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A Failure to Communicate
Once upon a time, it wasn't that hard for a company to control its message. The world outside only knew about things it
opted to share, and secrets were easier to keep. Today, though, there are so many outlets for information, and information itself travels so quickly, that keeping a lid on things is almost impossible.
It's like holding water in a sieve. Consider the case of BP. The Deepwater Horizon sank on April 20, which was only seven weeks ago. Yesterday, a search in Google for "BP Oil Spill" returned
over 25 million results.
There's no reason to think BP isn't trying its best to shut this well down. But it seems they're also trying to shut down negative media coverage. Add that to the news that they're spending millions on TV ads to downplay the disaster, and promising to pay all "legitimate" claims... Talk about a legalistic expression! So perhaps it's
not surprising that a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that most Americans favor criminal charges against BP.
Its attempt to spin the story was a big mistake, in our humble opinion. It only made people more angry. The moral here is that you can't not communicate, since doing so simply communicates that
you’ve got something to hide. That’s something BP should have learned from Mr. Universe: You can't stop the signal.
The Power of Suggestion
It's pretty well established that eyewitness testimony is one of the most powerful things you can
bring to a court case, even though studies show it's terribly unreliable. People remember things that didn't
really happen, or forget things that did. We like to believe our memories are inviolable, since they’re what most defines us. The truth is they're actually pretty plastic.
Dr Elizabeth Loftus was recently interviewed on a New York radio show, speaking about her long history in this field. She's probably the world's greatest expert on human memory, and is the subject of a fascinating eight-part series at Slate.com. She believes memories aren't really recalled in a stream, like video or audio recordings. It's more like they're reconstructed from smaller parts, and that means they can be subtly influenced by visual or verbal cues. In one of her most surprising experiments, people were shown doctored images of themselves as children, riding in a hot air balloon. Even though it's a ride they never took, most of the subjects "remembered" the experience after seeing the picture. She's even defined a recipe for generating a false memory. You start by earning the subjects' trust. Then plant the seed of an idea, associating it with some real memories that make sense. As the subject continues to think about it, he or she will at some point take ownership. The false memory now belongs to them.
In Knowledge Management, we like to say that you only know a thing when you need to know it. It's a little unsettling to realize that some of the things we know, could really be figments of our
imagination. Especially in these days of casual Photoshoping, it gives one pause.
Multitasking as Addiction
We've written several times about the myth of multitasking. That is, our personal experience has been that people who engage in serious multitasking
aren't really increasing their productivity. Instead of doing one thing well, they're just doing several things badly. We can see the damage done by distracted drivers and text-messaging engineers. So
why do we do it?
According to a recent article in the New York Times, it may be a kind of addiction. There's a primitive impulse for people to respond immediately to opportunities and threats, and doing so provokes excitement. The brain releases dopamine in response, so the hard-core multitasker may be something like a compulsive gambler. Experiments have shown that some people suffer depression and symptoms of withdrawal when they try to do without their digital feeds. It's a relatively new compulsion, but not as new as you might think. NetAddiction.com has been on-line since 1995. (If you think you might have a problem, you can take their Internet Addiction Test.)
We admit we've tended to think talk of being addicted
to the Web was a little silly, but that's only because we've never felt the pull. Thinking of it pharmacologically, it's kind of scary. What happens to us when we start to find our Facebook friends more
interesting than our real ones?
One Tablet per Child
If you're a regular Directions reader, you already know about One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a philanthropic organization that has been trying to develop a cheap, sturdy laptop for use by children in the developing world. Its goal was to help bridge the digital divide by building an Internet-ready machine that could be sold for only $100. It never quite reached the production volume needed to hit that price point, and its XO-2 computer comes in at about $200. Now, though, it has plans for a tablet that might be had for as little as $75.
The proposed XO-3 will be designed for extremely low power consumption and use a new screen technology that substitutes a rugged plastic for glass. The tablet design will support a touch-screen
keyboard, and that will simplify the language customization needed. That will help keep costs down as well as widen the potential marketplace. The XO-3 is still at the prototyping stage, but OLPC hopes
to be in production by 2012. It's certainly an ambitious project. You can see some concept pictures at Forbes.com, or read the details at Technology Review.
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