By way of my friend and colleague Espen Andersen. I’ve found that I’ve already used this story in several conversations and that I find myself mulling it over regularly in recent days.
The Edge question this year is "How has the Internet changed the way you think?". The result is eminently readable – my [...]
Here’s a pointer to an excellent interview with Alan Kay. As always, Alan shares some deep insights about technology innovation and the willingness to take on risk (he’s not confident in the ability of most organizations to tolerate risk no matter how small the level of funding involved).
Anyone with an interest in the continuing role [...]
Tech Support Cheat Sheet Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:00:00 GMT
There’s a striking amount of wisdom and good advice packed into this flowchart. It’s not about the body of knowledge stored away in your head. It’s about a robust strategy for generating and testing ideas that are likely to be productive.
What puzzles [...]
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of curiosity. Wanting to know how things work or what’s around the next corner is fundamental to being human. I’ve come across two video clips that illustrate the power of this far better than I can.
The first is a clip by the late Nobel prize winning physicist Richard [...]
I found this wonderful piece from the late Isaac Asimov in Dan Ariely’s excellent Predictably Irrational blog.
Here is what Asimov had to say about believing in data… "Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? [...]
1000 Times Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:00:00 GMT
We live in complicated times. We’re all trying to make sense of what is going on. That sense making isn’t made any easier by lazy writing and thinking. Actually, I don’t think this is a matter of deliberate efforts to mislead [...]
Tagged BIEat, Pray, Love is not the sort of book that I’m likely to pick up despite its tremendous success. Nevertheless, this TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, its author, is an excellent rumination and reflection on choosing the most effective emotional relationship between creativity and work. In a nutshell, the Greeks had it right in their [...]
Tagged creativity, Elizabeth Gilbert, TEDBrain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School, Medina, John
John Medina is a molecular biologist bent on sharing how what we know about the brain can help us be more effective in the world at large. His central argument is that there are simple, but very important, lessons to [...]
What a great way to start off a St. Patrick’s Day. This is certainly worth 20 minutes of your life. As someone inclined to spend entirely too much of my time inside the left-hemisphere of my brain, I found this especially affecting.
Stroke of insight: Jill Bolte Taylor on TED.com
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few [...]
Espen reminded me of the following passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a wonderfully succinct description of the scientific method and its power to protect us from the risks of wishful thinking when problems call for discipline. We used to use this passage as a piece of our basic training [...]
