You Are A Munger

This is not a post about computer programming. It’s a post about you. Because you’re important.

There’s a term in the programmer’s world called “data munging.” It means “taking data from one computer system, manipulating it in some way, and passing it to another.”

Munging can mean manipulating raw data to achieve a final form. It can mean parsing or filtering data, or the many steps required for data recognition. Or it can be something as simple as converting hours worked plus pay rates into a salary cheque.

So how does munging relate to you?

Chances are, given how much information is streaming at us from every direction these days, that you yourself are a data munger. A human data munger.

Chances are that part of what you do every day is take some information, process it, and direct it to someone else.

And I don’t even mean in your occupation. How about in your non-work hours?

Do you…

• Find out about a sale or a bargain and drive your mother to the store?
• Read a good book and tell your friend about it?
• Learn how to do something online and email it to a friend?
• Find something interesting in the newspaper and fold the section open to the right page for your spouse?
• Learn a new fact about diet and pass it along to your exercise buddy?

You’re a node in a social network–but you’re more than that. You have the potential to add value to every piece of information that passes through your hands. How?

• By adding your insights, as through blogging or email.
• By filtering the information for what’s important, saving other people time.
• By learning how to do something and telling someone who needs to know.
• By assessing what you hear in the light of your own experience, and passing on your assessment with the information.
• By spurring other people to action or compassion through your sense of mercy or justice at what you learn.
• By abstaining from easy outrage or meaningless ridicule, passing along a view of the world that is better and finer than the raw data that you received.

You’re not only passing along information; you’re cultivating it; you’re making it better.

At least, I hope you’re making it better. There are destructive kinds of munging: gossip, malicious comments, misinformation. You could use what you know to hurt people, gain an unfair advantage, trample on the down and out. You could be an info virus in the machine of the world.

But I don’t think you’re like that.

So give yourself some time to reflect on the streams of data you receive today. Add the value of your insights, beliefs, feelings, and actions. Change the world for good.

And if a good new Mexican restaurant opens up around the corner, for goodness sake let me know.