Don’t Be Afraid To Be On The Edge

Hugh MacLeod wrote the following about releasing ideas on the Web via your blog.

If your ideas have merit, bloggers will talk about them. If they don’t, they won’t. This lets you know what to expect when you finally unleash your ideas for real on the big, bad world. Without spending a king’s ransom finding out the hard way.

I disagree (but I do understand where he’s coming from). People have always been telling the explorers of the world for ages that they are nuts. Just because people don’t understand what you’re talking about now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. With a change of time comes a change in thinking. Unless you already have a close knit readership of people who fully understand where you’re coming from, I’d disregard what the average person says about your ideas.

I think it’s important to remember that just like how edges are important in nature to create an interface between two areas, so too are people on the edge important in creating an interface between two different stages in our evolution. These are often the pioneers and explorers who can see past the next paradigm shift before others can. Therefore, just because their words don’t make sense at the moment, it doesn’t mean their stupid or crazy. It just means they’re…different. 🙂