15 Minutes (of Fame or Failure)

One significant difference between humans and machines is that whereas machines need not cope with the “real” world (e.g. “bugs”), humans indeed do need to cope with whatever happens.

I experienced this recently when a “bug” in one of my healthcare providers’ system (of machines) caused a failure in the information I received, leading to many more failures throughout the healthcare industrial complex … and I still have to deal with the repercussions, even though I have already spent hours on the telephone (just in order to establish the correct facts). All in all, I expect that solving these problems will require at least a full working day (if not even more).

I also expect that my laments are not exactly unique but rather quite commonplace. Every now and then I hear them. Actually time and again. Maybe even “nearly all the time”.

One thing many people have probably also heard before is that famous quote by Andy Warhol regarding “15 minutes of fame”. I find this concept of 15 minutes is fairly simple. Simplicity can be a very good thing, and I want to focus on this notion of “15 minutes” as a construct that is easy to grasp, easy to use, and also easy to successfully build upon.

I guess Mr. Warhol was sort of an expert in commonplace things — maybe they even call them “commonplaces“? In contrast, my own work focuses on extraordinary skills — extraordinarily high levels of literacy and publicacy (see “Literacy & Publicacy” and “What is Publicacy + Why does it Matter?“). I fully realize that my work is intended to help and support mainly some of the most highly skilled people on the planet.

At the same time, I am also concerned about the “Rest of the World” kind of people — people with less advanced skills. [1] I wonder what might motivate a relatively unskilled person to make such a substantial investment in themselves — especially since it would probably require a significant amount of time and effort before achieving a justifying “return on investment”?

This week, I may have found a small piece of an answer to that question:

“You will get through these 15 Minutes, and the next 15 minutes after that.”

Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk Memorial Service (relaying the message given to her by Usha Vance)

This type of logic is apparently also commonly used in groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. When we face a formidable challenge, it is easier to overcome what seems like a large hurdle by simply taking one step (or perhaps just one small leap) at a time. Likewise, it is also helpful to recognize our own character, convictions and similar traits in the first place — in order to realize our own limitations and to work on ourselves (and to invest the time and effort required to improve our own capabilities) accordingly.

People who have little knowledge or interest in acquiring literacy and publicacy skills seem (to me) to be oblivious about their own “sucker” behavior. [2] Fortunately, there are more and more people (besides just me) drawing more and more attention to the dangers of falling for propaganda. Yet as long as the most powerful corporations and governments continue to manipulate the masses, the prospect of an enlightened “critical mass” of people resisting or rejecting manipulative powers — in one fell swoop — remains dim. Therefore, I continue to work towards enlightening more and more people, such that these people become more and more aware that they need to work on their own skills in order to become more and more liberated from manipulation and propaganda through self-enlightenment.

No one needs to give up irrational media overnight. People can simply test the waters step by step — and I expect that the rational media space will continue to grow as more and more people come to realize that irrational media are unreliable compared to vastly more reliable rational media sites. [3]

In the long run, I expect that as people become more and more comfortable with developing more and more of their own literacy and publicacy skills, they will also become increasingly rewarded by expanding the linguistic communities they participate in size, intensity, depth and so on.

[1] Note that I am rather skeptical about the so-called “digital divide” story — which posits that literacy (and publicacy) and similar skills depend in large part on the influence of national governments (and the corresponding levels of national economic development). My experience is rather that people everywhere are able to acquire skills, if only their own interest in acquiring such skills is strong enough. Although I wrote a little bit about the “Rest of the World” concept last week (see “It should be a wake-up call for everybody“), I think I will also write more about it next week.

[2] I have written extensively about suckers right here on this blog. See especially “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” and also other articles linked with the “sucker” and/or “suckers” tags.

[3] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]