We spend most of our lives forgetting. Mostly it’s little things — our keys, our appointments, where we parked the car. When you look at any particular lost moment in perspective, it’s not that important. Take them in aggregate, however, and you begin to understand the web.

Forgetting is the reason why so many of the same memes play out for us on the social network de jour every few months. Forgetting is why the “A-list” is dead, again. Blogging is dying, again and scads of new releases that will later flit out of our collective consciousness are being ushered in as game changers.

There are about five big things that we forget. Things that if we remembered, might save us a lot of time. What are they? Let’s see.

Forget Me Not

The fastest path from the cradle to the grave is center-stage

In almost every case, the product, service, meme or career that receives the most hype will burn out the most spectacularly. Basic conservation of energy law — the brighter you burn the more fuel you’ll need and few things can keep thriving on that kind of treadmill. No one remembers Jaiku, few people care about Open Social or Android, even giants like Facebook have seen better days.

All of these dogs had their day and most of them burned in the pyre of their own fame.

The take away is that if everyone is raving about how something will change the world but you just don’t see how — you’re probably right.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Early adopters aren’t real people. We aren’t. Our opinions rarely determine anything beyond our actions and the behaviors of a tiny subset of loyal followers. Even if you take the most heavily exposed micro-celebrities, their influence rarely extends beyond twenty thousand people, and their real ability to sway a crowd is likely much smaller than that.

Sure, early adopters control the flow of information and the echoes we make can make otherwise mediocre ideas seem important for a while, but all of this power rarely cures our almost genetic myopia.

Not everything plays by Valley rules: not everyone has given up on email, not every Friendfeed user is trying to have a “conversation,” not every blogger wants to reach an audience of millions, and a good fraction of the web still makes their bread and beans selling real, tangible goods.

When we start painting the world in such broad strokes, it’s no wonder every stray wind makes us believe that the sky is falling in on us.

Darwin lives in the heart of good ideas

Survival as a company, character or hanger-on on the web comes when you recognize that the Internet is a moving target. Your business is only as relevant as your next new feature, your next big acquisition, your next round of investment. Your status as a weblebrity is only as valuable as your next “big idea,” the next conference you attend, the next thousand followers on social service X.

When you exist in a culture where yesterday’s news is the realm of historians, your only chance of thriving is to live in the eternal today.

Or . . .

Get off the treadmill.

I try to live by the five year rule. Is this week’s bitchmeme or the cycle of hype a long bet or just more fuel for the fire? Ask yourself why you try to keep up with any of it. What’s it really worth to you? Is it making you a better business person? Are you making friends, contacts, finding new opportunities or gaining anything of value other than the nagging headache that comes from fighting towards nothing in particular?

Once you figure out what you draw value from, why not drop the rest of the cruft and start doing it? It’s really easy to get caught up in the allure of this brave new world we have created and forget that as it stands, 95% of what we have produced has been sound and fury — conversations about the glory of conversation and products that enable more of those conversations to take place.

There is a kernel of truth out there but it’s much more personal than the culture leads us to believe.

The secret is in the oat clusters

What’s the end game to all of this? Why should anyone care? Why do I?

When you can broadcast your thoughts to thousands, tens of thousands of people across the planet for pennies — the platform that allows you to do that is a wonder. When you can collaborate with an artist in India, a programmer in Germany and a sales force in LA to create a single product that combines the strengths of the entire team — that’s a power that human society has been seeking out since we were crawling around on the sea floor. When you can share anything, anywhere, anytime as a normal person sitting in your living room — you have the power to change the world.

We have that power and we should build it up as much as we can.

The reason why most people aren’t doing it is the same reason most people don’t run for president, or write the great American novel, or build death rays, most people don’t really want to.

That’s OK as long as we are always working to make it easier for them to try.

How about you? Why do you do it?
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