Hakiri

I stumbled upon the following cartoon on twitter. I have read “1984” but not “Brave New World“. Will be visiting the local library soon.

Some interesting stuff!

I often hear about success stories where the direct cause for the success is someone’s hard work and persistence. Although in my mind persistence is important, it seems that hard work is seriously overrated according to the founders of Flickr and a bunch of neuroscientists, as reported here and here. Now, this is an idea I fully support.

Here is what Caterina Fake has to say about working hard:

We agreed that a lot of what we then considered “working hard” was actually “freaking out”. Freaking out included panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn’t have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors, being at the office since just being there seemed productive even if it wasn’t – and other time-consuming activities.

Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that’s what you like to do.

There are a few interesting things we can draw from Caterina’s experience. I’ve organised them in bullet points to be processed easily when it is needed and also added a few things on this subject I found out on my own. So here is the list.

How to Avoid Working Hard

1. Find the right thing to work on.
2. Pay attention to what is going on in the world.
3. Look for patterns.
4. See things as they are rather than how you want them to be.
5. Read what people want.
6. Put yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen.
7. Never, ever work for work’s sake.
8. Even when you need to work hard, take a 10 minutes break every 40 minutes.
9. Take it easy.
10. Keep it simple.

I know for a fact that these things may sound like nonsense to some of you but there is some truth in them if you choose to embrace this kind of lifestyle.

Last Wednesday (09/09/2009) Derren Brown predicted, or at least he made us to believe that he did, five numbers from the lottery draw aired on BBC. For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, here is a video footage from the show.

How did he do it? I was eager to find out but since he promised to reveal the secret the following Friday, I retained myself from making any guesses until I see the show on TV first. His explanation is out now and as I thought things do not add up as nicely as I would like.

So here is what I think is possible and what is not. Let’s lay out some facts:

1. You cannot predict a relatively random sequence of numbers – unless it is not random at all. Any claims and proof that the lottery is predictable will make the draw automatically invalid. Not random means that it is fixed. It also means that it is unfair.
2. The lottery draw is NOT invalid – and therefore it wasn’t predicted as he tried to made us to believe. Derren did get an approval from Camelot to do the show and they were completely aware of what he was up to. Camelot knew that the draw cannot be invalidated because Derren did not and could not get the winning numbers, which leads us to the obvious conclusion that it is only an illusion.
3. Even if the lottery can be predicted due to being not random, it is very unlikely that Derren has access to resources that can give him the ability to predict the numbers. Think about all technical aspects required to perform a one time guess of something that is the end result of many system properties and variables which are influenced by all kinds of internal and external processes.

The most likely explanation of the trick is usually the most obvious one. The most obvious explanation is that this is a live video montage. Why? Well, why didn’t he do the draw live on stage but inside a studio? The reason for this is because he cannot guess the winning numbers. Only a studio with fixed lighting and scene will let him to create the illusion.

Another peculiar thing about this act is that he essentially gives deliberate hints on exactly how everything works in reality. At the beginning of the show where the trick was explained, he starts by presenting to the audience 3 possible options he could have employed in order to pull off this trick. Here they are:

1. Fake a ticket
2. Genuinely guess the winning numbers
3. Fix the machine

The funny thing is how he disregards the first and most obvious solution by suggesting that it is too obvious and uninteresting and therefore it should be ignored. He quickly moves on on the second possible solution. Now this is basically 99% of the entire show. It is extremely convoluted and full of pseudoscience of all sorts. The last possible solution is of course not possible at all since this will undoubtedly land him in jail, nevertheless he spends a couple of minutes on it at the end of the show to force us to thinker between options 2 and 3 and completely ignore option 1. He is a mentalist after all.

Derren Brown is a magician at the end of the day. The power is not in the trick but in the magician being able to produce an image of something magical happening.

When we see something that is simple and obvious we automatically assume that we can reach the same idea because after all it is simple and obvious. However, simple and obvious concepts are hard to come up with.

Do not ignore the simple and the obvious. Some of the greatest things ever invented are quite simple and rather obvious but nevertheless great and irreplaceable.

I think that we are at the verge of another online change. We are going from hyper global communities, to ultra local and even micro communities.

Global communities are places such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and all other social networks which sole purpose is to get as many users on board as possible. They are doing well but have become significantly less helpful in the last couple of years. In other words, people find them too intrusive, to globalized and subjective to abuse. People add friends as maniacs for no apparent reason apart form increasing their rank and apparently popularity level – a number which often means nothing to anyone.

As a result of all of this, we see the emergency of hyper local communities where real relationships can be made; micro communities designed around very specific purposes with clearly defined goals. These communities matter as they are real. They are small but sometimes quite significant and influential.

Needless to say, hyper local and micro communities are more secure and less subjective to abuse. Simply put, when people know each other quite well a lot of technological and social related problems such as spam, fake identities, etc., become non-issues. They simple disappear. This is an interesting side-effect which worths further exploration.

Mashable is running an interesting article today titled 6 Things World of Warcraft Can Teach You About Social Media Success. It is about the life lessons the author of the article learned while playing WoW.

I took the courtesy to summarize them all here but pay a tribute to mashable by visiting their website first.

The Lessons

1. Success requires constant dedication – To succeed, you need to put in time and dedication.
2. It’s important to strategize your communication – If you don’t communicate effectively and clearly who you are and what you want no one will listen.
3. Set an objective and develop a strategy – Do not attempt to utilize social media without any specific objective or idea on how to be successful. You will fade away because you didn’t try to participate actively in the community or just didn’t know how.
4. It’s about networking – The people you connect with are incredibly important. It can mean the difference between success and failure.
5. Join new services, create new lines of communication – You should always be looking to create new lines of communication and new people to interact with. Rely on these people to educate and enlighten you. Expand your horizons by trying out new things in social media.
6. Earn other people’s trust – People won’t trust you until you can show them that you are to be trusted. Enough charlatans exist that you have to prove your value first before earning respect.

All of this reminds me of something I wanted to do for long, long time. Let me explain. In my high school years me and my friends used to organize late evening StarCraft tournaments – nothing too obsessive, two games max per day and no more than 1-2 hours long. We used to do these tournaments for a couple of months and it was then when I noticed similarities between the strategies involved in the game and the things that we do in real life. I very rarely play strategy games these days but I’ve always wanted to summarize in a blog post or something my conclusions from my experience when I used to play.

I guess now I have an incentive to finally sit and do it.

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

If you watch the video you will spot the Kindle sell-out but it is interesting presentation nevertheless. Actually, I listened to (yes audio version) of Seth’s book called Tribes and I found the whole idea quite fascinating but a bit off the ground.

See the video. You might get inspired to start your own tribe.

I wrote about the importance of simplicity before but here is another reason why you should believe me. :)

Keep this in mind the next time you design a service or a product. The simpler the better.

Confused information security folks (but not only) can find this video quite interesting.

What I liked the most about this video is that the authors clearly explain that social media is first of all the collective contributions of ordinary people through blogs, wikies, podcasts and other social instruments combined with the efforts of other individuals and organizations who are willing to aggregate, organize and help facilitate community feedback.

By the people, for the people!

Funny Sunday morning stuff:

Steve Jobs and St. Peter are also there.