Back in the early 1970s, I wrote a talking blues. I had gotten to be a halfway decent picker, and I managed to record the song acceptably, I thought. My old friend Andy Abbott was passing through town, and we sat down with a couple of Manhattans to listen to it: Talking Thomas Edison Back […]
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” –Edward Abbey Trees grow tall and deep, with their roots often connecting in complex systems that are among the Earth’s largest organisms. These forests can grow in the alpine for thousands of years, quietly quaking in the breeze and withstanding the most
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I remember the moment I learned that teachers get no respect anymore. “So what are you going to do to help him, Mr. Parent?” asked the mother of a student failing my eighth grade physical science class. My principal then repeated the question, leading to my stunned silence. The child failed my class because he didn’t
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In the article “You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot and Sooner than You Think,” Kevin Drum warns that extreme unemployment is probable within the next forty years. He begins his argument by placing all jobs into four categories: routine physical, routine cognitive, nonroutine physical, and nonroutine cognitive. Many leaders in the field are
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The definition of the term “singularity” varies depending on discipline. For instance, a singularity can be a location where the curvature of space-time becomes infinite and therefore ceases to have any meaning, at least in a measurable sense based on the laws of physics. In this context, there might not be such a thing as
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In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell offers a curious definition of what most people consider to be satisfying work: “Those three things — autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how
Malcolm Gladwell, Happy Assumptions, and the True Nature of Work Read More »