What I found was a well written post from a student entitled: it’s:learning™ is crap! The post’s author, clearly an informed thoughtful user is both thorough and structured in their critique. But that is not all. This engaged user shares a bit about their attempt to help the developers, only to be rebuffed:

I was contacted 2005-12-15 by it:solutions support personnel, and mailed back and forth a number of times. I lobbied for a separate interface that’s designed for efficient use, but they did not appear to grasp concepts such as usability vs usefulness, and had no distinction between presentation and business logic.

Needless to say, the post’s author is now a passionate detractor.

That this should be the case would surprise me, if I hadn’t experienced it myself, and often. Constructive criticism is increasingly lumped with general whining, treated with halfhearted “thanks for your suggestion” platitudes, even condescending arrogance. The host of new media interactivity options (blogs, forums, social networking, etc.) has raised the noise level for developers, and it isn’t surprising that they should want to listen only to compliments and conciliatory suggestions, while dismissing instances of emphatic criticism.

Of course, there is better way to look at it. It’s far better to have critics that not, and way better for business. Kathy Sierra, co-creator of the Head First book series cleverly called it the Kool-Aid point.

The Kool-Aid Point: “You don’t really have passionate users until someone starts accusing them of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ If you create passionate users, you have to expect passionate detractors. You should welcome their appearance in blogs, forums, and user groups. It means you’ve arrived. (Posted on headrush.typepad.com)

If you are a smart developer, a smart inventor, or a smart start-up, you will use this feedback and recognize it for what it is: a potential road map to success or an opportunity to create customer loyalty. (Did you just hear: blah, blah, blah? Well, maybe you just need a cup of coffee. ) Focus groups are useful. But I contend that they are not nearly as valuable as engaged user feedback. Questionnaires are limiting. Yes-men are useless.

If you haven’t already, check out Get Satisfaction and the products and services that participate there. The site provides an effective forum for customers to communicating directly with the companies behind the products and services they use, a mechanism for prioritizing feedback, and customers communicating and supporting each other.

… Oh yeah, and I dare say, ItsSolutions is not very smart. (And, if you are interested in my opinion, when it comes to ItsLearning I agree with the passionate detractor mentioned earlier.)

And I do mean sensationalize. Even here in this far northern corner of Europe, Norwegian reporters are getting more and more masterful at whipping up controversy and creating crisis. Rather than turn their backs on folly and those practices so evident on pseudo-journalistic shows like Bill O´Reilley´s No-Spin Zone, Norwegian media seems keen to embrace these questionable hype creation practices.

Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud, studying political debates in conjunction with her doctoral thesis, stated recently in an NRK interview that debate programmes in Norway are staged and sometimes even misleading.

Political debate programs in Norway today, are characteristically very popularized and pretty tabloid. Producers want politicians who step it up a little, without too many reservations, who don´t refer too often to dry resolutions, numbers and statistics. It should be very simple, concrete, and it should pertain to the public.

We get a debate that is often more constructed than it is possible [for us] to be aware of. Journalists want a debate with high temperatures, and politicians know what journalists want, and ensure that their message is formulated in such a way as to get into the studio. — Kjersti Thorbjørnsrud. [ » Read the original interview Debatter kan lure seerne, 30.10.08, NRK.no]

In a speech many years ago, delivered to a crowd of California university students, Michael Crichton went so far as to say that there is no value in following the media coverage of today:

We need to start seeing the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out false fears. — Michael Crichton [Speech entitled: Why Speculate, April 26, 2002]

Crichton’s speculative intellectual excercise is entertaining and witty (as his writing often was; and we can agree to disagree with him about the lack of evidence for global warming). While President Elect Obama’s honeymoon phase has provided a respite from the biting form of media speculation that reigned for the last decade, but not a reprieve from speculation entirely. As the world anticipates the Obama administration’s installation in January, the speculation is simply of a different character: upbeat and hopeful, like the man himself. (Actually, it is seldom one reads European news coverage and commentary concerning America’s roll and responsibility in the world, that is so harmonious and propitious as that of this last month.)

No one but McCain really envies President Elect Obama the challenges he is facing. The honeymoon will end —as they inevitably do—and when it ends the media climate will be a deciding factor in whether the new administration makes headway or not. Polarization, or the lack of it, will matter a great deal. Crichton put it this way:

Endless presentation of conflict may interfere with genuine issue resolution. There is evidence that the television foodfights not only don’t represent the views of most people-who are not so polarized-but may tend to make resolution of actual disputes more difficult in the real world. At the very least, they obscure the recognition that we resolve disputes every day. Compromise is much easier from relatively central positions than it is from extreme and hostile, conflicting positions.