The Silence of the Adults

A few of the posts made in response to yesterday's post indicated that the
writer didn't feel comfortable posting about their life because either it
wasn't interesting, or because the only things they had to say were
negative, and writing negative things made them feel like teenagers.

There is clearly something pervasive in society which makes people feel
either that adults do not have problems, or that adults do not talk about
their problems.

Needless to say, I do not agree with either of these opinions.

Everyone has problems, that's just the way the world is. Adults frequently
cannot turn to parents in the same way that children did, and so if
anything it's _more_ important to turn to other adults, talk about your
problems, and get feedback from other adults, either with useful
suggestions, or simple acknowledgement that your problem is a common one,
and you are not alone in having it.

In addition, it seems that if people don't talk about the negative stuff
that's going on then they get out of the habit of writing at all, and I
don't get to see cool posts about the interesting/fun things they've been
up to.*

Which leads nicely into the other point - the idea that your life is not
interesting. Fundamentally, it's probably not, in a global sense. The
chances of you being someone whose biography I would read if I'd never met
you is pretty slim**. But if we have any connection (friends in meatspace,
met you at a con a few times, enjoyed chatting online) then what you're up
to _is_ of interest to me. I loathe the attitude I've seen from
anti-Facebook/Twitter people of "Why do people think that their every
movement is of interest to posterity?". Because posterity can go &$&^
( itself, people's lives are of interest to their _friends_.

So if you have negative stuff in your life then feel free to share it,
anyone that's not interested can unfriend you (or move you off their
default view). And if you have nice, normal, stuff in your life then feel
free to share it, and uninterested people can hit page down. And if you
have awesomely cute kittens that you can photograph then feel free to share
them, and frankly that's what the internet was designed for.

*Yes, it's all about me.
**Not least because I don't tend to read biographies.

The death of a thousand cuts

Something that successful startup companies do well is to throw ideas out
at high speed, see what sticks, and then build on that, iterating rapidly
towards a product that people actually want to use.

It's something that large companies do badly, which is why they are
frequently disrupted, eaten alive from the insides by faster moving, more
flexible competitors.

William Gibson came up with the phrase "The street finds its own uses for
things."* and it's a lesson that you'd think any designer of tools would
have learned by now. If you designed what you thought was the perfect egg
de-whiter, and then discovered that it was selling in massive amounts to
motorcycle owners to be used as a rear-view mirror then the _last_ thing
you do is tell them that they're using it wrong - you design some new
boxes, stick some adverts in the motorcycle magazines, and work out a way
to make it an even better rear-view mirror.

Sadly, illustrating how badly large companies do this is the perfect
example of Google Plus. Where a site with potentially awesome
functionality was launched, and then people started using it wrong.
Leading to Google throwing people off the site, and causing endless bad
blood. People who would have happily used their real names are now upset
at Google for removing the option from others, and traffic has
fallen 37% over the last couple of weeks.

There was another case I saw, where a webcam video feed site decided to
throw off their "adult" users, because they were only a small proportion of
the userbase, and the site didn't want to be associated with that kind of
thing. And then discovered that the adult content users were a massive
proportion of the _paying_ user base. Thankfully, they realised this in
time to turn things around.

I suspect I'm being optimistic if I expect Google to be that smart.


*in the same short story that laid the paving stones of his Sprawl trilogy
and coined the word "cyberspace". He was clearly having a good day.

Interesting Links for 6-9-2011

• Do Happier People Work Harder? Why yes, yes they do.
  (tags: happiness work productivity management business)
• Become a Good Programmer in Six Really Hard Steps
  (tags: programming development advice)
• Androgen and Estrogen levels tied directly to finger length
  (tags: hormones gender biology)
• A breakdown of the figures in the latest Independence poll
  (tags: scotland independence)
• Yes voters take lead in new independence poll
  (tags: independence scotland)
• They're finally about to finish painting the Forth Road Bridge
  (tags: scotland construction bridge technology)