Well done is better than well sued

"A definition is the enclosing of a wilderness of ideas within a wall of words." Samuel Butler

In last weekend's The New York Times the paper featured an Opinion article by Neal Gabler titled The Elusive Big Idea. In the article Gabler explores the very definition of ideas and thinking. What is an idea? What are they for? And, do we care?

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé.

It is not so much that bold ideas are passé as it is that bold ideas tend to be very costly.

Patent lawsuits are rampant at the moment, everyone suing everyone else, from Lodsys suing independent developers (and Apple trying to defend them), to Google, Apple, Microsoft, HTC, Samsung, and others all suing each other in various incestuous permutations fighting to put up the the walls that will determine what "mobile" means.

And it's not just technology. Lawyers, with their walls of words, are doing a great job to make anyone pursuing creative thought feel like the simple act of thinking is always pending litigation.

Ultimately there are two kinds of ideas: those that live in the ether of concepts and angels and dreams and those that are made known through action.

The boldest idea is the one that is actually implemented. Anyone can have a thought, anyone can try to define it, contain it, claim it, sue for it, but few, those that dare develop it, build it, are the true thinkers.

Bold ideas may be passé, but bold, differentiating action is not, and never will be.

Most importantly, if you can make something happen from an idea once, you can do it again.

With apologies to Benjamin Franklin, well done is better than well sued.

The Filter Bubble In The [Google]Plex

This week Google announced the ambitious Google+ project, their latest foray into the social web. This provides me with a great opportunity to encourage you to read two very relevant books that will influence how you feel about Google+.

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, And Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy
Steven Levy is a Senior Writer at Wired Magazine. In The Plex reads like the biography of Google, made possible by the rare access granted to Levy. In the book he reveals with clarity how Google came to be and in turn shows how the company works. He even describes the beginnings of project Emerald Sea, the code name for Google+. Levy also wrote an in-depth overview of the project on the day it launched. 

To further increase your curiousity here is Steven Levy in conversation with Kara Swisher of All Things D discussing the book:

The Filter Bubble, What The Internet Is Hiding From You by Eli Pariser
Eli Pariser noticed differences in search results based on an individuals past online history and set out to investigate why this was happening. In the following TED Talk from last February he shares what he discovered, giving you an overview of the book's content: 

Kernel Panics & Shredding Cellos: What I Learned This Week

• On the same day the PC was demoted my main desktop computer at home had a kernel panic. Heat is not the friend of technology. It also means backup often, then backup again, especially now that so much of what we create will live on the cloud. Think about how you work and how you use your files and put a backup strategy in place, because the cloud will crash and the PC, demoted and all, will have a kernel panic attack. 

• It's easy to forget how satisfying a great meal with smart colleagues can be, especially when there is no work talk and instead people enjoy each other's company. 

• Yes, it's true, people that waste my time with inconsiderate email etiquette drive me crazy. And I'm not the only one that feels that way. Let's work together on an Email Charter (to learn more see this post from last Thursday.)

• Thank you John Gruber for inventing Markdown.

• The post on this blog that so far has been retweeted, liked, commented on and shared the most this year features two classically trained cellist playing the hell out of a classic rock song. (See the post here.) Rock enthusiasts went crazy for it. Classically trained musicians enjoyed it. It was deemed cool, better than the original and as a whole really made a profound impression. 

I discovered 2Cellos performing "Welcome to the Jungle" via the blog Cover Me, a fantastic blog that finds some of the best covers available on the internet. What I particularly love about the site is that they showcase artists that are not remixing, sampling or mashing up the original, they are instead creating a brand new interpretation, making new art from something that already existed without really changing it.

What We Learned This Week

• The past and the future are colliding: Friday morning, on a platform waiting for a train to go into New York, people watched The Royal Wedding on their iPads. An event happening thousands of miles away, in very old buildings, was casually watched in real time by people simply waiting to go about their days.

• It is possible to be immersed in a Shakespeare play and experience the intentions of the characters up-close. There is such a thing as wordless Shakespeare. 

What We Learned This Week

• The cloud is were turbulent weather happens. 

• iPads are more widely used than Linux. 

• Quinine causes tonic water to fluoresce under ultraviolet light. 

• Caring is daring. 

In The Art of War Sun Tzu wrote "he who dares wins."

Many years ago, before reading the book, I misheard a lecturer and for days went about my business thinking how profound it was The Art of War said "he who cares wins."

Days later, when I finally read the book, it became obvious that I had confused 'cares' for 'dares', a rather important distinction. 

In the battlefields of creative work sometimes what is expected of you is to not care. To not care about the details, about collaboration. To not care about executing your best work. One is led to believe that in order to survive the war one must dare to not care. 

And to that I say the most daring act of all is to care. Care about the details, about collaboration, about executing your best work.