The small-minded vision of the technology elite
sethgodin.typepad.com
sethgodin.typepad.com
The only point of Seth's post is to remind you of the principles from his books. It's not meant to say anything new, and it's not supposed to mean anything to you if you haven't read his books.
"I'll let you in on a little secret. I didn't really write this book. I paid a ghostwriter to do it while I took a vacation to Tahiti. Then my publisher slapped my name on the front so it would sell more copies.
"...Just kidding. But you reacted differently to this book, didn't you, knowing that I didn't write it. You thought you were getting one of Seth Godin's books, but instead, you got one by an anonymous ghostwriter. It changes the story you tell yourself about why you bought the book, and that changes how you think about your purchase.
"That's the power of marketing."
Anyone remember Alanis Morrisette's song Ironic? It wasn't ironic at all - everything she sang about was just bad luck. But that was the meta-irony: she'd written a song called Ironic that wasn't irony at all.
I think a lot of Seth Godin's writing is the same way. The "product" is crap. But it's exceptionally well-marketed crap, so people spread it around anyway. The message is in the medium, not the message itself. Look at it as meta-writing.
I see that in a lot of his writing. This article was a barely coherent stream-of-consciousness. And yet here it is on the front page of Hacker News. You commented on it. I commented on it. I may've ascribed meaning to it that wasn't even there in the first place. But that's the point. He got people talking.
Same goes for his FastCompany article that's currently #1 on Hacker News. He took a risk, just as he advised people to do. He spoke on topics that he's not competent in, with a perspective that's just different enough from mainstream views to get people talking. And it worked - his article is #1 here. People talk about it. It got published in a major magazine.
Look at what Seth does, not what he says. What he says is almost always pure drivel. But it's pure drivel that works.
I think you shouldn't excuse drivel just because it works. What happened to doing things well for the sake of doing them well? Just because Seth is good at what he does, just because Scoble and Arrington are good at arousing attention, doesn't mean we should look to them for inspiration.
Seth just writes some very good stuff and a lot of stream of consciousness stuff. The later has a tiny shiny idea at its core, that's wrapped in a tone of crap.
Perhaps technology demands more precision when expressing ideas, but still we often see the same style from tech writers.
And that's just it, bad style. Not a culture clash between the great kingdoms of marketing and technology.
Currently looking at the top stories, his article on fastcompany is #2 and the blog post he wrote about the article on fastcompany is #3.
What's wrong with this picture?
When an engineer has a proven ability to ship stuff, to keep things humming and not crashing, it's easy to fall into the trap of rejecting anything that hasn't demonstrated that it can work, that hasn't proven itself in the market.
What he's really saying is that it's the status quo to argue against (reject) ideas and technologies that are radical - simply because "engineers" are trained to produce things that "work." Until proven (which takes time), radical ideas and changes are extremely experimental, by definition, and likely to cause friction. This does not make them unwise, however.
The key point, in my mind, is that even if EVERY highly educated person in your field told you that your idea is stupid, wrong, and will never work, you shouldn't believe them blindly. James Dyson didn't, and now he's a billionaire. SOMETIMES (but very rarely) everyone else is wrong when you are right.
On the other hand, it is easy to say "oh, you have curse of knowledge and that's why you do not appreciate my idea" even if one has good arguments.
What is interesting that even so bright idea, as the curse of knowledge, worded by Seth Godin sounds so bad I'd assume it is wrong if not knew it before.
Which we already knew. I agree with the people questioning why this guy always makes his way up HN. Honestly, I have a habit of automatically skipping his articles, but I fell for it this time because I was curious aobut how bad it was.
Or is he referring to the ones who spend their spare time using Smalltalk, Lisp, Scheme, Factor, Prolog, Haskell and Erlang? They're small-minded and quick to reject anything the market hasn't accepted? Really?
Those two camps have very different attitudes towards new, unproven ideas.
Untrue.
I do see some people making specious claims, and other people asking for support for those claims, but I also see a good deal of thoughtful discussion and excitement over new ideas.
Maybe Godin just sees what he wants to see?
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Competent people have a predictable, reliable process for solving a particular set of problems. They solve a problem the same way, every time. That's what makes them reliable. That's what makes them competent.