There's this really brilliant article I came across. Apparently it was prepared a few days ago but I just read it now. Chalk it up to my quirks — Josh Wolfe, who steers the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, wrote so many things I relate to about choices and decision-making in one concise article. It's not obviously related to nanotech, on the surface level anyway, but it rings true through us as creatures of flesh, bone, blood, and bzzts of electricity (and then some!).

On a personal level is the part where he says,

Every time I go to a diner, I order the exact same thing Why? The choice is overwhelming. I get hungry. I give up. I give in. I get a grilled cheese.

LOLEX. Reminds me of my recent entry, and takes me back to my youth. As much as I desire variety and diversity and all that good stuff, I have my favorites that I'm content to eat day after day. That's the methodological part of me that craves routine, which is easily summed up as an autistic stereotype. A definite, inherent contradiction within myself.

Wolfe goes on to cite anumber (not "a number")?of sleek anecotes which all find their way in comfortably. And by golly, it really has resonance with me:

When given less choice, 10 times more people bought and they felt more confident about their choice.

Too many options are confuzzling, especially when the majority of those options don't appeal to one in the first place! For instance, if I was given a selection of a dozen books to read along with their summaries for prejudging, and found that absolutely none of them appealed to me, it would only serve to bewilder and frustrate me. On the other hand, with a baker's dozen of books heuristically calculated beforehand to match my whims using some uberAmazon tastemaking tech, I'd also be lost deciding WHICH DAMN ONE TO READ FIRST! Can't quite flip a coin, although a D13 dice might work.

There are certain things which were alien to me which I've become accustomed to, and I can latch onto them with trust. As unhealthy as McDonald's can be (and I do enjoy a good Filet-O-Fish), my dear Grandma (hailing from Thailand) remarked upon a visit here sometime ago that the golden arches are like safe harbor, because when you're under them, you know you're in familiar territory. Tru dat.

For many, it seems like if they've gotten used to products and the loyalty to a brand name over an extended period of time, it's not easy to throw them into the deep waters of adapting to something shocking! It's kind of like a WWII ace fighter pilot suddenly out of his element when he notices his P-51 Mustang replaced with the neurotactical controls of an extraterrestrial's stellarama.

Likewise, something I've been thinking about: abandoning usability metaphors, like the "computer interface is a desktop". Ever since 1984 wasn't like 1984, mice have become ubiquitous and we wouldn't get anywhere without thinking of files and folders. Whatever happened to all that hubbub of the "paperless office"? Collapsed, that's what. You can't just jump to Train Station B without a smooth ride from A. FAR more practical and likely would be realizing future advances such as smart paper, which is really a metametaphor.

I mean, wouldn't it be such a wild trip to have a single, scrunchable sheet that literally holds… your whole office?

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