The place of ideas in an economic sense is, of course, a priori. We cannot create a plan of action without the seed idea from which to germinate a full plan. Humans cannot build work-flow maps, create processes and implement design methods to reach the moon without the desire to visit the moon. Not to mention all of the innovative ideas that go into the building of “the things that get us there.”

Of course, our personal achievements are throttled by our abilities. If our desire is to see an idea converted into something that other humans use, consume or ponder in some mainstream manner, then we face the daunting task of overcoming our in-abilities. If we lack vision, then our ideas may lead to achievement levels that earn a level of notoriety which remains hidden in the noise of society. If we lack skills, resources, connections, acumen or voice, then we are limited in our chances of achieving any sort of reasonable return on the effort we put into turning an idea from ethereal to substantial, without risking it becoming ephemeral as well.

(Ideas + Action) / Ability = Achievement.

So. Ideas in stasis are at that balance point between what we can intuit in our minds and our desire or ability to identify and achieve a goal.

Is the act of brainstorming as pure sport, simply for the pleasure of the neuronic exercise a waste of time? Of course not! Just as the emptying of one’s mind and staring into the sky to admire the shape and color of the clouds can bring that blissful state of being, so can the creation of ideas bring a mind to joy without requiring achievement to be part of the equation.

So why am I writing this?

There are certain people in our society who feel that ideas without action are worthless. I simply wanted to state that achievement without ideas is impossible and the generation of a multitude of ideas, some of which cannot/should not/will not be acted upon, is appropriate for any individual. Period. Simply for the joy of creation.

With Wordle.net you can create interesting word visualizations from a few simple inputs.

Input options include:
1. Entering a group of words that you hand pick
2. Entering an ATOM or RSS URL
3. Providing your Delicious.com username

It took seconds to create these clouds:

Me on Delicious.com

wordle.net - delicious.com word cloud

The Web 2.0 Expo

Web 2.0 Expo Word Cloud

I can see myself using this simple tool when creating presentations or posting online.

We can track certain aspects of this weaving, we can try to label that tracking as “attention”, but it’s not really. Attention involves more than the process of weaving our lives together, we have a mind with synapses that form on new concepts and apply thought to determine a desired outcome.

Interestingly, attention can be defined as a courteous act indicating affection; “she tried to win his heart with her many attentions”

In many ways this applies to the landscape created by the disparate parts of our online social interaction.

We try to influence the external world of people places and things by our presence; when online our digital ghost provides an influencing framework through a continually contextual presence interacting with our social wake and bow wave. Our acts of attempted influence is our attention, just as much as our attention, when speaking in the language of quantum physics, creates our reality.