February 20, 2009
We Will Prove You Wrong

“Jeff Jarvis handed me a copy of his new book, “What Would Google Do?” after we finished a brainstorm on health care costs at the World Economic Forum. I have the utmost respect and admiration for the author as a visionary and change agent. He does not disappoint in his very pointed and inspirational text that is a must-read for anyone in the communications business. His central thesis is that control has moved to the people, that companies are advised to tap into the power of networks and that marketing must be based on relationships.”Richard Edleman

The last person to attempted to take a stab at Mr Edleman’s Profession was Jason Calacanis-It is pretty hard to criticize the field of public relations unless you have a backround in Semantics,General Semantics, Mathematics,Game Theory and Statistics- Not just mouthing the words but are educated in these fields-General Semantics is a field pioneered by Alfred Korzibski  and promoted by Carl Rogers,S I Hayakawa and Antatol Rapaport-and others-

The map is not the territory is a remark by Polish-American scientist and philosopher Alfred Korzybski, encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one’s opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself; and so on. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source—e.g., the pain in your foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone, you don’t know everything that is going on in the life of a politician, etc.—and thus may limit an individual’s understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, in this sense.