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Seth Godin again puts into words the thoughts I’ve been throwing around for a while.  His post “Why Celebrate Halloween?” addresses the influence of a crowd, or social network, on our beliefs.

We are influenced incredibly — not so much by facts — by those we trust.  Whether it is an author, a lecturer, a politician, an uncle, or a friend, much of what we believe is girded by experiences with those people and less on fact than we would admit.

Check it out:

• 10 days ago, our church began to use the Twitter hashtag #lifeteam in reference to our small groups.  You won’t see it in the top 10 trending lists, but it’s building momentum.

• About a month ago, @k75swartz and I decided to start using the hashtag #ccpl for Calloway County Public Library.  No, you won’t see that one either on Tweetmeme.

• @TheEpicJourney just started a new series called Remember — I’ve been using the hash #remember, but that hashtag has already been used quite a bit, but not for the same idea.  But, you probably haven’t heard of that one either.

You may not have heard of any of these — and you may not care about hashtags and Twitter, but there is a community building around these ideas.  A local Twittering community.  And, that’s what matters to me.

Haven’t heard of it?  Check it out. Google Voice is one of the newest additions to the Google WonderApps.  In the wake of Google Wave’s beta release, Google Voice makes a quiet yet clearly audible entrance, but leaves many questions about its practicality.

The versatile web app offers such practical features as call recording, phone routing, voicemail transcripts to your email, and personalized greetings for groups of people in your contacts — yes, your contacts that are already in your Gmail!  I got my invitation to Google Voice a few days ago, and I’ve set up my new Google Voice number.  I’ve made a few “practice” calls to my wife’s cell phone, and it worked flawlessly.  I was able to record a conversation, and a few seconds later, I played the audio back from my Google Voice inbox.  I also tried out the voicemail transcript, but didn’t get great results.  The text was nowhere near what I said, so they’ve got some work to do on that.  But, that would be a very handy feauture if I were trapped in a meeting and couldn’t answer a call.  I could check the message transcript, and even reply by SMS from Google Voice.

My biggest question so far is this:  how can I leverage this to my advantage?  Google Voice does offer free calls to anyone in the US through their system, so if I run out of minutes on my cell plan, I could still make calls through Google Voice for free, right?  But, again, I’m already paying for a cell plan.  Do I drop my cell plan to lower minutes and route all my calls through Google Voice?  Or, am I using up minutes as I call through Google Voice, making the whole service a bit useless?

They also offer competitive international calling rates, as low as $.02 minute to Great Britain.   But why not just use Google Video chat?  I know if I had family in another country, I’m not going to be paying $.02 a minute for a voice call when I can get a video call for free.

And, they offer the ability to send and receive SMS in the Google Voice web app.  If you’re at your computer, you can still text and chat with friends all night long.  But, what does that really offer me?  I can’t really carry my laptop with me and text on the go, so how is this service useful?

So, I’m very torn here.  Perhaps Google Voice is just the next step to proving to us all the very clear fact that our cell companies are screwing us.  Internet-based calling is cheap and easy and reliable.  Cell phone companies, take note.  You may have a very limited life-span.  Think about what will happen to your service when broadband internet access is nationwide.  The cell network will lose to services like Google Voice in a snap.

In the meantime, I still think it’s cool.

What do you teach a son so he becomes a man? Not a broken man or a man with a strong facade, but a real, fight-for-what’s-right man?

How much do you challenge? How much do you give?

There is only one kind of disbelief.

Disbelief stems from distrust.

Perhaps at one time in history, people read the newspaper and the facts and made decisions.  But not anymore.  We’re so much like the people Ray Bradbury describes in my favorite novel, Fahrenheit 451.  “Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.”  We can find facts to support whatever we believe.  Our world is full of facts.  Facts are in abundance.  But these facts don’t influence us much anymore, really.

We are confronted by the facts of our diet and lack of exercise.  But we don’t change our lifestyle.  We look the facts of our spending habits right in the face, and keep throwing money around that we don’t have.  We are continually told by experts that much of our productivity and creativity comes after a good night’s rest, but here I am writing this late at night, instead of just going to bed.  Why?

I don’t really believe the facts.  If I did, I’d change, right?  It’s not much of a belief if it doesn’t affect the way you live.

There’s only one kind of disbelief.  Disbelief stems from distrust.

So many of the facts just aren’t believable anymore.  Not necessarily because someone is manipulating them or lying but because there are just too many facts to consider.  And if we can’t find a good way of judging the validity of those facts against one another, then we lump them all together in one pile — and mark them untrustworthy. Or, we match them up with the facts we already trust, and mark them believable.

It doesn’t matter how you slice it, all of your beliefs are based on trust.  You trust something or somebody more than you trust the other something or somebody that is saying something differently.

You will not find belief in what you cannot find trust.

I’m a Google Freak.  I should probably start a club.  My friends often laugh at me when I start talking Google, and I laugh a with to avoid seeming too weird.

But secretly, I’m laughing at them for not realizing how easy Google could make their lives.

In fact, I’m becoming such a fan of what Google does and why they do it, that I’m close to making a huge decision.  But let me back  up a second.

I’m an iPhone/iPod Touch Freak.  I’ve had an iPod Touch for a year now, and I’m still just as much in love with it as the first day I got it.  It is infinitely interesting because you can always add a new app or reorganize or add new music.  It is the ultimate in personal technology.  And, the iPhone is just short of perfect (the monthly bill is enough to keep me away from it).  However, I still find myself wanting an iPhone.  Why?

It represents freedom.  Internet, maps, document, movies, music, calendar, text, camera, video, and more.  All with you and accessible from anywhere.

That’s attractive to me.  But, I’m very close to giving up the iPhone dream in exchange for a new one.

What if I just went Google?  Why not throw in my chips with Google completely.  Stop drawing the line at my laptop, and stepping into the world of mobile Google altogether.  Instead, what if I got a phone that runs Android and explored the world of Google?

I’m about ……… this ……… close.