon Inn, a turn of the century Inn/Bed & Breakfast, featuring the oldest elevator in the State of Vermont (No Joking), mostly because the more natural places to choose to stay, such as a chain hotel, were booked for the evening. We had an awesome time at the Brandon Inn, but I never would have chosen that naturally, just being on the road and looking for accommodations for the night. And I would have missed out on a great experience as a result.
Part of the charm of places like the Adirondacks, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and other places is the remoteness itself. While there’s probably money to be made by encouraging tourists to come, there’s many more logistical hoops to go through to get to places like Stowe, VT than there are getting to Boston or even Cape Cod. People are lazy and like convenience and instant gratification. We like predictable and comfortable. But we’re missing out on some really amazing experiences by not hopping in the car and exploring places that aren’t easy to get to and convenient.
As I think about how connected we all are on the ‘net, it’s a wonderful thing. It’s even better when we can meet up with folks who we’ve met on line, and really get to know them as friends. This becomes more challenging as people live in more rural and isolated communities, and finding out where the online and offline can merge takes greater dedication and effort than around here, where our biggest challenge to holding a tweetup is to find an establishment willing to have 150 people come in for a night.
I think it means more to people who don’t have the same ease and geographic closeness when they do get together. I think there’s a greater appreciation for the meeting, and that everyone is there by intention and not by default. I’m just hoping I can figure out how to bring this intentionality to “regular” events without requiring people to do advanced gymnastics to get there, so that they appreciate the experience more.
The more effort you have to expend- whether its time, money or convenience- to do something or go somewhere, the more you heighten the experience, both good and bad. If it’s awful, it will become magnified as the worst experience ever, but if things are good, the effort will enhance your perception and you will remember the whole experience more fondly than you would have otherwise. We appreciate things more when we have to work for them, and I’m not sure that’s ever going to change.
So for me, despite the time, the long drive and the inconvenience, I’ll continue to make these efforts, because in the end, the heightened sense of value on the end experience is almost always worth while.
