Here I’ve provided some answers to the most popular questions about evergreen content and its application in content marketing:

  What does evergreen mean?

  Definition of evergreen content

  Guidelines for creating an evergreen piece of content

  Examples of evergreen content types

  Evergreen content as a gap filler or as a component of the content strategy?

  Evergreen content examples and ideas

  Tips for creating evergreen content

  Evergreen content vs. other content types

What does evergreen mean in marketing

The term evergreen is much older than marketing. It has roots in botany and describes the plants that have leaves throughout the year.

In marketing, the term evergreen is used for the products, segments, and strategies that stay relevant over a long period. In another word, evergreen marketing is an umbrella term for any marketing idea, concept, action, or initiative that will last a long time while staying relevant and practical.

Evergreen segments, evergreen niche, evergreen products, and evergreen approach are just a few terms currently used in marketing and other management realms. Let’s take a look at the definition of some of these terms:

• Evergreen industry: An industry that always has a viable market.
• Evergreen business: Businesses that have a long life and are not much affected by seasonalities. Selling books or teaching English as a second language are examples of evergreen businesses compared to selling camping equipment.
• Evergreen stock option: An employee stock option with no expiration date.
• Evergreen design: Any design with enduring popularity and long life in the market. Minimalism is an example of an evergreen design style. Many different styles come and go, but the minimalistic style always has its own demand.
• Evergreen brand: An evergreen brand is a brand that never goes out of style and never gets old.
• Evergreen product: A product that always has market demand and retains its relevance over the long run. Pens, wallets, and bottled water are examples of evergreen products.
• Evergreen funnel: An autopilot marketing sequence that turns website visitors into customers. Landing pages with good call-to-actions and permanent incoming traffic (e.g., with SEO) are examples of an evergreen funnel.
• Evergreen advertising: Advertising that is not related to specific events or periods of time and stays relevant for a long time. So they stay on websites and billboards for longer or even permanently on the city walls and other outdoor placements.
• Evergreen books: Books that don’t stop selling and their content and context remain relevant for a long time. Classic books are examples of evergreen books. But many contemporary books can also be considered evergreen. Just compare a book on SEO techniques versus a book on the life of Barack Obama. Although the latter is not considered classic, you can still classify it under the evergreen category.

Definition of evergreen content

In the simplest definition, evergreen content is a piece of content that does not expire in the short term. But here you can find a more elaborate and formal definition of the evergreen content:

Evergreen contents are attractive because of driving more traffic, having a lower maintenance cost,  getting a higher SEO rank, and receiving more social shares for a prolonged period.

Guidelines for creating an evergreen piece of content

Although every content without an expiry date can be considered green, there are many hints, guidelines, and statements about the properties and characteristics of an evergreen piece of content:

• Evergreen content can’t include news, statistical reports, seasonal topics, and current trends.
• Evergreen content shall preferably aim at narrow beginner topics. Such contents are best choices for creating evergreen content.
• Evergreen content should seek for higher stay time or long click (What is a long click).
• Evergreen articles are typically longer.

Examples of evergreen content types

Here you can find some examples to have a more clear picture in your mind:

• Most of the definitions are evergreen articles (e.g., definition of longform content, definition of complex systems, definition of content strategy, etc.)
• Resource lists are the other popular type of evergreen content (e.g., list of content strategy blogs, list of technology blogs, leading thinkers of the technology age, etc.)
• Checklists are another type of evergreen content that is attractive to beginner and expert readers.
• How-to articles can be easily designed in an evergreen format and can be helpful and engaging. You can take a look at the following topics as examples of such content:
  • How to decide on what to do with your life!
  • How to market in a recession (HBR)
  • How to learn speed reading

Evergreen content as a gap filler or a component of the content strategy?

Every content provider has a portion of evergreen content in its content portfolio.

Reading any newspaper,  you will find a mixture of green and non-green content that, in most cases, the ratio is not chosen deliberately and on purpose.

Most newspapers and news companies fill their content gaps with evergreen content. These companies would prefer to talk about last night’s blasts, and when there is no hot news available,  fill the gap with a report about an old and forgotten place in the city’s suburbs!

However, for some content providers, evergreen content is something beyond a gap filler.

