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In the January 18, 2010 edition of Newsweek, there was a great piece entitled “Your Online Brain.” It’s well worth the read as it focuses on the different theories about the Web’s impact on how we think.

The last paragraph really caught my attention as I had just participated in a creativity session last week.

“Science historian George Dyson believes the Internet’s flood of information has altered the process of creativity: what once required ‘collecting all available fragments of information to assemble a framework of knowledge’ now requires ‘removing or ignoring unnecessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.’ Creativity by destruction rather than assembly.”

The image I got from this was of “sculpting knowledge.” As a qualitative researcher, identifying consumer insights has always been about sculpting knowledge.

What does this have to do with my brain online? Well, my brain has been overwhelmed lately. I had some downtime over the holidays and I signed up for even more newsletters and feeds. I now need to cut back. I need time to think. The Internet is causing, as Evgeny Morozov said in the same article, “the disappearance of retrospection and reminiscence.”

It’s like a swimmer’s lung capacity: a swimmer might be able to hold their breath for a long time, but they still have to come up for air. I need a breath – to sculpt, process, digest – whatever your metaphor.

So is the Web changing how I think? No, at best it’s impacting how I problem solve (as I’m able to seek out so much more information in this new way). It provides me with more to think about.

Creativity is an iterative, infinite process: from inspiration to output and back again. It’s likely we’ve always been “assembling” and “destroying.” Said another way, when we seek the “knowledge hidden within,” it’s always through the prism of our “framework of knowledge.”

What are your thoughts?

Before Malcolm Gladwell, there was, among others, John Naisbett.  Naisbett’s Megatrends was a must read.  My favorite was the “High Tech/High Touch” trend.  His theory was that the more technology impacted our lives, the more we would strive to find balance with human interaction.  We are social creatures, after all.

High tech/high touch has been going on with humans since the advent of technology.  My view is that this is a three-step adoption/integration process.

Take the wheel.  Great new technology.  Took awhile to figure out how to use it (Mastery).  First used it for work (Utility).  When it became easier to make wheels (and more “cost effective”), someone probably thought “let’s hook up a mule and go visit some friends”  (Social Usage).

Or the pen, after paper became plentiful (costs had come down).   Mastery again came first (practice for legibility), utility came second (use for business or lessons), and social usage came third (write a letter to a friend).  High tech to high touch.

Social usage is often linked to lowered costs and a distribution system or infrastructure that’s in place.  Take the telephone.  Initially, it could only be mastered by a few as distribution was more limited.  When the infrastructure was built, bringing phones into homes, costs were still high, and usage was more local and limited – but business usage soared.  Over time, and as people moved further apart,  the telephone allowed people to “visit” without making a trip; they could do so more often and without the time and expense of a real trip.  High tech to high touch.

Name your technology and it follows this basic  mastery-utility-social usage adoption process, if the infrastructure is in place.

Video games:  learn the rules –> a fun way to spend free time –> play with others online

iPod:  learn how to use it –> build library –> share tunes with others

So social media networks are the logical manifestation of becoming comfortable with the Internet and cell phones and the other technologies of today.  We’re comfortable now, so we’re socializing them.  Facebook makes it visual.  Twitter makes it fast.

I wonder what’s next!

Last month, Brian Powell blogged in Ad Age about cause marketing.  This isn’t a field I’m familiar with, but we’ve all heard the news that charitable giving is down due to the recession and I thought there might be some interesting innovations coming from this discipline.

Brian’s main point was that “cause marketing should be ideas with business and social impact.”  He believes this discipline is so important it will eventually be fully integrated into a company’s overall marketing efforts.

Just a couple of days ago, I looked into the SocialVibe widget that’s available on many of the social networking sites, such as Facebook.  It’s simple:  pick a charity from their list, pick a sponsor (aka advertiser), place the “badge” on your social network or blog site, and earn charitable donation points.  In other words, if I can drive traffic to one of my sites, and people click on my badge, my charity gets a donation.  The catch?  Every visitor who clicks the badge sees a short ad or request by the sponsor (e.g., rate an ad, pick a baseball card, etc.).

Interactive cause marketing?  A radical new twist on the old customer brand loyalty programs?  Whatever it’s called, I like it.  People can “do good” with the assistance of brands, while brands get attentive watchers of their messages.   In this day of people skipping commercials due to DVR recordings and with print publication readership down, this is really quite inventive.

How is your brand helping customers to “do good”?

I just finished listening to a webcast entitled “From Brainstorm to Firestorm:  Creating an Environment for Viral Marketing Success” hosted by SmartBrief and moderated by one of my favorites, Guy Kawasaki.

In Guy’s opening take, he stated the obvious:  you get more followers with any social media tool by being more interesting; and you’re more interesting by providing interesting links and information.  The three tools he uses are Objective Marketer (for email campaigns), TwitterFeed, and TwitterHawk.  Another tool, TweetMeme, he felt to be the single most powerful way to get followers.

Andy Sernovitz had a slightly different perspective.  He felt that allowing people to participate and share however was best for them was the key.  Rather than TweetMeme, he would go the ShareThis approach where people could “share the love” for you/your brand in whichever they wanted.

Stacey Kane of California Tortilla (voted best burrito in D.C.) said they leveraged their TacoTalk email newsletter into effective Twitter campaigns to drive store traffic.  One example:  providing a “secret password” on Twitter for a free taco in-unit; conversion rates were much higher than when the same thing was done via newsletter.

Brendan Hart with National Geographic talked about the importance of connecting with the brand.  For instance, on Twitter, they’ve invited people to solve a puzzle of Mount Everest at their website; as someone improves upon the time, NatGeo posts that result on Twitter, keeping it fun and interactive.  On their website, people can post photos they’ve taken and a couple are selected for inclusion in each issue of the print magazine.  Involvement on all fronts.

Stephanie Miller of ReturnPath summarized things this way: Use Twitter when brevity over clarity is desirable, email when content is king, and Facebook when a brand wants to be more engaging.  She gave an example of Oreo, which has 1.3 million fans on Facebook and where nothing has been posted since early March vs. Coca Cola, with 3.4 million fans, who seem to be so engaged that every few minutes one of its fans is posting something.  Do people love Coke more than Oreo?  I’m not sure.  But what’s clear is that Facebook is more important to Coke and its fans know that.  In short, she said whatever social media we use, we must commit the time and resources.

As with any form of marketing, no matter the way in which we connect with our consumers, we must be channel appropriate and engaging.

Your thoughts?

When I got my new Kindle, I started to realize how much Amazon has been lagging behind in its merchandising efforts.  When Amazon first came to market with its ability to recommend books based on past purchasing patterns and/or interests, that was a real step forward in online merchandising.

But think about it: while Amazon has broadened its scope on what it sells, have they moved to “Merchandising 2.0″or beyond?  In my view, they are no longer leading.

Just for starters, why can’t I…

View the “back of the book”?  I want to read the book description (better than the publisher’s version), see which authors/publications have written a blurb on the book recommending it, and read the author bio.

Be notified when an author I like is going to publish a new book?  Even on the Amazon site itself, one doesn’t have this feature.

See all the books that the magazines are touting as great reads for the month?  Real Simple had a summer book section in its June issue.  When I read it in May, nearly 3/4 of all their recommended new books weren’t available on Amazon.  This happens to me a lot.  If a magazine or publication is going to help sell books through recommendations, shouldn’t Amazon be savvy enough to take advantage of it?