ebb and flow

Subtitle- Seeing the beacon and passing it on, as opposed to understanding what it means, and internalizing it. Not turning data to knowledge is a bad thing, probably.

I’m wondering about our ability to learn from what we see and read on the web. I know a thing or two about the flow of information on the internet; specifically how it flows through online communities. A message works its way along trusted pathways from one person to the next; received like the beacon lights from Gondor to Rohan in the movie Return of the King. There’s the nuance of how the information is passed and flows to consider, but what of how is the message is processed and digested once it is received at each node? The simple message passed in Tolkien’s story need not be understood by the people passing it along ( though it certainly was ). It just had to reach the terminus of the chain to be effective.

I am thinking about this because I am engaged in a great swelling of knowledge at the moment, by doing… but also very much by reading. In undertaking this business effort, I approach it as I do most topics I have a keen interest in- I read everything I can about it. I become a subject-matter expert ( as I can ) on the topic of choice. I have a diverse background with management and some general business acumen; but it is not my first language, so to speak. I do more than read, certainly; I try to-do- the thing that I am learning about as well. I wouldn’t just read about surfing… I’d take a board out into the waves and get beaten down a bit. The same thing goes with the books I’m reading now, for Social Flare. When I can, I stop at Borders or the library and in between other tasks I read a book or so. I surround myself with sharp, motivated people whose gifts lay in areas mine do not, but I seek to build up my talents as best I can.

And I get a bit brighter, maybe.

But probably not much wiser, with reading the messages of sages who have gone before me. This would be my point.

It’s one thing to get information, to accept it. It’s another to internalize it. One can listen to Jimi Hendrix all day long… but maybe not -hear- him. I can read books all day long about surfing, though it is another thing entirely to head out into the breaking waves, leashed up at the ankle, breath coming up a bit short as you see the size of the surf from the prone position, heading your way.

So, experts write books. Our parents try to teach us the lessons they learned. We receive this information as data, rarely turning it into knowledge. We see the beacon to the west, we light ours, and in doing so the watchtower in the East sees our light, and lights its own beacon, passing the message. And the message varies with life: Never give your bookkeeper check-signing ability. Don’t get into a car with a stranger. Never eat yellow snow. There’s war in Gondor, send help. Fast.

I think that merely passing the message along is part of it, and a vital part. But passing it to others in a form that makes it more digestible, more easily turned from data to knowledge, info to wisdom, and is just as important. As most any insightful school principal will tell you, there’s a vast difference between being a subject matter expert, and being an insightful teacher. Communicating the message is different than doing all you can to assure that message is taken up. Merely making a message passable is not the end. It is very surely an important, necessary beginning… but not the end.

I read the books to develop my business acumen, and although no one can learn –just- from books, some are very helpful. Some have the message crafted in such a way that it will very likely be taken up. That’s the goal, of course it’s one thing to put wisdom in a book, and make that book available. It’s quite another to deliver that wisdom in a way that will be taken up, that can benefit someone.

One of the many things that distinguishes Social Flare, I think. We don’t’ just pass your message from one mountaintop to the next; we understand a bit about who’s watching for your message, and we craft it in a way that helps enable that transition from data, to knowledge.

Because it’s not just how many eyes see a message, it’s how many people react to it. There’s war in Gondor, after all.