eugene gordin

This post combines a few things I’ve been meaning to write about, but they are too specific to warrant their own posts. Enough introduction – here goes:

The Diddle Factor

Last summer, I was sitting around with both friends and family and I was introduced to an interesting term. The term was called a “Diddle Factor,” and has one of two definitions, each of which is slightly different, but they both general correspond to the same thing. A “Diddle Factor” is defined as either:

1. The amount of money that a person is willing to throw at a certain problem to make it go away quickly; or
2. The amount of money that a person is willing to part with, without thinking twice about it.

In the end, both definitions really relate to the same thing. The Diddle Factor is not mine, and I cannot claim any responsibility for it. However, it does lend itself to several intriguing ideas.

First of all, everyone has a different Diddle Factor, and its quite interesting to find out what people’s Diddle Factors are – the result might surprise you (when my sister said what hers was, her husband was quite shocked at the disparity between them). Second, a person’s Diddle Factor is highly correlated with the period one’s life is in i.e. throughout one’s life, one’s Diddle Factor changes.

A google search for Diddle Factor did not yield either one of these definitions, so I thought that such a great term deserved its place online.

Internet Culture

Maybe it shouldn’t be called Internet Culture. Maybe it has some more appropriate name. Regardless of its name, what I’m referring to is the ability of the internet to bring complete strangers together for only a second, both walking away with something new. Let me provide an example.

My friend Lisa was browsing my website with its new design and happened upon a bug that didn’t let anyone see the previous pages of posts. The bug had to do with one of the plugins that I installed on the site in order to simplify navigation and links.

After browsing for a solution, I simply could not resolve the bug. However, on the website that provided me with the plugin, had comments from the plugin users on it, one of which was by a guy who had the same “previous post” problem but had resolved it. He didn’t say how, but he happened to leave the name of his website with his comment.

Without thinking, I immediately went to his website, went to the contact page, and added his screen name to my buddy list. I don’t know why I did it – I rarely would bug a stranger about some obscure tech question – but nonetheless I added him. The next day, he signed on, I instant messaged him, and he took two minutes to explain to me how to fix the problem.

After he signed off, and my problem was solved, I stopped to think about what had just taken place. Here is this random guy (he was from some town in Georgia), who I basically stopped on the street and asked to help me. And he DID. That’s amazing.

Age and Decency

The last thing I’m going to say is this: I find it extremely interesting that the older we get, the more appalled we are that our peers lack the fundamental qualities that make up a functional, social, being – respect, decency, and pliability. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have always thought that the older we get, the more complex the challenges we are faced with become. However, that’s not necessarily the case.

More often than not these days, I find myself shocked not by people’s inability to deal with complex situations, but rather their lack of basic tools to even begin to tackle the issue at hand. Only now, when looking at how my 1 and 3 year old nephews are developing socially, I realize the sheer gravity of day to day interactions with them. Each interaction, regardless of subject or context, functions as an additional reinforcement or adjustment to the social being that’s being molded on the inside.

I can only hope that somewhere between their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunt, uncle, and friends, they learn those indispensable tools that are so lacking in some people. In fact, I’m going to do my best to make sure of it.