Taking words out of context and thereby thinking outside of the box

Keywords: media , advertising , brand , branding , brands , government , irrational media , law , propaganda , rational media , trademark , trademark law , trademarks , word , words

Whenever we say something we are in essence re-contextualizing the words we use in order to express our own expression. Words have been used since time immemorial. Ben Franklin had a self-imposed guide-rule to imitate Jesus and Socrates. Similarly, I wish to imitate Shakespeare insofar as I am time and again prone to invent new words, and perhaps I am also prone to use someone’s words and to transport them into different contexts. I do not wish to thereby alienate their meaning, but rather to consider whether their meaning also has implications outside of the contextual box they were originally “thought up” in.

Case in point: a statement Joe Rogan recently made about a more-or-less specific, contained topic — yet which was also embedded in a lengthy discussion about changes apparently currently occurring in the so-called “media” landscape [1]:

“It’s just control — and you can’t allow that kind of control to be in the hands of any government body … where, because of the words out of your mouth, they can now put you in a cage.” [“That’s really crazy — and it’s dangerous!” https://podcasts.video.blog/2024/12/05/thats-really-crazy-and-its-dangerous ]

In my humble opinion, every utterance (or communication) created by anyone needs to be interpreted from at least two contextual perspectives:

  1. the language that utterance / communication is expressed in [2]
  2. The legal environment that utterance / communication exists in [3]

One example which is often viewed as a hallmark event which has separated modern history from previous eras is Martin Luther’s nailing the so-called “95 Theses” to a (Roman Catholic) church door in Germany. In order to interpret this document, we must consider not only the language in which its expression was written but also the legal environment in which it was expressed. This act (commonly attributed to Martin Luther alone) is usually interpreted as the seminal act that set off the Protestant Reformation and thereby sparked numerous revolutions not only throughout Europe but indeed globally for centuries to come.

One such revolution was the so-called “American Revolution”, which happened well over two centuries later — and in a different legal environment — namely one in which the aforementioned Ben Franklin published Tom Paine’s “Common Sense” pamphlet, in which Mr. Paine argued that “In America, law is king”.

In the meantime, the world has become immensely more complex, and the notion of “Natural Law” which existed in Revolutionary America is now a quaint and antiquated relic of an entirely different legal environment than the legal environments which exist worldwide today. Today’s legal environments are immensely more diverse and multifaceted, they overlap in layers upon layers of legalese, such that the entire global legal environment is neither completely intelligible nor individually fathomable for any mere mortal human being (I even doubt that one lifetime would suffice to even read all of the relevant legal documents anywhere, let alone to begin to grok them).

What the world needs most of all now (again: in my humble opinion) is to simplify. Our new millennium ought to become an era of stepping back from legal documentation, and moving forward to interpersonal understanding. Now, more than ever, we need to look each other in the eyes and work towards mutual understanding.

Lastly (for now — and yet again in my humble opinion) this pretty long plea is probably much easier said than done. Yet even the longest and most difficult trip begins with taking the first step … and I have a hunch that first step may very well have something to do with us engaging in a collaborative attempt to subscribe to each other’s views, with not giving up and instead remaining steadfast, persistent, engaged and diligently working towards the intermediate goals we choose to focus on in order to help us achieve our dreams of lasting success.

[1] For more discussion about this topic, consider also “NoAgenda 1716” [starting @ 39:00 “I always admire people like this who can look at something and immediately see things nobody else can see.” https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1716?t=39:00 ]
[2] See e.g. Indigenous News — e.g. “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ]
[3] For example: natural language deserves special consideration, insofar as it is the medium in which “free speech” is particularly concentrated. For more about this, see also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
Feature image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense

When creating content for my job, I consider how it can mutually benefit our audience as well as our brand

Keywords: {0}

I try to curate this content for specific types of audiences with specific demographics and psychographics. If I can identify the traits, interests, and buying habits of my audience, I am able to create content that is specifically targeted towards this audience, thus benefitting them as well as acquiring sales and valued consumers for our brands.

https://katiemonesblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/28/what-content-means-to-mecontent-strategy

When is Advertising Contextual? (ALWAYS)

Some people refer to “contextual advertising” as if that were a special or specific kind of advertising. Yet over the past several weeks [1], I wrote a series of articles which now lead me to the conclusion that all advertising is contextual.