Content providers who deliberately include evergreen content in their content portfolio fall into two categories:

• Evergreen content businesses such as IMDb or Study.com
• Other businesses which use evergreen content for SEO purposes and as a driver for inbound traffic

Guardian serves as an excellent example for the second category.

Besides publishing up-to-date news articles, Guardian considers publishing evergreen articles as a permanent part of its editorial content calendar.

While the articles such as successful content strategy and dos and don’t of content marketing are outside their expected scope, Guardian insists on publishing such articles regularly to drive traffic to its website.

Most universities serve the same purpose by publishing part of their educational content as educational resources and proudly providing them free of charge to every website visitor.

While providing evergreen content as a traffic driver in the content strategy is more costly than direct advertising in the short run, this approach pays off well in the long run because of better rank in search engines and lower content maintenance cost.

Evergreen content examples and ideas

Here I have collected some ideas and examples of evergreen content. I am confident you will be able to list many other ideas after reading the following examples.

Write about persisting questions

Just think about the first questions your first readers (or customers) asked the first time they visited your website. Among them, you will find issues that are still relevant, and most of your new audiences are still looking for the answer to those questions.

Write about the structure of your industry

No matter the industry, it’s always helpful and fascinating for the audience to read about the structure of your industry.

Industry structures do not change very fast, and such informative content can live for years without needing a fundamental change and adjustment.

Write a glossary for your topic of interest

Glossaries are one of the best options for creating evergreen content. Glossaries have a long lifespan, and your audience will love them, especially if they are comprehensive and relevant.

You can check the following documents as examples of this content type:

• Mobile marketing glossary
• A short glossary of marketing terms
• Knowledge management glossary
• Concise dictionary of management terms

Create a list of useful resources for beginners

Advanced articles and resources are usually subject to change. But basic documents and resources remain valid for a relatively long period.

Therefore, preparing and publishing resource lists for your novice user is a good idea.

Check the following articles to have a better idea about this content type:

• Kissmetrics’ content marketing resources
• Content marketing resource list provided by VisualNews
• Digital Content Marketing Roadmap
• Content marketing resources provided by SingleGrain
• Free SEO and web analytics tools
• Curata’s resource list for content marketers (don’t miss out)

Worst practices for obtaining a specific goal

Although it’s quite popular to write about best practices, writing about worst practices can be a gold mine for your audience too.

While this type of content benefits your readers, it’s much less competitive than the best practice lists provided by virtually all the great players in the field.

Check the following articles:

• Five worst practices in content marketing
• 14 sales worst practices
• Top five worst practices in business intelligence

Historical examples and case studies

When you cite a recent case study, very soon, it will get outdated.

You have to change words and edit phrases, and still, your blog will look outdated.

Your audience will probably be more impressed by a story from five decades ago than a case study that refers to a two-year-old story. While the former looks like an informative case, the latter may be perceived as outdated content.

Tips for creating evergreen content

Your content needs not to be timeless to be considered evergreen

Some of the contents are literally timeless. These contents are valid even centuries later. Just Imagine the following articles:

• The fall of Rome: How did it happen?
• How did Steve Jobs start his career in the digital industry?
• 20th century in literature
• How to face stress and anxiety in your daily life?

But there are many topics and articles which are not eternal but have a much longer life than the average life of the popular articles. These articles are valid and relevant until a disruption happens or some progress happens in a field.

This type of evergreen content is usually called sustainable content.

Here are two examples that I consider sustainable (but not timeless):

• 10 SEO tips to consider when writing short-form articles (Such article can stay relevant for one or two years)
• How to choose the right mobile phone for yourself? (May remain relevant for two or three quarters and even more with minor modifications)

I think it’s more logical, feasible, and rewarding to consider sustainable content as a part of your evergreen content strategy plan and not rely solely on timeless content.

Don’t get stuck in one particular content type

Most content creators are inclined to certain content types.

For some of them, evergreen content means a ‘how-to’ article. Some others use checklists and questionnaires as evergreen content. But remember that evergreen content has many forms.

Don’t let the social media trends overshadow your content strategy

Social media is an invaluable source of ideas for your content creation. However, be careful not to be distracted by hypes and trends.

