This Is Not About SOPA

On a day when the interwebs are obsessed with preventing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) from passing the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as it’s pair PIPA in the U.S. Senate, I thought I would provide a SOPA-Free Zone. You can thank me later when this has all blown over, which it eventually will. But before I get some irate comments, yes, I did sign the petition and I agree that these potential laws are egregious, over-stepping, and should be stopped. So there. But I promised a SOPA-Free Zone, so from here on out it will be.

Let’s talk about me instead. For as long as I could remember I’ve had a thing about crowds. I hate them. If I’m in one, I look for a way to escape. If I see one forming I avoid it. And I’m not just talking about in-person crowds — I’m also talking about idea crowds. That is, when a lot of people begin to think one way, I get nervous. I look around for the conceptual exit, for a way to differentiate what I believe from the crowd that surrounds me. Call it a disease, but there it is.

I fully realize that this can get me in trouble. When I was in grade school we once did an experiment where we had to inspect, but not touch, smell, or taste, two piles of white granules. We then needed to decide which pile was salt and which sugar. I looked and decided to stand by one pile. In the beginning I was with a number of my classmates who believed as I did. Over the next several minutes most of them left for the other pile, but I stood my ground, confident in my decision. Was I right? No, I was dead wrong. So can I be stubborn? Yep. Can I be utterly, completely wrong in my convictions? Yep again.

This trait of abhorring crowds and being confident even when alone can manifest itself in other ways. I called for the death of our foundational professional standard long before it was fashionable to do so. I adopted the Internet, and began proselytizing it, long before many of my colleagues had ever used it. And yes, it must be admitted that I spent years developing a metasearch tool only to see it dropped at the point of near-completion — and rightly so.

I guess the point I’m edging to is that crowds are good for some things, such as enabling societal revolutions or preventing governmental mis-steps. But don’t look to a crowd to innovate. For that you need people who are willing to stand out from the crowd, who have the courage of their own convictions and ideas, and who are willing, therefore, to also upon occasion fail spectacularly.