As I was interviewing my old Yahoo crew for material for my book, I was simultaneously asked to read and review a book by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd called The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life.
It was an amazing coincidence because as I was interviewing, I realized that in many instances, there were several versions of what happened for a given moment in Yahoo history. These views were colored by peoples’ opinions about the various players, the order in which they thought events happened, and also by their own role in the particular situation, and their significance and contribution. As I gathered the information, I saw small and large contradictions in the stories I got. What a predicament!
My aim is to present an objective view of events. I do not want this part of the book to be sensationalist, but rather an objective view of what transpired and what worked well and what didn’t work so well. I also have no desire to present anyone in a negative light, because a lot of them are my friends and I respect them and the fact that they gave me information, and also that we were all learning about how to do business in an industry that was very young.
Somehow, I’ll have to find a way to combine all this seemingly contradictory info and make it all work.
At the same time, I found insight in the book I was reviewing, The Time Paradox. This book is an amazing look at how humans people have perceived time throughout history and in different cultures. It talks through relevant research on peoples’ perceptions on time and how it affects their lives. It also talked about something really relevant to my situation, which is the fact that as time goes on, our memories get super muddied and unclear. Sometimes we remember stuff that happened in ways that didn’t happen. Sometimes we even remember stuff that really didn’t happen!
In my intro, I will definitely put a disclaimer there saying I did my best to bring together and document the events that happened between 4 and 13 years ago. I know there will be errors and sometimes disagreements as to who did what and when and who should be given credit for what thing.
If I decide to self-publish, then I will definitely be able to tighten up the facts if someone were to present me with sufficient evidence that what I published was inaccurate. In any case, I think this is something that any historian has to contend with and it has been an interesting discovery on my part as I research and try to write the historical section of my book.