You can learn the taste of your audience and the ingredients of their current content diet. You can also find their questions and what they are willing to pay for.

But evergreen content is not meant to satisfy the transient and temporary needs of your audience. There you have no chance to compete with real-time mostly-free easily-accessible social content.

The evergreen content’s competitive advantage lies somewhere else.

Start with your current content assets

If you are not new to blogging and currently already have a collection of articles on your blog/website, first look for already existing evergreen articles on your blog.

Check the Google webmasters tool and look for old articles that have a high click rate (or even a high impression with low CTR). These low-hanging fruits are much easier to pick and have more potential for immediate results and draw more traffic to your blog/website.

Moreover, prepare a list of your evergreen content and schedule a regular update and optimization plan for them. Each piece of content may need a different check/update frequency.

Although it’s easy to check the history of organic traffic to each URL (via a simple query in Google’s webmaster’s tool), I do strongly recommend making a separate table (in paper or digital format) and registering the total number of visitors landed on each URL every month. Such a table can be an indispensable source of insight if you update it regularly.

Don’t make it over-green

To make our content evergreen, sometimes we deliver over-green content to the audience. Such excessive efforts often lead to dull, boring content.

To take an extreme imaginary case, suppose a blogger who wants to use Twitter in a sentence. He thinks that one day Twitter won’t exist, and my sentence will look outdated. So he decides to substitute the word Twitter with the following phrase: “one of the popular social media tools that helps you to share short messages.”

Of course, such an extreme case won’t happen. But there are many milder cases in which we deliberately use over-green words and phrases to make our content evergreen.

Experts are rarely your audience

Sure, there are some cases where an evergreen article targets experts and becomes successful. But usually, experts are not the audience of evergreen articles. Even if they reach such articles, most probably will skim over the articles to find references and resources.

So unless you have a sound strategic reason, it’s recommendable to target non-experts. These audiences are more likely to have a longer stay-time and deeper click-throughs, leading to better SEO scoring.

Don’t sacrifice relevance for better search results

Many content creators try to make their evergreen content as comprehensive as possible.

Such a strategy may lead to better search engine scoring and higher impression and click rates. However, don’t forget that your final goal is conversion, and sacrificing relevance for whatever reason would hardly lead to more conversion.

The same logic applies to keyword stuffing. Besides the fact that most search engines recognize this strategy and penalize it, this approach won’t result in more conversions and will just decrease your credibility and dilute your relevance in the eyes of the audience.

Don’t forget downloadables

The importance of downloadable stuff can hardly be overstated. As I have said many times, downloadable files resemble physical commodities in the digital world.

Any website with a long-term content strategy must have a dedicated page for resources (Including downloadables and valuable external links). However, evergreen articles will become more attractive if you consider a download section in their design.

Evergreen content vs. Other content types

Although many content strategists emphasize the importance of evergreen content, we have to accept that there have to be other alternatives to evergreen content creation.

Here I’ve listed a couple of alternatives to the evergreen content type. Although they are not totally different, and there might be some overlap, it helps to regard them as separate categories.

Topical Content

As you may have noticed, most of the introductory contents are (or can be) evergreen.

When you dig deeper into a topic, the chances are that you shorten the lifespan of your content because you have to mention current trends, up-to-date tools, relevant news, and many other short-life content pieces.

Therefore, the so-called topical content that goes into detail usually has a shorter lifespan and is regarded as an alternative to the evergreen content strategy.

Seasonal Content

Seasonal content can be evergreen too. However not suitable for all the seasons. Consider an article titled “How to minimize chances of getting a cold this winter?”.

Such an article will be helpful this year, next year, and even a decade later. But it will be helpful in a few months when the weather gets colder.

Guides for choosing schools, attending entrance examinations, finding a new home, and many other similar topics are usually classified as seasonal content.

Real-time content

Sports and stock market news websites are among many other content creator businesses that are heavily relied on real-time content.

Although such contents have a very limited lifespan, there are still various ways to generate revenue based on real-time content.

Dated Content

Most of us do not consider dated content as a valuable asset. However, take a second look at The Internet Archive to see 300 billion archived web pages that are literally dated content. They are still a really valuable asset not only for the organization itself but for humanity as a whole.

