ETL to QE, Update 25, Research is one thing a usable product is quite another
Product, product, product.... what exactly is product. The only way you can make money is by solving problems for other people. Many people trying to develop a product make up a hypothetical person and try solving their problems rather than getting to know real tangible people. Everything is about relationships at the end of the day.
Ender Wiggin of Ender's Game had competitive empathy. They were able to see inside the mind of an alien intelligence and converse using the tools of war.
Ghost writers like Michael Malice are able to not only speak the voice they are writing for but often times are able to articulate the essence of someone else's identity better than they can.
The sign of a great debater is when they can win against opponents no matter what side of an issue or proposition they are on.
Great technologists like Steve Jobs knew inside that people did not know what they wanted and needed to be told what they want. "People don't know what they want until you show it to them." As a designer you must also anticipate a users needs before they realize they have them.
Noam Chomsky helped coin the term Manufacture Consent. At the end of the day consent is all about memes. Consent is all about seduction The Culture Series style. Just provide people what they want. Good propaganda or psyop is never labeled propaganda or psyop it is just strokes of genius or just how nature flows.
I have come across a class of people that describe themselves as generalists. These are people of competence and understanding. They are the ones bought onto failing projects, recursively ask the simple questions, gets the important information, make the decisions that need to be made, then make a different in the world. This is the type of person I want to become. I want the structure of the world to break down before my eyes like it did for Michael Scofield.
There are "laws" to people just like there are "laws" of nature. The thing is there is a little nuance behind the nature of laws. They are erected within human society, broken, changed, appended, and repealed. Plus the society that created them tend not to last forever. Nevertheless there are still "laws" that regulate how humans operate, communicate, and work together.
Goals are what make life worth living, well specifically The Power Process which involves, goal, effort, autonomy, and attainment of goal. Another phrase for this concept is Motivation or Drive. Goals give up motivation. Motivation is driven by Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. Then there is Nietzsche's Will to Power which boils down to "What MOVES us... requires power. One might go as far to say that the human that seeks absolutely no power does not deserve the right to exist. Or in other words, One must insist on their right to exist.
Power in its most fundamental form, physics, is the movement of matter from one place to another. Actually that is not right. Power is just energy spent per unit of time. "Work" is the result of power, moving matter from one place to another. Power is continuous while work is discrete. Power is living in the moment, aware of the past and future, work is like save points in a video game. Every decision you make can increase or decrease your energy output in the future (power). Here is another way I want to view it, a Movie is the result of work, the process of creating that move.... that is power.
Power, Work, and Energy can't exist without a coordinate system. Our world has many different types of coordinate systems. There is of course our GPS coordinates, then there is the money we have, then the system of acquiring chemical energy, eating which belongs in the "science" coordinate system, then there is social status which is made up of fashion, experiences, knowledge, and personality type, then there is bureaucracy within our corporations, religions, and governments, then of course there is the entire field of mimetics as exemplified in the latest LLM software out there. So many different systems for Humans to navigate through at the same time. But how is one supposed to articulate where within these coordinate systems they desire to be, what "work" they want to do, or in other words, where are they to apply their energy, what is the path to power.
Coordinate systems tend to lead to the creation of maps. There are so many kinds of traditional maps of the physical world, Elevation, Geologic, Vegetation, Road, Land Use, Population Density, Climate, Seismic Hazard, Historical and so many more. There exists more than just the physical world these days... there is cyber space. Cyberspace has its own maps including, network ontologies, the semantic web, social networks, DNS, Cloud Infrastructure, Malware Distribution, Internet Traffic, censorship and more. Then of course there is the synthesis of these maps when it comes to ARGs, GIS, Internet Backbone, and the Internet of Things. Maps upon maps upon maps upon maps.... it can get pretty confusing and overwhelming sometimes. Especially considering we haven't even touched the financial, scientific, or mimetic coordinate systems.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Or so the phrase goes from The Shining. I like to think that "life" is a specific kind of game. It is the type of game you have to take fairly seriously. Losing, death, means game over forever. Games are thought of as fun but the lives most of us live aren't fun they are a chore. When was the last time you were excited to be you? Are you actually the master of your own destiny?
So at the end of the day what are all these discreet sets of memes good for? The unifying concept connecting them all is "perspective". You can view yourself as an ant in a colony void of agency or as the butterfly that eventually causes a tornado with the flap of its wing. The choice is yours.