johnmaconline

I’m a geek in technology. 

But that makes sense, right?

a) I work in the tech industry.
b) I’ve always loved technology. Ever since I first touched and smelled that TRS-80 Model I in the library of Lower Milford Elementary school in 4th grade. 

In a world where one can choose a path, you could argue that the tech industry was my destiny.

The same is true for my colleagues. When tech crosses the membrane and leaks into the world, we’re like little kids on Christmas morning. The world wide web, smartphones, self-driving cars — these are super bowls for tech geeks like us. 

And boy, do we love to debate their effect on the world. Sometimes we have useful insight, but most times, we overvalue our expertise. We need other non-geeks to stand above and behind, with different perspectives, to truthfully assess technology’s effects on the world.

Many professions have a similar crossover between a person’s geeky interests and vocation.

Take meteorology. One becomes a meteorologist because one loves the weather. And how do meteorologists act when an extreme weather event is imminent? Kids in a candy store. It’s their super bowl.

Public health is similar. Public health officials geek out on public health things (thank God). And when a new virus, bacteria, or behavior threatens the general population, it’s their super bowl. 

Like with myself and technology, the experts’ voices are important, but it’s critical to get the perspectives of the non-geeks when making decisions for the entire group. 

The tribe wants you to vote for it.

So it plays on your emotions with its platform, issues, and philosophy. It wants you to vote for the philosophy because the philosophy is for smart and caring people.

It doesn’t want you to vote for the person.

The person is dangerous. The person may not stick to the agenda. The person may have their own ideas. The person may have a relationship with non-tribe members. The person may care more about their people rather than keeping their tribe in power.

What if we voted for the person rather than the tribe?

The children’s play area at the King of Prussia mall is an interesting sociology and psychology lab. 

I spent one arduous evening at the mall over the holiday season, and the children’s play area, filled with 30 or so kids and their parents, was by far the most interesting thing I saw all night.

This was the runup to Christmas — the big day. I suspect Santa was watching. 

Here’s what I saw.

First, the obvious — kids at play. Some were running around and crawling on the overly safe animal-shaped equipment, and others were playing in calmer, loose-knit groups adjacent to the equipment. No electronics. I did see, however, many lonesome kids stationed all around the mall, on benches or at food court tables with their faces glued to screens. 

Second, I noticed that DEI seemed to take care of itself. All without special interest groups, mandates, rules, victims, or adult intervention. 

Third, kids in the wild are pretty good at organizing themselves and working out differences and issues. All it took was an occasional raised voice, a grab or smack on the arm, or simply ejecting from the group. Not exactly a calm or rule-based public discourse, but effective. 

Fourth, all of the adults — all of them — were sitting around the outside, heads down, necks craned, eyes glued to the 2.8×5.78″ gorilla glass. Some were probably spending their outrage budget on why the world is such a terrible place.

Look up. 

We overvalue ideas, and we overvalue our personal contribution to their creation and discovery. 

Ideas aren’t dangerous. Ideas don’t have any power. They can’t hurt you, nor can they help you. 

Nor can they be stolen.

We do all kinds of silly things to protect our ideas. We build a legal system around them. We speak of them in hushed murmurs behind closed doors. We sign meaningless pieces of paper promising not to discuss them outside of the room or with the wrong people. We argue over who owns the idea.

We love to inflate our egos with our brilliant ideas.

But an idea has no power or value unless and until someone does something with it. The idea must be born into the real world. It must move from abstract to concrete. 

Ideas are a dime a dozen. In fact, they’re worth less than a dime for a dozen. They are worthless. Unless you…

Build the thing.
Gather the tribe.
Write the story.

If you want to make a difference, stop worrying about someone stealing your idea and go do something with it. 

You want a mandate that will actually do some good? When I’m king, here’s one that I’m rolling out:

From the ages of 12 to 15, each and every American child should have to play baseball or softball. Mandatory baseball/softball service.

Here’s why:

1. You must learn how to handle failure. Baseball and softball are games of failure. The best players to ever play the game failed at 2/3 of their opportunities.
2. You learn how to forget what just happened and focus on the present. You just made an error? Get ready because here comes the next ground ball. You struck out last time? That has no bearing on your next at-bat. 
3. You cannot win individually. Even Mike Trout, the best individual player since Babe Ruth, never has and won’t ever win the championship unless and until he changes teams or the Angels get better collectively.
4. It’s a team sport, yes, but each play requires individual success or failure, and everyone will know how you performed. That ground ball is coming right at you. Only you can hit the next pitch. Will your fastball be a strike? All eyes are on you. You either did it or you didn’t.