Viral Content

Viral contents are another example of non-evergreen content types. Most viral contents have a very short lifespan. However, many content marketers use this type of content to promote products, businesses, and social moves.

Newsjacking Content

There are various definitions of newsjacking. But there’s a common element in all of them: Newsjacking, similar to hijacking, uses the trending and popular news as a platform for promoting a personal or business brand.

Just consider one of the recent social media contests that got popular in your community. Sure, you can remember a few bloggers or social activists criticizing the contest and publishing articles against public opinion.

Such articles will be of no value after a short period, but the content creator has made an audience with this newsjacking technique. The evergreen content usually does not provide such opportunities on a large scale.

The post What is evergreen content and how you can leverage it in your content strategy? appeared first on webmindset.

Title: The Lean Startup

Explanatory Title: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Publisher: Currency (Crown Publishing Group)

First Publication: 2011

ISBN / Pages: 978-0307887894 / 336 pages

Category: Entrepreneurship / Starting a new business / Startups

About the Lean Startup author | Eric Ries

Eric Ries, born in 1978, is a Yale graduate mostly known because of his now classic book “The Lean Startup.” The content of this book is mainly based on online posts he published earlier on his blog, Startup Lessons Learned.

Ries started his career journey as a programmer. After a few failures in various startups, IMVU was the first business that got real traction and received investment. Co-founded in 2004, IMVU remained in the market even till now. However, Ries stepped down from operational positions in 2008 and remained a board member. Most of what Ries has written in his books and preaches today as the lean method has roots in these successes and failures.

Over a decade, with the help of other friends, authors, and like-minded people, he has fine-tuned and furthered his Lean Philosophy or Lean Methodology model. Nowadays, many people worldwide believe that lean thinking, as a flexible and agile process, is a reliable model for leading startups through the path of success and growth.

Ries says that he has decided to devote himself full-time to the Lean Startup movement, the term he frequently uses to show his ideas’ vast, significant, and sustained effect.

The lean mindset

As Ries mentions several times in his book, the idea of The Lean Startup is inspired by lean thinking in Japan’s automotive industry, especially Toyota Manufacturing System. Lean thinking, in his words, means looking for value-creating processes and trying to eliminate waste.

But thinking lean in the startup world is much more complicated than in the automotive and other physical industries. It’s easier to find waste in a factory or most traditional businesses. But when you run a startup, you explore the uncharted waters of uncertainty.

This is the reason that he tries to integrate scientific thinking under the label of validated learning into his lean startup model. It should be noted that scientific thinking is much broader than what he refers to. And what he describes as scientific thinking is just an essential subset of the scientific paradigm: insisting on the importance of experiments.

Lean Startup meaning

Considering the above description, the Lean Startup is a method for developing a business or product using experimentation and iteration (Or, as Eric Ries calls it: The Build-measure-learn feedback loop). It’s based on learning and feedback instead of pre-planning, correction instead of perfection, and data instead of prediction.

Validated learning

In traditional businesses, with a known and stable environment, it’s easy to set a vision and define some milestones on the way. But startups are supposed to be operated in uncertainty. Otherwise, they won’t be called startupDefininging time-based milestones and allocating phase-based budgets are not meaningful and effective in such a situation.

Here’s one of the lean startup principles: Each case of validated learning should be considered as an achieved milestone on the way forward. Validated learning is so essential in the lean mindset that Ries literally equates it to the startup’s raison d’etre:

How the Lean Startup methodology differs from the traditional approach

The traditional approach to founding and developing a startup was akin to the classic entrepreneurship roadmap:

• Writing a detailed business plan (even if you are sure that you can’t stick to it)
• Making financial projections (even if you know that everything is uncertain)
• Designing and creating the perfect product in secret before making a full-force launch

In the traditional approach, in the early stages, the entrepreneur and business know everything about the product, and the market knows nothing about it. But in the so-called lean startup methodology, the business and the market are discovering (or somehow co-creating) the perfect product together in a never-ending path of experimentation and learning.

Selected sentences from the book

This book may not be suitable for you if…

Although Eric Ries believes that the application of lean startup ideas is not limited to startups, his book is heavily oriented towards online and digital businesses or at least businesses with a serious software core.

