The current “noise” about whether President Obama was really born in the United States may seem a view from the lunatic fringe, but we have long been captive to various urban myths, like the Satanic symbolism in a corporate logo or spider eggs in bubble gum.  It makes one wonder, how come?

In an interview this month on NPR, Princeton neuroscience professor Sam Wang, co-author of  “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life,” offered three reasons why we might believe things that just aren’t true.

According to Professor Wang, we know things — like the capital of Wisconsin — but we don’t always remember where we first heard it.  “As we recall things,” he said,”it’s currently believed that we rewrite them a little bit so that we gradually separate a fact from context.”  He called it “source amnesia.”

And when we begin not with fact — Madison! — but with fiction, things can roll down hill even faster.  There is “biased assimilation” which causes us to accept statements, true or not, that align with beliefs and “we tend to question or be more critical or even reject statements that don’t fit with our beliefs.”

Getting people — as voters, consumers or parents — to act differently may not only be about the facts they are given, but the way they get them and how those facts are reinforced.

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Plug the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 30,491 results.  That’s up from the last report, driven by events like the Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Microsoft’s launch of Office 2010 and the Major League Baseball All-Star game.

Truly interesting was this bit of advice from an employment blog from Canada’s National Post:

“When networking and interviewing, use any personal information you find about others carefully. If you choose to use personal informaiton about someone, make sure the context is appropriate.  Remember that old saying: Its not how much you know, but what you do with the information that counts.”

The same advice holds for companies, institutions and officials who seek to advocate for a product, plan or point-of-view.

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The flurry of comment and attention this week to Matthew Robson’s “How Teenagers Consume Media” reminded me of a scene in a movie I once saw.

It was the Beatles 1964 film, “A Hard Day’s Night.” And the scene includes a line of dialog that could be said of Mr. Robson.  It is spoken by the assistant to the marketing director for a line of clothing aimed at teenagers.  The pair mistook George Harrison for a model sent by an agency and asked him his opinion of some shirts.

“They’re grotty,” George says.  “Grotty?”  “Yeah, grotesque.”  The marketing director takes offense and sends Harrison packing, then, in a moment of self-doubt asks, “You don’t think he’s a new phenomenon, do you?”  The assistant replies, “You mean an early clue to the new direction”?

I do not mean to discount the discounting of Twitter in Robson’s analysis and I hope that Matthew has a career as long and successful as Harrison and his mates.  But noting that teenagers will swap new stuff for newer, cooler stuff and that they are reluctant to spend money for the privilege doesn’t feel like new information.

The attention given the report is likely powered more by the uncertainty faced by the companies courting those teenagers.  But our time might be better spent focusing on what has not changed about teens in the last 45 years — the contradictions that drive adoption.

Now, as then, teenagers are anxious to stake out their own territory and belong to a group; they are keen to know first what’s new, but willing to share it fast in their circle; and no matter how bleak the rest of us can make the future seem, they intend to be around long into it.

The companies whose products support, aid and encourage these qualities will do well.  Those that don’t will have to rely on the rest of us to get by.  Ultimately,what Matthew Robson may have captured in his analysis is not so much a snapshot as much it is a frame from a film — building on previous images but moving the story toward an end not yet written.

This is no epitaph, but an opportunity.  As Timbuk3 so eloquently put it at the mid-way point between Harrison and Robson, my future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

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Word came recently of the apparent death of Phorm, a UK-based consortium of ISPs seeking to deliver over their networks behavioral targeted — or BT — advertising.  In a mild bit of irony, reports of the death of BT came in the form of an announcement by BT — British Telecom.  Last week, the giant telco backed out of its intention to launch the technology.

Phorm is following not so much function but NebuAd, another company seeking to offer BT to networks.  NebuAd closed its doors it May.  The move came after Congress began an inquiry into the technology, spurred on by consumer advocates who successfully argued that the technology was being rolled out without consumer consent and in violation of their privacy.