I started writing this series without any particular overarching topic — indeed, what motivated me were several interconnected topics. I am not done with the series yet. Next week I intend to turn towards market forces in the publishing industry.

If you would like to follow this new line of thinking, now seems like a good time to begin with the three installments mentioned. If you want to get more background of the entire “Social Business” project, the “wiki” link provides a quick list of the entire table of contents (to date).

Wishing you a happy & easy summer — whether with or without lazy days, and a funny summer reading list to check out & check off before moseying on down into autumn.

[1] See “A Deep Dive Behind the Editorial Wall“, “Publishing Without Walls” and “With or Without Advertising“

Markets Without Money

Markets without money seems sort of incomprehensible, yet that is what I would like to talk about here and now.

Oddly, just a few days ago I maintained that “I do not live in fantasy land” (see “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1” [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/06/06/social-business-regulation-introduction-socio-biz-rule-1 ] ) … and yet here I am asking you to believe that markets without money are possible.

Back when I was an student of economics, I recall meeting another student — I think perhaps she was from the University of Chicago — who had worked with Professor Becker on the general topic of shadow markets … and so this at one and the same time acknowledges that even way back when — in the stone ages? — there was such a thing, a concept (if you will), about exchanges in “quasi-” markets without money.

Without getting too deep into semantics, I would simply like to point out that our conventional view of the definitions of “market” and “money” are very closely intertwined — and I think that is probably one of the main reasons why the concept of markets without money seems so odd.

Yet there has actually been a very long history of this concept in media — just a couple examples should be more than sufficient to make this case. “Front page news”, “above the fold”, “headlines”, “top 10 results” — need I say more? (wink wink, nudge nudge 😉 )

If I do need to say more, the notion of “screen space” has probably already filled entire volumes of treatises on graphic design, data visualization texts and whatnot more.

If you still don’t get IT, please look up the term “attention economy” (that ought to be a good place to start in case you have been living under a rock for most of your life 😛 ).

Now I am simply going to assume that you are already able to entertain the thought that markets without money do exist (and perhaps such so-called “shadow markets” actually overshadow our traditional concept of money and markets).

When working with information, context is paramount. A statement such as “mix two things” may be a commandment in the context of a religious text, or it may merely be a suggestion in the context of a cookbook. Or just think of the way a message might be completely appropriate in one context versus completely inappropriate in another context. The supply and demand for any particular message may be completely different.

Ideally, there ought to be enough awareness of context so that communications are better suited to their environments. This is what I was referring to when I used the word “fittest” in my question to Matt Mullenweg the other day (see “Matt Mullenweg’s Answer May Have Been Somewhat Misleading” [ https://search.tech.blog/2022/06/08/matt-mullenwegs-answer-may-have-been-somewhat-misleading ] ).

I think maybe Matt misunderstood my question about marketplaces — it seems that his answer was mostly about marketplaces with money, and hardly at all about marketplaces without money.

For more background on my thinking about the relationship between money and language, please see “In What We Trust” [ http://remediary.com/2021/02/11/in-what-we-trust ].

If you boil it down, it is about the future of capitalism — I like big, huge, scary topics like that (it comes out of my fascination for how [a business] balances customers and employees against the business [financial] goals that it has to meet)

Keywords: business , Charlene Li , Bob Buday , lead , leading , leader , leaders , leadership , technology , people , research , brand , brands , branding , media

How do you put them into context and understand them from a leadership perspective? How do you make the trade-offs?

https://podcasts.video.blog/2022/01/06/charlene-lis-focus-in-the-last-few-years-has-been-on-how-leaders-must-deal-with-social-media-and-other-digital-technologies-that-force-them-to-be-more-transparent-externally-and-internally [13:30 – 14:31]