Therefore, if you are not running such a business, you can find similar or more valuable ideas in the books classified under the design thinking category. Or in other words, if you are already familiar with design thinking principles, The Lean Startup will not have too much to teach you.

The Lean Startup Summary

There are many different summarized versions of The Lean Startup on the web. Kim Hartman’s summary is one the most accurate and useful summaries accessible for free. As this file is about 30 pages long, it’s more than a summary, and it could be called a synopsis of the lean startup.

You can download a PDF version of the summary either from his website or the link below (also available in ePub format):

The Lean Startup Summary (PDF)

The Lean Startup Summary (ePub)

Selected book reviews

10 Years Since ‘The Lean Startup’ (Forbes | Ryan Gray)

Book Review: The Lean Startup (Financial Times | Philip Delves Broughton)

Links for buying the book

The Lean Startup (Paperback) – Amazon

The Lean Startup (Audiobook) – Audible

The post The Lean Startup | Book Review & Summary appeared first on webmindset.

The lizard brain is commonly contrasted with the mouse and monkey brains. While the former represents the part of the human brain responsible for memory and emotion, the latter denotes the newer part of the brain, capable of complex cognitive functions and higher-order thinking.

The following diagram depicts this so-called triune model of the brain (+):

No matter how close to reality, this simplified divided model of the brain has been attractive for authors of management, psychology, and personal development books. For example, Seth Godin, the well-known business writer, has used the term extensively in his book Linchpin. Here are a few samples:

• Everyone has a little voice inside of their head that’s angry and afraid. The voice is the resistance, your lizard brain, and it wants you to be average (and safe).
• The lizard brain is hungry, scared, and horny.
• The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away.
• The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival.

John Medina, the author of the best-selling book Brain Rules, is also comfortable with using the term “lizard brain”:

Criticism of the model: lizard brain, mouse brain, and monkey brain

Lisa Feldman Barret, the well-known and respected neuroscientist, the author of various academic books, and chief editor of The Emotion Review journal, has criticised this model in simple words understandable for the non-technical audience.

In her book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, Barret describes the model as “one of the most successful and widespread errors in all of science.”

Look at the following passage from her book:

Barret tells the story behind this model and the way it got traction and survived till now. A physician named Paul MacLean has visually inspected the brains of lizards and mammals, including humans, and concluded that part of these brains is similar. He considered it as the old part, shaped in the early stages of evolution, and responsible for basic survival functions. In such a model, the human brain has extra parts sitting over this old brain, which evolved in later stages of evolution, responsible for complex cognitive functions.

But what’s the better description of the brain’s structure? Barret tells us that:

Why lizard’s brain is attractive to authors, coaches and mentors?

Most of the courses, classes and discussions about behavioral modification and emotion regulation revolve around a fundamental yet essential point: “You must monitor your first reactions and manage your impulses.” Or in other words: “Think twice before any judgment or doing anything.” This recommendation is crucial, and authors and coaches prefer to reinforce it with scientific evidence. Thus, instead of simply saying, “Beware of impulsive behavior,” they like to put it beside “scientific” pieces of evidence. Neuroscience is an attractive and persuasive term, and why not use these kinds of pseudo-neuroscientific descriptions as support for our recommendations?

Is it wrong to use this term? No. This simplified model can be helpful in teaching. The term lizard brain is much shorter and more understandable than “all fast emotional conservative automatic responses of the human brain.” But we have to remember and remind that we are not talking about the brain’s actual structure, and it’s just a metaphor.

The post The Meaning of Lizard Brain | Do we really have lizard and monkey brains? appeared first on webmindset.

The story of the Ship of Theseus

Before delving into details, let’s read the original version of the ship’s story as appeared in Plutarch’s book (+/+):

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”

The Pluratch’s story is the first known appearance of the Ship of Theseus’ Paradox or Theseus’ Boat as it is sometimes called. Let’s sum up the story:

The story of the Ship of Theseus illustrates various possibilities and paradoxes of identity over time and has attracted the attention of many great philosophers for centuries. Heraclitus, Plato, Hobbes, and Locke are among many thinkers who have discussed this story in one way or the other over the course of the last two millennia.

