In 1989 the US Government started to build the Superconducting Super Collider. The goal? Collide particles inside the Super Collider and study the results in hopes of scientific discovery -- determine the basic building blocks of the universe, and detect the elusive Higgs boson.
In 1993, after only two miles of an 87KM tunnel had been completed, Congress killed the $10 billion project.
Although, the project wasn’t a complete waste of time and money. Herman Wouk used the Super Collider as inspiration for his latest novel -- A Hole in Texas, and I’m using it as a metaphor for the blogsphere.
You see, blogs are an idea collider -- blogs accelerate the collision of ideas, and thus the formation of new ideas. For new ideas are formed by combining two existing ideas. Best of all, metaphors tend to appear when ideas collide.
In Writing Better Lyrics, author Pat Pattison writes, “In it’s basic form metaphor is a collision between ideas that don’t belong together.”
When we slow down the collisions we begin to understand the metaphor universe. Pattision says there are three kinds of metaphors. Let’s take a close look at expressed identity, which asserts an identity between two nouns. Three forms of expressed identity exist:
“x is y” (fear is a shadow)
“the y of x” (the shadow of fear)
“x’s y” (fear’s shadow)
Most of us have the creative spark to make metaphors, we just need to train and direct our energy properly. One way to find metaphors is by asking two questions:
1. What characteristics does my idea have?
2. What else has those characteristics.
After you understand how metaphors are formed, you will find it easier to compose metaphors. If songwriters use metaphor to communicate an idea within three minutes, perhaps bloggers can use metaphor to speed the collision of ideas.
Are there other ways to improve the blogshere? Surely, if we added just one or two managers to the blogging process, productivity would accelerate. Management would know which ideas to combine and which ideas are silly.
Management and blogging: An idea fuel as potent as gasoline and water.
Of course, blogs work because there is no management. Blogging software sits atop a peer-to-peer structure (the Internet) that parallels the organic organizational model.
Blogs allow us to escape command-and-control structures and stifling authoritarian models.
Whats more, I believe small companies benefit from blogs and the generation of new ideas at a faster pace than larger companies. Why? Less management.
I recently talked to an executive coach who told me that 90 percent of the jobs in New York City come from companies with 50 or fewer employees. I don’t know if these companies are using blogs to grow their business, however, I feel certain they are taking business ideas and moving with a speed and energy that engage customers.
With all the empower-the-employee management theories, I find it interesting that technology, in the form of blogging software, has the ability to circumvent management structures and holdfast thinking. And it’s holdfast thinking that short circuits many of the theories that align with business reality and its immutable laws.
In fact, I believe there’s this invisible, imperceptible space between two ideas just before they collide, that even a manager cannot fit into and destroy. The name of this space?
Higgs blog.
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