“Never Forget” is a tribal mantra.

“Never forget 9/11!”
“Never forget January 6!”
“Never forget what they did to your kids!”
“Never forget how they voted for fascism!”

That’s tribal marketing doing what it does — working to gain and keep the power. They play your emotions like a fiddle, suck you in, and get your head nodding along.

But how exactly do we move forward if we “never forget?”

You can’t. You can’t ever move forward. It’s the surest recipe to stay stuck and exactly where you are. Is this where you want to stay?

Therefore, we must always forget. Start today.

When we didn’t have enough food, people died from malnourishment. Now we have enough food, and people die from over-nourishment.

When we didn’t have enough internet bandwidth to support social media, people were more isolated from each other. Now we have enough bandwidth, and people suffer from mental health disorders from being too connected.

When we didn’t have enough transportation, people died or suffered because they couldn’t get to medical attention. Now we have enough transportation, and people die or suffer because of transportation accidents.

If you don’t have enough money, life can be difficult. If you have enough money, life can be difficult.

Often, we think quantity is our problem. Sometimes it is. But having enough also brings its own set of problems.

Which side is a bigger problem? Less or more? Only context can provide that answer.

To be clear, you don’t need to get smarter. Neither do I.

I don’t really care, nor should you care if I care, because nowhere in this reality we call life does it matter how smart or dumb each of us is.

That’s lesson one.

However, if you want to get smarter, there is a simple prescription:

Question your own beliefs.

When you do that, you realize that many questions are valid scientifically, if not emotionally.

“Could the earth be flat?”
“Could gender be fluid?”
“Could lockdowns and masking be more harmful than helpful?”
“Could Christianity be wrong?”
“Could Q be nothing more than a grand marketing scheme?”
“Could COVID vaccines be responsible for deaths?”

By the way, it’s OK to land back on the same belief you had before you questioned it. Most of the time, you will. But the journey will pay dividends in the form of previously unknown nuggets of insight and understanding. And those tiny little nuggets stacked upon one another allow us to build the bridge of empathy.

Smart people aren’t afraid to question their beliefs, nor are they afraid of revisiting already answered questions, if even just to confirm.

The Science^(tm) demands it.

My software development team has a method of determining the importance of a particular requirement, bug fix, feature, or task by asking a single question.

“Is this elephant shit or mouse poop?”

For example, is it more important to fix the bug that’s crashing the system or that we get the correct heading color on the results page?

When you’re looking around at a room full of elephant shit and spot a little bit of mouse poop over there in the corner, where do you start? Seems easy, right? But it’s not always easy because often, the mouse poop aligns with the story we tell ourselves.

I’m cutting sugar to lose weight, so I don’t eat bananas.
I always buy organic Doritos.
I don’t run because too much running will lower my testosterone.

Mouse poop can be a powerful trap.

If you want to make a difference, attain a goal, or effect a change, take care of the elephant shit first. That may require adjusting the story you tell yourself.

I have the same thought each year as I trudge through my yearly Inbox Enema: 

There oughta be a better law^† for unsubscribing, and that law should look as follows.

• All email messages sent from a subscription service shall include a single-click opt-out for unsubscribing^†
• The opt-out shall be a clickable link in the header and footer of the message.
• The clickable link shall be attached to and presented by one of two methods:
  • The (hypertext) word “UNSUBSCRIBE,” or
  • An image/button that clearly presents the word “UNSUBSCRIBE.”

• Upon unsubscription, the service shall send a single message confirming that unsubscription is complete.

To further define “single-click:”

• When clicked, the link shall directly unsubscribe them from all communications.
• The user shall not be required to further login (provide credentials) or choose from a selection of opt-in/out preferences.

You may:

• Present a page that indicates they have been unsubscribed.
• On that page, include links to re-subscribe.
• On that page, present a selection of opt-in/out preferences.
• In the confirmation message, present any marketing information, resubscribe links, or opt-in/out preference links.
• In addition to “UNSUBSCRIBE,” email messages may include links for opt-in/out preferences or any other related operations. But the “UNSUBSCRIBE” link shall directly unsubscribe them from all. 

† A weak single-click opt-out law already exists.