Last week I was flattered by an invitation to be interviewed about my DIY approach to education. Nicole Veerman, Jim Saunders and Steve Howard from Wayne MacPhail‘s Online Journalism course at UWO went easy on me but I managed to flub most of it anyways. Between that conversation and the interview I had with Thomas Cermak from LondonFuse.ca [...]
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With so many people claiming to be social media experts we just as often hear “there are no social media experts.” There certainly are a lot of people who can generate a whole bunch of verbiage, but social media presents such an all-encompassing, massive and dynamic shift that the “social media expert” label makes about [...]
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During the weekend I spent some time writing yet another criticism of old media protectionism. I called it, “Because You Wouldn’t Go to a ‘Citizen Prostitute’ for Sex, Would You?”… this is the tame version. What so many protectionists miss is that telling stories and getting to the bottom of things are basic human motives [...]
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Another bit of a ramble (I love where it ends up), starting with this Time Q&A: TIME: How difficult was it to chart a history of a massive and diverse thing like blogging? Rosenberg: This is a phenomenon that starts small, then diversifies, then explodes at a certain point. At the small phase, it’s not that [...]
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I’ve been thinking about the pernicious effects of our overachievement society again, this time by way of Philip Delves Broughton (via NYTimes Opinionator), in a post called The McNamara Syndrome. The following is actually from the author’s book, Ahead of the Curve: One of the most famous alumni of Harvard’s MBA program is Robert McNamara, [...]
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Some time last week I realized I’ve made a turn towards a more “professional” mindset in my writing. They say “amateurs write for themselves, professionals write for others,” and until very recently I was doing it mostly for myself — which I unabashedly admitted. For me writing has mainly been simply the best way to think clearly. [...]
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I love this “essay on idling,” by Mark Kingwell, in this weekend’s Globe and Mail. For those who don’t know, Kingwell is Canada’s cool philosophy professor: media darling, sometime columnist (including a stint as the token progressive for the National Post), he writes for a popular audience on wide-ranging subjects (politics, happiness, architecture, booze), and is still [...]
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Continued from Our Society of Overachievers. I saw this in Robert Shiller’s latest Economic View piece for the New York Times: In short, Mr. Janis’s insights seem right on the mark. People compete for stature, and the ideas often just tag along. Presidential campaigns are no different. Candidates cannot try interesting and controversial new ideas [...]
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I noticed this article yesterday in the New York Times about marquee marathons that are in danger of becoming too popular. Funny: “You are a victim of what you accomplish,” Morse said. “We want to be as big as we can be without compromising the integrity of the event. There’s a breaking point, and you may not [...]
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Burying the Best and the Brightest
by OpenConceptual on 07-09-2009
in commentary
I’ve been thinking about the pernicious effects of our overachievement society again, this time by way of Philip Delves Broughton (via NYTimes Opinionator), in a post called The McNamara Syndrome. The following is actually from the author’s book, Ahead of the Curve: One of the most famous alumni of Harvard’s MBA program is Robert McNamara, [...]
Tagged as: best and the brightest, careers, creativity, education, leadership, learning, management, opportunity, overachievement, robert mcnamara, war, work
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