A common thing about thoughtful people is something I’d call “weak opinions, strongly held” (more on that choice of words in a second).
Also known as choice paralysis, it keeps us from making decisions, because we keep thinking about our options, and cannot decide which one is the right one.
I call it “weak opinions”, because we’re not sure, maybe they’re right, maybe not, who knows? But we hold on to them strongly, because, well, maybe they’re right. But they are contradicting each other, and at least some of them must be wrong, but which ones?
So, we hold on to our conflicting opinions, because we might be right, but we don’t take action on them, because we might be wrong.
We’re holding ourselves in a death grip of indecision, because we’re afraid we might choose the wrong option.
Here’s the counterpoint: Strong opinions, weakly held.
Coined by Paul Saffo, it’s the concept of forming a strong opinion about something rather quickly. Strong enough to allow you to take action. You truly and thoroughly believe that what you think is true, and you can follow through on that opinion.
But you hold it weakly. If your opinion turns out to be wrong, you adapt it:
"Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the “strong opinion” part. Then –and this is the “weakly held” part– prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit, or indicators that pointing in an entirely different direction. Eventually your intuition will kick in and a new hypothesis will emerge out of the rubble, ready to be ruthlessly torn apart once again. You will be surprised by how quickly the sequence of faulty forecasts will deliver you to a useful result.”
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“The books will stop working”
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It’s July 2019, and Microsoft is shutting down its eBooks service.
As a result, all its eBooks, protected by Digital Rights Management, will stop working.
It’s funny that something like a book can “work”, or “stop working” in the first place.
Users will be refunded, but this is not business as usual. It is a stark reminder about how digital services might look like buying, but actually are just renting. This is mighty fine and often cheaper than buying (for example, if you want to watch a movie just one time), but the distinction is important, and sometimes blurred by those services.
So, whenever something happens to your service provider, it also happens to the service you are relying on. That’s nothing new. What is new is that we rely on services in areas that previously were about property and ownership.
Sometimes, the service provider shuts down, like Microsoft Books. Sometimes, the service provider changes their business model, like photobucket. A once free image hoster suddenly charged a 400 dollar fee for serving your images to the public.
The lesson learned here is that ownership in the sense of total control does not transfer to the cloud age.
A book, once bought, is yours. You can do with it whatever you want, regardless of what happens to its publisher. Short of the state, no-one can tell you what to do with it.
With digital content, that is radically different. In theory, Amazon could control when you read your kindle ebooks. Or it could remotely remove books from your device, as it once famously did with George Orwell’s 1984 (of all books …).
Content you buy at the Kindle store, Spotify, Amazon Video, etc. does not entitle you to ownership. It only allows you to consume the content in ways defined by the contract between you and the service provider.
Once that contract is terminated, your rights are gone.
As an avid Spotify and Kindle user, I’m not going totally paranoid on this, but it is something to keep in mind: If you’re using cloud services for anything, you’re not in total control of your data.
And right in the vein of the google cemetery, here’s an impressive list of discontinued sites and services.
or, if you want to dig into more detail, have a look at this category over at wikipedia.
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A narrowly avoided desaster
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Jessica Hische has a nice take on strong opinions that can change rather abruptly. Her anti-invatations for cancelled weddings are at least as fancy as the real ones.
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That’s the sound the similarly called musical instrument makes, right? Like, when you hit it with a stick, which is what you do when you play it, right?
Like, hit - ‘goooooooooooooooong’ wait hit - ‘gooooooooooooooong’ until dinner is served or something.
Oh boy, how wrong was I about gongs.
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Can you high-five a gong? Asking for a friend. 🤓
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