From, The Only Fields That Matter
The trauma that changed my life permanently; loss of my career followed by divorce, in the Great Recession, will benefit no one by being covered under my memories like old magazines stacked in a garage. There are no You Tube videos of a job search existence but the script is essentially written: millions of Americans adapted to a new life while another restless counter culture aggressively pushed national leaders to face inevitable social progressivism in the same manner as leading technology firms prophetically claim a glorious future through their inevitable world-changing products. Only, the restless faction seeks new interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, if only closer to Socialism. And 76% of US businesses, at last, trust employee profiling norms using tech+science+med analytics. During these years when governing officials failed to lead it became human nature to look for the next grand source for answers. In the Great Recession decade, workforce psychological profiling offered a prediction solution to HR to explain to business why some employees would strike out and others hit homeruns. Today, neuroscience promises a better formula for the average team becoming a winning team as individuals focus on talent metrics integrated with teammates’ psychometrics. Finally, genomics will eventually inform the talent agents who to allow in the ballpark and who must permanently remain in the parking lot. One nation under technology with data and judgment for all. (end of Chapter 8) RPW

As authors, we all start somewhere. Marketing a book is challenging. Here are some lines I wanted to - but haven't used:


Number 10: If you have no emotional intelligence this book won’t help you

Number 9: My book is not on Hillary’s private server.

Number 8: I want to be the first author to have his book read by a robot, cover-to-cover.

Number 7: This is a heavy read but, you won’t gain weight.

Number 6: I would never write a book about myself but you might.

Number 5: My book isn’t for robots. Sorry, humans only.

Number 4: Read. Then follow, share, tweet, snap, post, chat, like, repeat. (FSTSPCLR)

Number 3: There’s not much proof for my content but it’s right and you’ll agree.

Number 2: It will improve your sex life...if you know your sex.

Number 1: You will die if you don’t read my book.

[revision] The point of making any particular social impact using current social narratives draws out the vividness effect. That is, in decision-making or problem-solving people draw from memory the information that seems to fit the situation. At this “now” moment we are post-recession where wealth and careers look different than in 2007. Physician practices are still adjusting to Obamacare, businesses are assessing employees through psychometrics, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still reverberate, cities and states are near bankruptcy and so on. These memories don’t leave behind stable references for solving today’s problems. While media channels compete for ownership of the general narration of every issue, as consumers we live with short-term memory about the past recession.
Some examples of competing narratives that require our thoughtful consideration: A firm we've all heard about, 23andMe.com, has captured imaginations by offering data (mail ordered) about our personal human genome and yet the National Human Genome Research Institute as part of the NIH leads the world in breakthrough genomic research. One is a stop-gap to fear about carrying bad genes, the latter a world-scale health research center for good.  Another, gas powered cars are 100 years in perfecting but Google envisions driverless cars using proprietary technology and gizmos no mechanic has seen before. Lumosity.com is banking on the neuro-craze just by playing digital games and yet, a few U.S. states don’t object to citizens smoking weed and depleting their brain functionality. Many leading tech firms want us to put sensors on our bodies to share live bio-streams with busy friends; privacy groups warn us of security issues to mitigate over-exposure. In the vividness effect model of assessing information we can choose the narrative that appeals to us and this will likely become framed in memory. Or, we could dig deeper into the autonomous automobile, for example, and learn much about merging GPS, radar, AI, sensors, etc. that prove how experimental autonomous cars really are. Then we can ask, is this the future? 
The vividness effect is occurring as an ideological battle over who will cast the “future”. Have you noticed nearly all leading technology firms are proclaiming, as if prophetically, how we will live in the future? They are brand-structuring narratives as if their product is at war over which technology will rule the future. Complexity added, their strategies include disruption; the latest goal championing company culture. In my own assessment of future life and things I've concluded that this epic battle for controlling the future is inherently marketing.
Branded future order competes with what is most vividly memorable about the future; that is, Hollywood created epic wars perpetually occurring in the universe. Movies, not brands, have beaten the path to all future worlds and that time is about cosmic wars. Even with vivid images from current wars, none of which are resolved, the brand-created internet-of-things future by tech marketers is competing against Hollywood. Movies have resolution and more essentially, don't embrace a prophetic role by telling us, "this is your future". No, we can imagine for ourselves and choose what to believe about the future. We should be able to do the same concerning technologies like asking, do I really wish to have a neural connection with all humanity and share my private thoughts?

The Great Recession left most of us with few positive memories and even today stories in the WSJ and NY Times can be found about people and businesses facing aftershocks. Is it any wonder we're trying to get past the  most vivid memories of recent times? We walk out of the theatre dazzled with Hollywood special effects and face the humanity-of-things so vividly before our eyes.

RPW