My Caring Spheres

When I sift through a social news aggregator like Digg, I often ponder the differences between something that is cool for its own sake (like Shark Week on Discovery) or something that is meaningful on a level where I actually have an interest and a desire to follow story updates or do more research.

I’ve decided to create a template for myself that tries to juxtapose the following four domains:
1) Cool but don’t care
2) Cool and do care
3) Not cool but care
4) Not cool, don’t care

Let’s face it, there aren’t many stories in the last category we even give a second glance to, thus I’ve instantly made my job 25% easier for the long term.

For analytic purposes, however, let’s establish some real world examples for each of subdomains (I’m feeling so pedagogically enabled):
1) Cool but don’t care – “Oct. 8, 1582: Nothing Happens”
2) Cool and do care – “460,000 brick Lego Tower in Austria”
3) Not cool but care – “99% of Alaska Glaciers Melting”
4) Not cool and don’t care – “Formula Created for the Perfect Shower” although “Haggis Could Disappear due to Climate Change” was a close second.

What really prompted this post was a link to a story I saw about galaxies colliding in deep space could impact star creation in deep space.  By the time I got to the end of reading the 10 word link, I already knew that as impressive a scientific discovery this might be, I couldn’t relate it to my lunchtime dilemma over choosing Caesar or Ranch dressing for my salad.

Let us know what you caring sphere parameters are, and listen to the second podcast either here at the blog or in iTunes.