METACODING & CONNECTING

METACODING & CONNECTING

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© January 2008


First of all, I want to wish each and every one of you a Happy, Healthy, and Hallowed New Year with the emphasis on "hallowed."

In our rush to enslave ourselves to things, many of us have gotten lost in technology, which is the narcotic of our age.

It makes other addictions pale by comparison.

Our retreat into electronic gadgets has resulted in our being stuck, staying the same, missing the changes, and leaving the future up for grabs.

It is why I write what I do, and why the past is future to us all.

But enough of moralizing, the purpose of this brief note is to answer a small question that has caused you some concern during this busy season of the year: what is metacoding?

METACODING EXPLAINED

You have received these long lists of "metacodes" from my books; these lists of short phrases titled "metacoding," and wondered what is this all about.

Until recently, I didn't know such a thing existed. I did know that I wasn't getting much traffic on my website, or with books sales.

People in the business of ideas, and others who were booksellers kept telling me, "Your books should be flying off the shelves. Your honesty, directness, clarity, and compassion represent a wake-up call for all of us."

Then they would add, "Let me help you get the word out." Invariably, what followed was predictable. I was advised to get a computer consultant.

Now, computer consultants are in their infancy, know a lot about digital technology or 0 to 1 iterations, but not necessarily much about books or book readers much less ideas in books. They are computer literate while not necessarily being literate in a literary sense if you get my drift.

They are in the business of business making money without necessarily being in the business of promulgating ideas.

They are looking for well-heeled souls who want but don't necessarily need another cellphone or iPod or more fan club memorabilia.

They are by the nature of their calling indifferent to the state of the nation much less the state of the soul as businessmen have been throughout history. What sells rings their bell. It is not their nature to worry about the Pied Piper marching us over the precipice to oblivion. Not their job, but more importantly, it doesn’t sell.

Stated another way, they are the architects of the archipelago of the Internet; the lost world of Atlantis that has suddenly surfaced into our midst as the media of this medium. They are betting on a sure thing when the surest thing is not new ideas.

If this sounds like doublespeak, let me be more precise.

Metacoding is the synapses of the central nervous system of communication in the New Electronic World of the Internet. Without sparks flying from its nerve endings and making connection with that electronic world, ideas go unnoticed, and eventually idea makers burn out.

In my limited world, I have seen this happen repeatedly. Countless writers of ideas far better than I am finally desist from sparking at all. They burn out. On the other hand, I am a Taurus and know no better than to spark to the end regardless of making connection.

This burn out of my friends is sad to report because metacoding could have saved them and their ideas.

That said imagine an idea as a tiny nerve cell expressed in a few letters. To connect with the multi-ganglion of nerve cells (the world), it must explode across “no man’s land,” or this gap in connection to this idea synapse by the chemical message of these words.

So, metacodes, then, are simply connectors. They broadcast these sparks to the ganglion world and bring the idea to life to be shared beyond its creator.

A website that does not develop these connectors is unknown to the world-at-large drifting in a sea of meaningless sparks with no connection in sight. That has been my world.

To make this connection, a metacode alerts the Internet surfer that you are "out there" with some idea of interest and use to them.

Take someone who feels we are stuck, as many do, and they type in the word, "stuck."

Eureka! My book A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD comes up. A book excerpt on my website (www.fisherofideas.com) is available on being stuck, and a person in Hong Kong, Berlin, Suriname, and East London (South Africa) simultaneously orders the book. Another person in Sao Paulo sends an email wondering if I'm available to speak at a conference in Brazil.

All this is because of the exploding cell of an idea being transformed across a synapse connecting with the wider world of our small planet.

This past year I took a Caribbean cruise in which I became the metacode of my idea synapse, and repeated it on a Baltic Sea cruise with a similar outcome. I made some connections. The cruise directors wanted Dr. Fisher to come to sea and discuss his ideas.

It is, however, an expensive, tiring, and a bit daunting experience to be one's own metacode, while having only to type in a few letters such as "toxic leadership" or "empowerment" or "stuck" and discover one's whole world changing.

At least that is the idea.

Thus far I have metacoded WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s, and THE WORKER, ALONE!

I told BB that it might be better to write my manuscripts, then metacode them. and then rewrite them. I say this because in metacoding I had to reread these books entirely, and found acres of diamonds that were no longer covered in coal dust but were visible in their naked brilliance.

CONNECTION REDUX

People write to me all the time and tell me they download my missives and put them on discs to refer to later. I have no problem with this. It means I am being read by an alert and connecting readership.

My only caution is that they note that I copyright everything, or nearly everything I write, and therefore it cannot be used or sold or included in other writings for publication without permission.

My words and ideas, which are not necessarily that popular at the moment, may be so when I am gone, and that is BB's legacy.

If I have had any peculiar talent in my long life, it has been having had the ability to see ahead when most people were totally invested in now. For example, one need read any of my three books (mentioned above) to see that that book is as if it were just written.

The sanctuary of ideas is that of psychological not chronological time, of the human heart that has syncope with the eternity of the human soul.

And who is a writer of ideas? Actually, it is everyone. I cannot improve upon the words of the British writer and philosopher Alan W. Watts:

"A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gapes and stares at what sensible people take for granted, a person who cannot get rid of the feeling that the barest of facts of everyday life are unbelievably odd. Aristotle put it best: the beginning of philosophy is wonder."

My intentions in writing books and missives are a little less grand. The human link to us all is our minds as an expression of our souls. Life often contaminates this linkage and buries this connection in a heap of hate, greed and paranoia. In none of my books and missives do I ask the reader to agree with me, but I do ask the reader to get under this debris of suffocating nowness to find the synapses that connect us all to each other.

Be always well,

Jim

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Books listed in this piece, along with several others of Dr. Fisher, are available at reduced prices on www.fisherofideas.com compared to other electronic websites.