Things change… 10 October, 2006
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, My Thoughts.trackback
While I’ve been writing software and making websites for many years, one thing I’ve never had is a blog. It’s obvious that I’m jumping into this scene relatively late, but for me it’s just another reinforcement that things change…
This is particularly so if technology has any sizable part of your life. Just when you think you’ve got it all together. Just when you think things are going well. Just when you think you know exactly where you are heading. Suddenly there’s a curve. Suddenly there’s a hill. Suddenly your clear vision’s obscured. That’s change.
Problem is, we all need to have a role in change. Some people drive change – like the YouTube co-founders that just converted their 20-month old website into a US$1.65B windfall. Some people are early-adopters of change and end up leading a huge band of followers of change. Some people only change as a very last resort – when they absolutely have to. Then unfortunately, some people never change. And we have to live and work with all of these types of people. It’s no wonder true change is so difficult to achieve.
Parallel Divergence is my small tangible effort to facilitate certain aspects of voluntary change with some of those people I come into contact on a more regular basis. By adding your comments, maybe you can help me change as well.
Parallel Divergence 
Stu, great to see your blog up and running. As you know, I see this format as a great way to communicate in certain circumstances. You’ll find that there’s a large number of themes and plugins available for WordPress and I’ve added a plugin which allows people to subscribe their email address to be notified of site updates. I can think of some situations where this is really useful when people have been used to a listserv type of message delivery. I also like the availability of the RSS feed, and could see great value in people using a simple News Aggregator to be kept up to date with blogs and feeds from a number of different sources.
Change is something which seems to leave some people almost dealing with it as though it causes the ‘death’ of what they have come to know. The responses can follow the same cycles of denial, anger etc with some taking a long time to progress to any form of acceptance.
I like your metaphor of ‘parallel divergence’ .. it is a conundrum within itself .. Maybe we are seeing yet another example of the impact of an ‘internet paradigm’ on a social context. That is, we have made a shift away from the linear view of sequential growth and development into a mental model of interconnected mutliple pathways and places, media and messages..maybe, really, in this case: ‘the medium IS the message!”
I hope you get plenty of comments and opportunities to promote dialogue. Anybody reading this should also feel very welcome to drop by to the LIPS blog at http://pryorcommitment.com/lips2
Thanks Roger, I’m certain to be looking into the sorts of things I can add to the blog to make it better.
I like the comparison of change to ‘death’. While we’ve always had ‘spin-doctors’ to portray change in a more positive light, the problem is that there have been too many people that have been burned by false promises. They’ve all become more skeptical and resistant.
We need less selling of change and more actually doing and demonstrating it.
I certainly will be popping by at LIPS.