Comments on: Shift Happens, I guess.

By: Wilson Lively

Wilson Lively — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:06:12 +0000

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By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:53:53 +0000

I think I said that people *think* about facts?

I appreciate the comment. I wish this wasn’t my most popular entry, but hey… whatever the people like!

- J

By: Craig Brown

Craig Brown — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 11:13:57 +0000

Josh, did you say people make decisions based on facts?

Some people mke some decisions based on facts. Most people make them on emotions, hence this and similar presentations effect and popularity.

Cheers for the rant though. God to see some critical analysis on a blog

By: Cornelius

Cornelius — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 17:46:24 +0000

First I thought, this presentation is absolute nonsense. I’d rather liked to see how these countries will deal with the political, social and environmental consequences they are facing. But then I remembered the skull on the first slide ‘shifthappens’- brilliant!

By: Maarten

Maarten — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 09:39:55 +0000

Thank you Josh for putting the ‘facts’ into perspective. The presentation meant something to me, though. The ‘feeling’ I get is of many colleages and employees I’ve met during my work in several companies. Many people (here in Holland) are used to a lifetime employment, instead of lifetime employability. Thus not quite able to deal with any kind of shift. The presentation shows how important it is to look outside in see what’s happening and about being adaptive. Off course this is something else than uncrittically watching a ppt. presentation and regard it as a new Al Gore film.

By: k.a.anand

k.a.anand — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 11:23:27 +0000

hi josh,
you make very good points here…another thing which comes to mind is ppl can be made to ‘believe’ anything as long as one uses their insecurities….fear sells as much as excitement.

cheers
kaa

By: Josh

Josh — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:33:26 +0000

People FEEL about propaganda. They THINK about facts, and then they form OPINIONS or draw logical conclusions from those facts. "Shift Happens" is not factual.

I responded to this because someone at a company my buddy works at actually used this presentation to argue for a higher IT budget. Their budget was already high. The money needed to go to other programs, but the other programs did not have propaganda.

And I am perturbed by the "An Inconvienent Truth" approach to stirring movement towards progress. Let's tell facts. Let's understand. Let's not be misleading and present things in a way other than they are. Our government did this with Iraq. It is a bad idea, in general, and I take tremendous issue with it when the subject matter means something to me, personally.

And this took all of 45 minutes to type up (the blog entry). It was by no means labor-intensive. I also do not equate this presentation with art. It is as much art as my last bowel movement.

Josh Milane
Director, MIT Technical - Boston.

By: j

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 16:36:58 +0000

Ok, we get it….you don’t get it

By: kat

kat — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:16:41 +0000

I’d like to think that the author’s intention was to stimulate discussion (which the presentation has been VERY successful at doing) in a very artistic way.
We could mathematically analyze the frequency and pitch of each note of every top 20 hit that plays on the radio and use that information to write a top 20 hit but we’d be missing at least one key ingredient- creativity.
Whether people believe each slide as factual, or not, may not be the only point.
“How do people FEEL about the presentation?”
Apparently it impacted Josh enough so he spent a LOT of time thinking about it.
My understanding is that a high school teacher wrote the original ppt?
If I were his student, this is the stimulating kind of teacher I’d like to have an intelligent discussion with about education and my future…as opposed to the one who simply assigned the next Chapter.
Whatever changes lie ahead, preparing students for change (and how to think in depth) is critical.

By: Stephan Meyn

Stephan Meyn — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:17:14 +0000

hmmm, I thought the whole thing was a clever satire on those “documentaries” on cable tv