How To Break Anything - Thoughts and insights on culture and human behavior, living blissfully at the intersection of rationality and irrationality (but mostly irrationality)

Thoughts and insights on culture and human behavior, living blissfully at the intersection of rationality and irrationality (but mostly irrationality)

I sometimes wish we could freeze a person and examine - in a very comprehensive way - how any one person's thoughts and experiences have led them to see the world in the very specific way they perceive it. Why any one person is exactly where they are, making the decisions they believe they are making, when they could be in an infinite number of other places, thinking and deciding an infinite number of other things.

This site exists because I've come to believe that we learn something from everything we experience. It's not always big. It's not always what we expect it to be. We might think it's contrary to what we already know. Or believe. But it's always something. And it always has a greater impact on our choices and experiences than we ever realize.

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February 8, 2010

"Choice" can be engineered and constructed like a well designed building

Behavioural economics is described (by Thaler himself) as ‘ libertarian paternalism’. This is the idea that while people should be able to live their lives as they want, “it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people’s behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better”.

via wearesocial.net

I find the counterintuitive reality of how we make decisions compellingly beautiful.

If you'd like, there's a rather long explanation of behavioral economics below:

Filed under // behavioral economics decisionmaking irrationality

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February 7, 2010

On the history of cultural style: "I am authentic" as driving force since the early 20th century

"Every age uses dress and body decoration to signal what is most important at that historical moment. Throughout most of our history that message has been "I am rich" or "I am powerful." If today more and more people use their dress to assert: "I am authentic," it is simply evidence of our hunger for the genuine article in an age which seems to so many to be one of simulation and hype."
-StreetStyle, 1993 [tedpolhemus.com for more on the historical search for 'authenticity']

Filed under // culture offline inspiration

Posted from New York, NY

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February 7, 2010

I'm beginning to think of 'art' as that which is irreplaceable

I like this definition of poetry as "organized use of language that cannot be replaced by paraphrase."

Seth has been talking a lot lately on art, in Linchpin and otherwise, as the act of creating something that connects with and changes someone.

I like that model, and I'm beginning to incorporating the idea of irreplaceability.

As in: you don't have to worry about anyone stealing your best ideas; if they are truely that good, they are the result of an irreplicable amount of work - cognitive or otherwise.

Filed under // art offline inspiration

Posted from New York, NY

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February 6, 2010

More insight on cultural externalities and the arbitrary nature of what is important to us

via proseandconrad.com

Conrad put together a good collection of examples here: The good old days of advertising

(the 'more' part refers to my earlier post re: Tim Stock's The Structure Of Trends)

Filed under // culture human insight perception

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February 6, 2010

A goldmine of insight on cultural externalities and the paradoxical nature of human behavior

via designologic.net

My favorite slides are 65 and 70. They have a lot to say about the mercurial (arbitrary?) nature of meaning and what matters to us.

Filed under // culture human insight trends

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February 5, 2010

Social Media Mullet: a clever bit of insight on identity in the digital world

via swiss-miss.com

Filed under // identity

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February 4, 2010

Thoughts on distraction & social interaction from my experience at PSFK's Seth Godin event

I had a brief thought this morning from the PSFK Good Ideas Salon with Seth Godin. Very much in contrast to the Wired: Future of Space & Time event where there was significant backchannel twitter conversation and sharing, I looked around the room during Seth's talk and found that there was almost none. Looking at the twitter feed upon my return confirmed this.

What I was thinking during the event was nothing profound - essentially that this talk was so engaging and so compelling that no one wanted to do anything except simply be a part of it.

In fact, I was almost kicking myself for not taking a picture to go along with this post. But then I remembered back on when I was almost going to take my phone out to do so and specifically thought, "you know what? I'd rather pay attention to Seth instead."

I guess I think back to IDEO's 'Humanizing Social Media' Event. By asking everyone to leave their mobiles at coat check when checking in to the event, I think there was this attempt to 'rehumanize' the social part of being in a group. I already wrote some initial thoughts about the fact that "not having connection to the outside world" didn't feel any more like we were "paying more attention to the world immediately around us" (see: Insights from IDEO's Humanizing Social Media); essentially my point is that there's nothing 'dehumanizing' about interacting with people digitally rather than in person - our basic human social behaviors remain the same.

Including our being drawn to the insightful and passionate. Today I saw this overpower our dependence on being connected to the digital world. That's humanizing.

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February 4, 2010

Insights From IDEO’s Humanizing Social Media Event - PSFK

As part of Social Media Week in NYC, design firm IDEO hosted the event Humanizing Social Media. Check-in to the event required attendees to leave their mobile devices behind with their coats, setting the stage for an experiment in human interaction. Participants were given a large blank white t-shirt to cover whatever they were wearing, and their choice of a range of buttons with which to express interests and identity. Below are two brief perspectives and insights on human social behavior that team PSFK walked away with:

Kyle Studstill:

The event was framed as an experiment in bringing social interaction back to its basics, in the face of complex digital platforms like Facebook, foursquare, Twitter and the like – the idea being that impersonal nature of these networks take something away from the simplicity of face-to-face interaction.

What I observed reflected the idea that all social interaction – digital or not – is an exercise in individuals using whatever they have at their disposal to say something about themselves. The buttons were an obvious example of this, but it was also clear in the vastly varied ways participants placed their buttons or even wore the blank t-shirt itself. The entire event begged the question “what parallels can we draw between what happens here in this experiment, and what happens in social networks?”; one clear one that emerged is that the expression of identity through carefully (and often subconscious) curated details of one’s personality applies both online and off.

As far as the digital disconnect (no one knew they would be without their phones for two hours until they walked in the door), I don’t think I had that feeling of ”everyone is paying more attention now” that one might expect. Perhaps the rest of the crowd did. But it has been my experience that we are getting better at dipping in and out of both digital and offline conversations, pulling ourselves away from a casual group to share an idea on Twitter and diving back in seamlessly; I haven’t experienced the feeling that people being connected to their mobile devices has made them any less “social,” even in the physical space.

Francisco Hui:

Kyle makes a good point that the lack of phones didn’t particularly change how we socialized for those two hours. The blank t-shirts, like current social media platforms, placed everyone on the same footing, regardless of their age and what they came in wearing.

Learnings from the discussion alluded to an interesting group dynamic that occurs in real life that hasn’t been replicated in social media. While you can broadcast messages to your followers, it’s still an individual act that is occurring in on your phone or at your desk.

From another conversation, we learned that current status updates are very much about the past tense; what you did yesterday or earlier during the day, but we’re slowly moving towards the present and future tense, what you’re doing right now, and what you plan to do.

via psfk.com

Filed under // behavior human insight social interactions

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February 2, 2010

I think the concept of things being 'ruined' is absurd.

Mostly because it's hard from me to think that the last x number of years of humanity [choose your own number, anywhere from 30-3000] have been an exercise in things getting worse. I mean, when did things first start to get 'ruined'??

Most people you ask this question, should they happen to be on the 'things need saving' side of the world, will give you a very predictable answer. Humanity stopped progressing usually when they were either in their early 20's, or when they were established in their careers.

Which I of course find laughably hilarious.

Who will save book publishing?

What will save the newspapers?

What means 'save'?

If by save you mean, "what will keep things just as they are?" then the answer is nothing will. It's over.

If by save you mean, "who will keep the jobs of the pressmen and the delivery guys and the squadrons of accountants and box makers and transshippers and bookstore buyers and assistant editors and coffee boys," then the answer is still nothing will. Not the Kindle, not the iPad, not an act of Congress.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Filed under // doomsday perception time-orientation

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February 1, 2010