The Center for Democracy and Technology told Congress: “In recent years, however, massive growth in data processing power has spurred the development of new ‘deep packet inspection’ (DPI) technologies thatpotentially allow Internet service providers (ISPs) and other intermediaries to analyze all of the Internet traffic of millions of users simultaneously. The use of DPI technology, though still in somewhat limited deployment, raises profound questions about the future of privacy, openness, and innovation online.”

That specter, not any measureable reality, became the tsunami that overwhelmed NebuAd and Phorm.

What could they have done?  And, in light of the investment media and other companies are making, spending as much as $22 million per year,  to address privacy concerns (read: liability), how can you prevent what ought to be a competitive edge — that commitment to privacy — from turning into a market problem?

One answer may be in the fact that BT and other intrusive technologies are seen only as being to the advantage of the advertiser.  Strategically, companies instead need to create and communicate value for consumers.  Tactically, this might be a rebate, a lower cost of service, more control or advertising that is so relevant, it becomes content.

Ad Age’s Bob Garfield said in his 2007 market-changing Chaos Scenario 2.0, “people don’t like ads, but they crave content.”  While BT is one way to deliver more relevant advertising, without engaging consumers in the Phormula (bad pun, I know) such technologies, and the companies who deploy them, may get no further than Capitol Hill or Brussels or wherever legislators act on behalf of their constituents.

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Type the word “context” into the Google News search box today and you’ll get 28,829 results.

The impending Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a key driver this week, as were the Independence Day weekend announcement by soon-to-be-ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the Obama/Medvedev summit in Russia.

The number of results had been holding steady in recent weeks at about 32,000, but the 10 percent drop this week may not mean less emphasis on the value of context, but its unspoken inclusion in ever-widening set of human, industrial and political issues.  Health care reform has not yet taken center stage, but it is unlikely that it will compete in the near term with the stories of the McNair homicide and the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center in LA.

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The shooting deaths of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi in Nashville early Saturday morning were far more startling than the death days earlier of Michael Jackson.  In context, the King of Pop had long lived a life outside the lines.  The former All-Pro quarterback of the Tennessee Titans had lived well, literally, inside the lines.

McNair’s toughness earned him the respect of his teammates, his commitment earned him the gratitude of his community and the stability of his family made him the envy of people who didn’t follow football.  In a single moment, though, on Saturday morning, that “story” of his life came undone.   The context in which we knew McNair, which we now know was only a partial construction, no longer made sense.

Sports Illustrated’s Don Banks put a finger on the sometimes tenuous link between what we think and reality:  “As McNair’s grisly murder reminded us again over this holiday weekend, the truth is we don’t know (athletes) anywhere near as well as we presume, and our conclusions can often be exposed as woefully uninformed.”

It is not just athletes we don’t know as well as we think.  Politicians (from Vitter to Spitzer to Sanford) and financial wizards (in a line from Greenberg to Thain to Madoff) get the lion’s share of the headlines, but as Garrison Keillor once wrote in an Op Ed in the New York Times, the grandest public monuments are financed as penance.

McNair’s death is a reminder that our adoration (as fans), our participation (as citizens) and our endorsement (as consumers) cannot be given lightly or only once for all time.  They rightly need to be constantly tested and re-evaluated.   This is easy to do thanks to the growing digital web of information available, but it is not easily done.

As we have come to hear in recent reports, the relationship was a secret out in the open.  TMZ has pictures of the two on a vacation,  Kazemi’s nephew had a long story to tell of how his aunt thought she and McNair had a future and neighbors at the condominium where the shooting occurred saw the two often enough to know.

Yet even in the face of contrary evidence, it is hard to discard a story we have come to believe.

McNair’s former Titans head coach Jeff Fisher is a case in point.  This is from a Bloomberg story: “Detectives also said they had been told that McNair, who was married with four children, had been dating Kazemi for the past several months.  Fisher said he decided to focus his initial comments on what McNair would have liked him to say, speaking to McNair’s family and seeking to move past his former player’s imperfections.”

It will serve no purpose to ignore what we know and will come to know, but it would be wrong merely to swap the old context for the new story.  Both are true.  And the story that tells only part of the truth is no story at all, whether for individual, institution or company.  It is an alibi.

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