Potential != Reality

I think technologists like myself sometimes get confused between something that is potential, versus something that is real.

Small (well not small…) example:

With this personal blog I have the *potential* of reaching anyone – across the entire world – with an Internet connection.

That’s amazing when you think about it for more than a split second.

It’s easy to get caught up on that empowering potential and miss the hard realities that define it.

4 thoughts on “Potential != Reality

  1. Every lottery ticket *can* win.

    Virtually none of them *will* win.

    Blog-evangelists deliberately sell people the dream of the former, and deny the reality of the latter.

  2. I get your point about much blog evangelism to be sure.

    But about that word – ‘win’…

    I’m not rich from my blog. However I met you through it (not in person, but I hope someday), and my life is indeed, richer for it.

    An an earlier channel I ran on the Kosovo war led to me getting read by some folks in Russia.

    And I regularly bump into folks, in person, I’ve met through blogging.

    I yearn for a nuanced view to take hold.

    But we humans don’t do nuance too well do we? And we technologists (developers, sys admins, etc), really have a hard time with it. Things either work – or don’t. Are on. Or off. One. Or zero.

  3. It’s not about “nuance”, but bait-and-switch.

    To continue the lottery analogy, that’s like saying, “I didn’t win the jackpot – but I won a few dollars. Isn’t that winning, of a sort?”

    No. Not in the sense conjured up by “reaching anyone – across the entire world”.

    Playing the lottery is a poor way to make money, because for almost everyone, the amount of money they spend will far exceed the amount of money they receive.

    Blogs are similarly a very poor way of gaining the sort of audience under discussion, since they deflect a lot of energy into very unproductive areas. Note what this DOES NOT say – not that it’s impossible for anything to return, but it’s like spending $100 in lottery tickets to win $10 in prizes. That’s a bad deal which is why so much is devoting to not having people examine it.

  4. “Blogs are similarly a very poor way of gaining the sort of audience under discussion, since they deflect a lot of energy into very unproductive areas. Note what this DOES NOT say – not that it’s impossible for anything to return, but it’s like spending $100 in lottery tickets to win $10 in prize”

    I have to return to my comment – it counts upon what your goal is.

    I’ve gotten a great return on investment from my blog. If I was seeking fame and fortune, I might think otherwise, but I’m not.

    I’m seeking my own definition of success.

    There’s a huge difference between ‘reaching anyone’ and ‘reaching everyone’. But that kinda gets glossed over all too often as well.

    I tend to think it is over enthusiasm and a bug in thinking that leads to declarations of utopianism and the ignoring of realities – not deliberate bait and switch (well most of the time… some folks are just trying to sell something).

    But it leads to the same view, a view we both agree is flawed. We simply feel the motivations behind promoting that view are different, I think.

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