Comments on: Account planners and fearless noticing

By: Henry Chilcott

Henry Chilcott — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:27:02 +0000

From my understanding, stimming is a repetitive subconscious behaviour - a kind of subconscious self stimulation.
Noticing is a subconscious stimulation - the thousands of things we observe every day enter our heads and settle like silt in our brains. I like the idea of turning this on - conscious stimming. My blog: http://henrychilcott.typepad.com/ is all about noticing - but then so are all blogs in their way. But blogging in the traditional sense isn't conscious stimming - for it's a product of thought triggered by observation. Stimming needs to be more spontaneous. To that end I've just started using twitter for what I call micro-noticing - a record of small things I notice and observe. So perhaps micro-noticing could be the new stimming.

By: Claudia Mendez

Claudia Mendez — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:16:25 +0000

Dr. McCracken,
Being an anthropologist is learning to observe and not to watch the obvious. Here in Colombia, different private organizations are beginning to value anthropological research. I work in Sancho-BBDO doing anthropological research, but I want to pursue further studies in Consumer Research to improve the knowledge we colombian anthropologists have about this issue. I believe that it is very important to combine academic and applied athropology.
I wanted to ask you if you perhaps know of a university that may be interested in my profile.
Thank you very much.
Kind regards

By: Adrian Lai

Adrian Lai — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 03:42:56 +0000

Hey Grant,

I was at a presentation last week given by Genevieve Bell, Cultural Anthropologist at Intel. She's made some very interesting observations of technology usage around the world. Definitely a "Fearless noticer" of the corporate world. Will put up a post soon...Cheers.

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:52:59 +0000

"But I think at its most rudimentary stimming is a call for feedback. Banging a drum proves the existence of the drum and the drummer."

As one who stims, stimming is more akin to self placation than anything else. One, when stimming and by diagnositic definition, is not seeking recognition, the activity is a self comforting mechanism (the autistic is happiest if you go on your merry way leaving them to their own devices whilst they calm down). I'd argue Corporate America doesn't stim, autistically insular as they may *appear* to be. There is a clear line between the autistic and the narcissistic. The drum beats of Corporate America, resonating in their echo chambers *is* a (pathetic) call to recognition, a sign of corporate narcissism.

By: jens

jens — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 13:18:50 +0000

"fearless noticers and noticing" – plus you need the ceo to be a fearless leader – plus you need a sharp process to facilitate between linear and non-linear corporate processes.
and that's it then.

c-school, noticing-school, see-school…
i personally find nothing as intriguing as walking through fairs of contemporary art.
if it is an important fair you have the world's best gallerists showing the hottest and most upcoming art to their audience – "the future is about this! blelieve me."
there is so much information – and most of it is 'irritation' (or it has been 'irritation' at some point as 'irritation' is the rhetoric of modern art)… – you browse through the fair, you soak up so much data and most of it – or the most relevant of it – does not make sense to you… – you keep it in mind, stored somewhere – where ever – and sometime later it might come u again – and hey: a puzzle fits!

irritation is always good – as i say. – (and steve portigal said something similar here once).
still – it is not always easy to follow that lead.
when garnt was writing on 'cloudiness' previously, did i like that? – no. – it actually irritated me to no end – "what are you smoking over there, mc cracken?" – turned out once it settled that i could very well relate to and make use of grant's thoughts.