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Broadcasting Brain

An uncanny blog by Mark Dykeman

Are you ready for your digital legacy?June 25

Our words, images, video, and audio files will be around for a long, long time. To me, it seems very likely that the digital content we create through all forms of social media, Web pages, forms, etc. which are indexed by Google and other search engines will be around for an indefinite period of time.  I can see at least some of this content being available in some form for decades.

Many of us have young children (mine are both under the age of ten) who aren’t as adept with Web functionality as teens and adults.  Many Web users are teens and Gen Y types who haven’t yet started families and have no offspring.

Today your friends, family, colleagues, employers, neighbors, etc. can find out lots of stuff about you, especially if you are active in social media and use your real name.

In the coming years, your children, nieces and nephews, and their friends will be able to check out your Digg, Reddit, and Mixx voting record;  your StumbleUpon likes;  your photos and videos; your movie, TV, and music interests;  your blog posts and comments; and so on.  They’ll get a view of you that they might not see from face-to-face interactions.

Do you ever think about this?  Does it concern you?  Are you ready for this coming scrutiny?  And do you ever think about the impact of your online content on the generation(s) to come?

Get brainyJune 14

Think.

Question.

Extrapolate.

Theorize.

Experiment.

Analyze.

Make something new and cool.

And don’t be afraid to ask questions.

How to turn a PC user into an Apple fanboyJune 10

Image by videogioco

What would it take to make North Americans yield to the conventional wisdom of most countries and start calling soccer by its more widely used name: football? How do you make a life-long Coca Cola drinker switch to Pepsi? When does a Boston Red Sox fan learn to love the New York Yankees? Can you teach an old dog new tricks? Where is the tipping point at which an influencer can have an impact on our beliefs, tastes, thoughts, and behavior?

The answers to these questions are the equivalents of the Fountain of Youth, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Midas Touch to marketers everywhere. The ability to influence behavior, as much as some of us despise the thought of being manipulated, is a very valuable thing to people who have products and services to sell.

A tale of two tunesmiths

These thoughts are running through my mind today as I’ve just finished listening to a Fresh Air podcast in which

Why one guy is quitting social media and why this is importantJune 6

Jay Cruz, a Broadcasting Brain reader and a great blogger in his own right (see Tape Noise Diary), has written a thoughtful and insightful post about why he is drastically scaling back his social media participation in Why I’m Quitting Social Media.

Here’s an excerpt from his post:

Lets not fool ourselves. The web is mostly for entertainment. (Or, The Internet is for Porn) Everyone supposedly knows this, but pinpointing the distraction is actually harder than people are aware of.

When you read a book, watch tv, or consume other type of media, you do it for a purpose. Most of the time the purpose is to entertain yourself. But on the web, specially on so called social media like Twitter, the purpose is constantly being challenged and shifted. It’s a two way, or asynchronous conversation as it has been proselytized, but you still have to manage that expectation. To listen or to talk, to participate or to follow, to write or to read. This is theoretically great, but you will never have that sense of completion I was talking about.  [Jay spent a week without Web access and says he focused a lot on activities which led to conclusive or decisive ends -

Developments on the home front part 2 - wake up dude!June 3

In my last update I mentioned a health issue that I’m dealing with. Don’t worry, it’s nothing life threatening or anything like that, but it is a bit life-changing. I figure that it’s worth discussing because my experience may be valuable to you.

No this is not an image of me

Image by marvin L

But first a bit of background:

I have had problems with drowsiness for years, probably for longer than I realize. There are certain situations which sometimes, but not always, lead me to start dozing off. Some of these things are relatively benign, like, saying, sitting on the couch. Others would not be so good, like when, say, sitting in a meeting of some kind. Others, like when driving, were not very good at all.

At one point several years ago I did go see a doctor about this falling asleep problem, but the experience wasn’t very helpful. My sleeping habits weren’t always very good so it could have been that I was getting myself overtired at different times. I just decided that these things happened rarely enough that they weren’t worth worrying about. In retrospect, that was a dumb idea.

Things finally came to a head when these “nodding off” experiences were starting to have a neg