The second form of the Theseus Paradox

Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher of the 17th century, posed a new paradox based on this old story. We can call it the second form or the complicated variation of the paradox:

The second form of the paradox is more helpful in discussing the concept of identity. Thus in the rest of this article, we will stick to the second variation. Just to make it easier to refer, in the rest of the text, I’ll use the term voyaging ship to denote the ship that started the voyage and has the crew on it, and the term assembled ship for the other ship, the one built with old parts.

Importance of the Theseus Paradox

Identity is one of the concepts which many metaphysical models of the world rely on it. When you believe that every human has a never-changing identity, it seems more reasonable to have a dualistic view of humans: body and spirit.

The answer to the Ship of Theseus paradox

It’s hard, even impossible, to provide an answer to this paradox. First, I will show why it is hard to provide an answer. And then, I will describe why the question itself is problematic.

To discuss the paradox, it would be easier to quantify the case. Let’s suppose the voyaging ship has 1000 pranks, and on the voyage, they are changed one by one.

After changing the first prank, what do you think about the identity of the ship? Is the ship still Theseus’s Ship? Most probably, you would say yes. It’s still the same ship. If the side mirror of your car falls down or if you injure one of your fingers and the doctors amputate it, you are still the same person. In the same way, we may lose one tooth and implant a new one, and no one would believe that we have changed our identity.

The problem arises when we change most of the parts, e.g. 900 pranks or 950 pranks, and so. In this case, the paradox seems meaningful: Is the voyaging ship still the original ship?

Now we can put forth another question: exactly from which prank did Theseus’ Paradox become meaningful and relevant? 200th? 300th? 501th? 900th?

Here’s where a person with Wittgenstein’s worldview can give you an answer: The ambiguity does not come from the ships but from the question itself. We ask whether the current voyaging ship is the same as the original ship. And we forget that sameness has not a clear meaning in our case. We have taken out the word from our daily language and put it in a philosophical context (+). So the problem lies in the question itself. And we have just to ask ourselves: is sameness a meaningful term in such a context? It seems not.

A similar paradox in another world

If the Ship of Theseus is too far from your daily experiences and you feel you do not have any intuition about it, there’s a more approachable case. This case is brought up by Shane J. Ralston in KISS and the philosophy (I use my own story and narrative, but with the same essence).

Consider a music band named X consisting of four members. One of the members leaves the band and starts a separate band with another name. The first band finds a substitute for him and continues for a few years without losing popularity. After some conflict in the band, another member separates from the band and joins the band of the old friend. Over the course of a decade, the story happens two more times. Now we have the X band without the original members and a new band with another name but the original members. Which is the real X band?

Here, each member has their own identity, so the nature of this paradox is different from Theseus’ Paradox. But still, it gives you some feeling about the challenges around the identity concept. And the answer to this paradox is similar to the original paradox. It revolves around the meaninglessness of sameness.

Theseus and Ariadne, from ‘Game of Mythology’ (The Metropolitan Museum)

Questions & Answers

Was there a real ship called the Ship of Theseus? Where is the Ship of Theseus?

We don’t know the answer. As mentioned above, what we know about the ship comes from Plutarch’s book. You can find the original text in the archive of Tufts University or MIT’s classics archive. Thus regarding the whereabout of the ship, we can say, according to Plutarch, the ship was stored in a museum in Athens, and we have not any further information about its destiny.

Which term is correct: Theseus’ Paradox or Ship of Theseus?

In most books and articles, the following terms are used interchangeably: Theseus’ Paradox, Ship of Theseus, Theseus’ Boat, Paradox of Theseus, philosophical boat, Theseus Ship paradox, etc.

But in case you are sensitive to language delicacies, it’s better to use «Theseus’ Paradox» for the general paradox of identity continuity and consider «The Ship of Theseus» as one of the physical manifestations of the case. As you have seen in the KISS case above, this paradox can have various manifestations in different realms.

Does Theseus’ Paradox have any meaning or application in the age of technology?

Unlike many old stories and paradoxes that are irrelevant today, the Ship of Theseus Paradox is even more relevant to our contemporary challenges and concerns. Nowadays, the question of identity has just gotten more complicated: How does identity relate to change, augmentation, and enhancement? What does Theseus’ story have to tell about the challenges of post-humanism and trans-humanism?

