Variety, the colors of an active market

by Richard Reeve on October 22, 2008

in AziMuth

@CCSeed

The beauty of the market was driven home to me walking beneath these scarves while walking down Canal Street in Manhattan on my way to Pearl Paint Art Supply.  Storefronts of fabrics, electronic, teas and plastics spill onto the sidewalks on both sides of this busy thoroughfare.  Chinese and Spanish words weave with English throughout the many transactions.  My thoughts tend to drift to the use of social media marketplace when I am emersed in sensory overload these days, and walking down Canal Street I realized that my eyes where drawn to very different things than every other person walking down the street with me.  And that’s OK.  That’s how it works.  It’s the variety that provides the wealth of experience even though not evey item is my cup of tea.

My takeaway: it’s not neccesary to remove each and every item from ones information stream because it’s not immediatly relevant.  If real estate deals in Florida do not interest me, perhaps I’ll pick up an unexpected insight from a post further down the street.  How do you sort through the data flood?  Are you learning to swim or fighting to get back on dry land?


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  • lfamous
    I scan. Not much different than picking up a paper and glancing at the photos and leads to get a snapshot of what's happening. I think the key is picking which sources you check every day, and which ones you check sometimes...like the daily paper you subscribe to, the weekly news magazine, the monthly hobby magazine, and the others you just glance at while you're waiting at the doctor's office, mail salon or grocery checkout.
  • As I twittered in reply to your tweet, the ability to filter really does produce the possibility of building a social setting that is entirely consonant / resonant with one's own world view ... homogenous ... so much so "difference" becomes equivalent to "unpleasant" and eventually "in error" ... a form of xenophobia.

    But to wrangle "flood" for a sec ... and here's how that tendency comes into play ... I think we can throttle quantity without reducing variety. For e.g. I'm a leftie; if I can find someone who's genuinely conservative but not paradigmatic knuckle dragger, that person is likely to stay in my stream.
    I'm trying to recall a quote ... I think from Locke ... "Who knows only his side of an argument knows little of that." Pretty close.

    I like to follow what resonates with me and then uhhh check the branches, the outlying aspects to find something that isn't so obviously in tune. Last thing I want to see when I look out into the world is a mirror! That's just too much like #matrix.

    --ben
  • Since my office is in this very part of Canal I can attest to this apt analogy. Treating the data stream as window shopping. Diving in only where something really resonates. Saving yourself the time and annoyance of barkers or worthless merchandise.
  • Data flood is an interesting twist on information overload, is it not? Finding common ground realistic to your goals is surely the watch word that must drive us. Without being informed we lose out on the world view. By spending too much time on sites not relevant to our immediate needs, we lose out on our own efforts. It is a fine line, methinks, and one that requires some discipline. Thanks for sharing...

    Alden Smith~
  • The data flood. Tell me about it! But it is us who choose to expose ourselves, at least in how we use the internet. I see your point though. The flood of interesting people, sites and information is virtually endless, and even 'irrelevant' stuff can lead to interesting avenues.

    In the end I think it comes down to "What do I need to know, what do I want to know, and who, and why." Without a little discipline it's easy to get lost in 'the next interesting thing'.
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