Glenn Stovall's Public Notebook

Species of Interesting Ideas

From Murray Davis's That's Interesting

The opposite of attention is the 'taken for granted' zombie-like state that we spend a majority of our lives in. Interesting things create attention. You create interest by attacking this 'taken for granted' zone.

You have to take your audience into account. You have to understand the assumptions your audience has so that you can attack them, subvert them, to be interesting.

The 12 Species of Interesting Ideas

  1. Organization
    • What seems to be disorganized/unstructured is in reality an organized/structured phenomenon
    • What seems to be organized/structured is in reality unorganized/unstructured
  2. Composition
    • What seems to be a collection of dissimilar elements is actually a single element.
    • What seems to be a single element is actually a collection of dissimilar elements.
  3. Abstraction
    • What seems to be an individual phenomenon is in reality a holistic one.
    • What seems to be a holistic phenomenon is actually an individual one.
  4. Generalization
    • What seems to be a local thing is actually a global thing
    • What seems to be a global thing is actually a local thing
  5. Stabilization
    • What seems to be stable and unchanging is actually unstable and changing
    • What seems to be unstable and changing is actually stable and unchanging
  6. Function
    • what seems to be inefficient is actually efficient
    • what seems to be efficient is actually inefficient
  7. Evaluation
    • what seems to be good is bad
    • what seems to be bad is good
  8. Co-Relation
    • what seems to be unrelated are actually related
    • What seem to be related are actually unrelated
  9. Co-existence
    • What seem to be that which can exist together actually cannot exist together
    • What seems to not be able to exist together can
  10. Co-variation
    • What seem to be a positive correlation is actually a negative one
    • What seems to be a negative correlation is actually a positive one
  11. Opposition
    • What seem to be similar are actually opposites
    • What seem to be opposites are actually similar
  12. Causation
    • What seem to be independent in a casual relation are actually dependent
    • What seem to be dependent in a casual relation are actually independent.

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