#ShareMore and TEDx: Some Sources and Further Thoughts

By Steven S. Vrooman

Here are some of the sources of information I used in my TEDx Talk, for folks who want to explore the ideas further.

1. Gregory Bateson.

I made fun of people greeting each other in the talk.

This is me doing the 'Sup greeting.

There is little information content, because most communication is about relational tasks, not informational ones. I used ideas from this small piece of Bateson's writings. If you want more, the whole book (careful, this link is a whole PDF!) is here, although you might not like it. :).

2. Will Thalheimer

I tell people in the book to check out Will Thalheimer's blog for more information on the mythology of numbers like this one:

Here is the post where he eviscerates this fake data. 

3. The 3%-15% Research

There's lots here to look at. In the speech I argue that mass media research for decades has found that we recall information from various media in the 3-15 percent range. I can post up the whole pile of studies for folks in the coming weeks if people want it, but here's an article you can read the pdf of for free. 

Here's one of the tables in Neuman's (1976) article:

The important column is the 2nd, "unaided recall." Aided recall is when I prompt your memory. It always has much higher numbers, as much as 50-70% in some studies. But you can see here that casual memory is right in that 3-15 range, except, in this case, for the economy. It's hard to blame a 1976 population for not wanting any more information on "stagflation."

I'll be happy to give more information for people who want it, but that's probably enough to get started with.