“What is dumbing so many people down?” asks Henry Mintzberg. His explanations 1 and 2 [quote below with my emphasis added] resonate with me, as I have promoted the idea that we need to connect our work, our communities, and our networks to make sense by engaging with people and ideas. The core of this is…
Posts Categorized: Communities
nineteen years of blogging
“A knowledge worker is someone who’s job is having really interesting conversations at work.” —Rick Levine (1999) The Cluetrain Manifesto [and that’s what blogging lets you do, from anywhere] Today marks my 19th anniversary of blogging here. This post is #3,566. I note that on my 5th anniversary I mentioned that I had started ‘micro-blogging’… Read more »
the tragedy of stories
What is the Tragedy of the Commons? In economics and in an ecological context, the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use, act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary… Read more »
there is a crack in everything
As the pandemic emerged in 2020 I sought credible information and advice first from institutions and authorities and later from a network of expertise — encouraged to do-your-own-research — in view of growing misinformation and disinformation, even from authorities like the CDC and WHO. I am not the only person to turn to a networked… Read more »
platform collapse
The robber barons of the 21st century are the platform owners. They have combined the power of network effects with a 20th century corporate capitalist, winner-takes-all approach. Amazon is choking the book publishing industry, Google is dominating advertising, and telecommunications companies are using their control of the pipes to directly compete with service providers. Now… Read more »
exit left authoritarian father figure
John Batelle notes that many of the thousands of people who were fired from or have left Twitter after Musk’s purchase of the company were women. He provides links to the profiles of 17 of these women. “Twitter was probably the most intentionally open, accommodating, and thoughtful work culture the Valley has ever produced at… Read more »
culture eats sanity for breakfast
Last year I came across a book — All for Nothing — about the collapse of the German Army in Prussia during the Second World War. It is written from the perspective of a young boy and the characters are mostly civilians. My mother, as a young girl, lived through this. People in the book… Read more »
“warts and all”
Helen Blunden is the inaugural winner of the ITA Jay Cross Award (2016). Jay had a significant influence on my life and it was sad to say farewell in 2015. Helen’s latest blog post in many ways reflects some of the challenges that Jay faced. He was outside the mainstream. Jay was constantly shifting his… Read more »
better stories for a better world
“Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following.” —The… Read more »
community sensemaking
We had a great conversation today for our monthly Zoom call with the perpetual beta coffee club. We had folks on the call from Japan, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, USA, Canada, and Spain. The diversity of perspectives really adds to our collective understanding, especially since this is a trusted space amongst peers. A… Read more »
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