As a teenager and a young man, I was totally current on the theoretical and hypothetical aspects of existence and experience, as those were known in the 1960s and 1970s. I read books and listened to the newly available FM radio, partaking of high-falutin' “discourses” about beautiful phenomena: social change, collaborative problem solving, advertising, classical music and the Beatles, Zen and Taoism, being in the moment, social milieus, poetry, media, politics, environmentalism (very avant-garde), even Space Shuttles.

Then, in the early 80s, I got sucked into the world of affairs. Government. Business. Research. Cable TV. The Internet. Cellular phones. HDTV. MBO, Six Sigma, and Co-Creation. Making money. Living large. I turned my truest loves, System Thinking and Media Theory, into instrumental chum to lure work my way. I had wandered off The Path and driven onto the Highway.

A cliché: it's dangerous in the fast lane. Mostly, your childish wonder is at risk.

Since resigning from my last startup in 2003, between episodes of consulting, I've had time to think broadly again. I've been able to revisit the high falutin' stuff again. Plus, today, besides knowledge found in books, there's the Internet. I've read quite a few websites, blogs, newsletters, and emails. I've watched my share of Fora.TV,, the yin and yang of online video. I've listened to my favorite media friend, the radio, again. And I realized: a whole, whole lot of what now's passed off as lofty new insights, intellect, and innovation, particularly in the fields I love -- among them, phenomenology, design, and media -- is really not very new at all. A lot of it boils down to that old saw, “The customer's always right,” in various permutations (co-creation, ethnography, customer experience design, etc., are some of the better known variations -- at least, those most chattered about).

A friend of mine whose opinions I value confided during a one-on-one that he couldn't understand what I did. Maybe it's because what I do is what I've done before, not repackaged in new jargon in order to appear inventive and fresh. I create things. Themes, Ideas. Products. Services. Events. Organizations and companies to make them real. I hire people and I discharge managerial responsibilities, including building and leading teams, encouraging multilateral communication, and getting things done. That kind of boring stuff.

But a lot of people don't do those things, or maybe they do them, too -- but mainly, they strive to reinvent the wheel. And you know, they do a good job of it. In universities, think tanks, research labs, and at professional retreats. The jargon, now “the buzz,” is sometimes deafening.

I'm not speaking out of nostalgia. Each generation must refurbish the hoary chestnuts, the old wisdom, that's been passed down over the centuries and millennia. The cultural walls have to be repapered, lest there be no new excitement or romance that compels people to maintain our species' and its many cultures' oral and written traditions. But you know, this kind of reinvention is...well, it's boring, too. At least it is to me, but I suspect, also many others, young as well as more mature.

Just once in my lifetime, I'm hoping to come across a thought that truly new, a new paradigm, a revelation or invention that changes things. Really changes how we see the universe and our place in it, or how we relate to one another, or how we act in the world to make it a better place. Just once would be sufficient. Barring that welcome but unlikely occurrence, I'm going to keep my own counsel and share it only with those who ask me to share.