Sitting at the Seat of Knowledge
There is a line in Meditations where Marcus says we can’t quench understanding unless we put the insights that compose it. In other words, it’s a two way street.
The big shift in media is that technology has blurred the line between creator and customer. With the basic software that comes on a mac I can take something that was previously only consumable and make it into something else that can, in turn, be consumed again. That’s the notion of a “prosumer.”
So how can anyone expect to get anywhere on the internet without participating? You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it. Prosumption is incredibly easy. Wikipedia, del.icio.us, messageboards, StumbleUpon are all in desperate need of contributions. And more than that, they’ll help you do the things you do already. In one capacity or another, I get paid to use all of them.
More than that, as a species that learns by doing, you can’t possibly develop to the fullest through absorption alone.
you are starting to repeat yourself with these posts about disruption and new media. How about some more meaningful content?
When you can post links to your accounts for every one of the services I mentioned and all the ones I didn’t have time for, I’ll listen to your opinion about content.
Ryan,
I believe that a lot of people who read your blog exert a lot of effort trying to figure out WHAT you do (even more so than WHY you do it). I feel that this focus on prosumption, however, gets at the heart of what you oftentimes write about — taking action, drawing connections between what you read and how you live your life, or as you have said before, exploring to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Something about the anonymity of the internet feels me with the urge to make snide comments. Good thing I have that outlet or I’d probably be a douchebag in real life. Wait…
Interesting way to look at it.. Nice to see someone contributing so much.
Guess a more elaborate comment would suit the contents of the post but I appreciate brevity.
That’s great point Glenn. Here’s basically what I do (and why Tucker and others have hired me): I find things I like learning about and teach myself how to do it. Then I find ways to apply it and how it could make something that already exists more efficient or better. Then I pitch people on why they should entrust that to me. Sometimes they pay, sometimes they don’t.
That job description somewhat resembles what I think William Wesley, a man quasi-famous in basketball for being a really good connector of people and for being shadowy, does.
http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-32-18/The-New-York-Times-on-William-Wesley.html?post=true
The author of the link seems to think there’s something shady going on, which may be true, but I believe Wesley has been working the same lines of action as you for a long time now.
The problem with guys like that is that they are only middlemen. They don’t know how to do anything. MOST people in Hollywood are like Wesley, when that kind of connector should be just a small small minority.
What I am talking about is developing skill sets in the areas that will become dominate parts of our lives going forward.
The beauty of this is that it benefits whatever you are trying to accomplish on-line as well. In other worlds, we might think of other sites as competitors. On-line, you want to chip in with each other because that way you start to share audiences. The cloud effect. It’s great.
I write for a site and one time at a meeting of its staff, one person said we shouldn’t have any links on our site.
Are you crazy? I said. We need more links. That the only way we’re going to show other sites we’re here in a way they’ll care about.
Something that I’ve noticed a lot recently, is that your knowledge/understanding/what-not seems to be about a year ahead of mine. I find myself repeatedly starting to finally understand posts that you wrote a while ago (especially those about stoicism). However, I just started reading Wikinomics, and as of about an hour ago I finished the chapter on Prosumers. So this post makes a lot of sense to me.
How did it come about that you would be paid for the time you spent on these websites? What advice would you give someone looking to do likewise?
Wow, I was reading this post and suddenly an idea that could revolutionize the way we organize the blog world, and maybe the whole internet, popped into my head. I’m not going to write about it here, but thanks.