What are the other articles worth reading regarding this paradox?

With a brief search on the web, you will find different versions of the paradox and various debates over it. Here are a few articles I’d recommend checking out:

• Identity over time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Relative Identity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• The Ship of Theseus (brain pickings)

The post The Ship of Theseus | A paradox about meaning of identity appeared first on webmindset.

Firstly, let’s begin by describing the distinction between replicate and duplicate. Afterward, we will address the most perplexing aspect: the meanings of reproduction and the differences between reproduction and replication.

Replicate vs. Duplicate

“Replicate” and “duplicate” are very similar in meaning and, in most cases, can be used interchangeably. However, “duplication” carries the nuance of copying, while “replication” is closer to recreating the same thing with a separate identity.

For example, when you make a copy of your license or obtain a second one after losing the original, you then have a duplicate of it in your hand. Similarly, when you read an argument in a book and republish it on social media, you are replicating the original content.

Here are a few examples of using “duplicate” (copy) in sentences:

– How do you duplicate a key? (Make a copy of your key)
– This application takes up too much space because it duplicates all the songs on my hard disk and stores them again in its directory.
– With the ever-increasing volume of data, duplicate detection is an essential feature in dataset management systems.

However, when you read a study and attempt to recreate it precisely in the same way, you are replicating it. It’s termed as replication because it maintains a separate and independent identity despite using the same methods and procedures. You are either confirming or refuting the original study with your replication study. Therefore, in this context, the research is being replicated and not duplicated.

Reproduce vs. Replicate | Examples from the IT & Software World

You can guess the difference if you are working in the information technology and network infrastructure field. There are hardware devices called replicators, whose function is to receive a data packet and deliver it elsewhere. The receiver collects packets in such a way that there’s virtually no way to spot the difference between the primary source and the replicator. Replicators, also available as software, are used for long-range data transmission.

Now let’s talk about reproduction. Again in the same context: software and information technology. You always hear from software developers that they are trying to reproduce a bug. What do they mean by that?

They mean that the user has faced a problem while working with the software. And although they don’t know the reason behind the problem, they play with the code and the interface, hoping that the problem will happen again and they can analyze and solve it.

So when we are talking about reproducing a bug, we are not going to make exactly the same problem again. There can be minor differences, and reproduction would still help detect the bug’s source.

Reproduction, in this sense, means the process of creating a very similar but not exact copy of something.

Having the above example in mind, now you understand why we say humans and animals can reproduce themselves. We don’t use the term replicate, as the children are not precise copies of their parents.

Let me restate the difference between replication and reproduction in other words:

In replication, outputs are exactly the same as the inputs but in reproduction, outputs are just similar to the inputs.

Here you can see a few examples of the word reproduce (process of building a similar copy) in different sentences:

• The concert will be reproduced on compact disc (It’s not the concert, but it’s a concert anyway)
• Let me reproduce that scene in my mind (It wouldn’t be the same scene, but very close to reality)
• Skin cells reproduce too quickly (Make new cells very similar to themselves)

Reproduction and Replication in Biology

Just imagine if every single cell was replicating itself or if all of the species were replicating themselves. There was not any kind of evolution on the planet: No change, No improvement, No growth, No chance for the emergence of the new species, No life!

As I have emphasized in the definition of the living entities:

But is the story as simple as it seems? Unfortunately not!

In the core of every living cell, RNAs just replicate themselves:

If there was not any minor error or mutation in replication at the lower levels, there was no chance for the emergence of reproduction in the higher levels. RNAs and cells are genderless. The concept of the gender just appears in the higher and more complex levels of the hierarchy as a trick to get more distance from replication and get closer to the reproduction.

Considering reproduction vs replication we can say every living entity has to find some way to get closer to the reproduction concept.

This is one of the reasons I am so optimistic about the social networks as a trick for making the cyberspace more alive. Comparing them with the printed content and even digital contents in the websites, social networks are more prone to human and technical errors in quotation and replication, which can move the digital world one step further from the simple mechanical replication process.

The post Replicate vs. Reproduce | The Difference Between Replication and Reproduction appeared first on webmindset.