Albert Camus was an original thinker whose perspectives on life started many back in the mid 20th century.
This quote (that I took from Tim Ferriss) will get you thinking
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.”— Albert Camus
While humanity may be headed into the “knowledge driven economy” in the 21st century, we are still a bit foggy about how innovation happens. By that I do not mean how do we produce really, really , really smart people who come up with great ideas. Instead, I am talking about the institutional array that promotes innovation on a systematic basis.
This presentation by noted economist and VC Bill Janeway at Princeton a few years ago addresses that issue. It is a bit dense, but Bill brings out a core point: how society organizes itself to produce innovation matters.
From Digital Tonto (I posted on this yesterday as well)
Here is the link. The heading
Bottom line”
“… every enterprise needs a vision, but a vision is meaningless without the ability to achieve it. That takes more than a lot of fancy talk, it requires the guts to see the world as it really is and still have the courage to try to change it.”
Right on, dude!
Here is the link from NYT . The Theading
A memoent of sanity
“… t there are many things we can and should do to make our society better. Doing more to help families with children — with financial aid, better health care and access to day care — is at or near the top of the list. The point, by the way, isn’t to encourage people to have more kids — that’s up to them — but to improve the lives of the children themselves, so that they grow up to become healthier, more productive adults.”
But
“On the other hand, yelling at members of the elite over their personal life decisions isn’t on the list at all. And when that’s all a politician does, it’s a sign of intellectual and perhaps moral bankruptcy.”
Anne has just come out with a new book (and I plugged it on this blog the other day). And to get a sense whether you want to read the book. you might read her article in The Atlantic entitled “History Will Judge the Complicit”.
It is long and it is well written. You may not agree with it, but whether you do or not, it is worth thinking about.
Go for it!
Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992) wrote or edited over 500 books. He was also a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was born in Russia and came to America when he was three years old. To say that he was unusually precocious is an understatement.
Here he is talking about his desire to spread the gospel of rationality. This is a thread that Steve Pinker and others have been advancing in our own day. Enjoy!
I have not thought through Al Wenger’s proposals, but they are intriguing.
Thanks to Marju for sharing the link below!
The idea is so simple that you might first think that it must be wrong. Addiction is just a symptom of being alone? Of not being able to tolerate on your own what life has thrown at you?
If that is true, we need to re-think quite a lot of things about how we deal with addicts (and the so-called “war on drugs”). Not only that, we need to re-think how we can better connect.
Check out this very cool TED Talk by Johan Hari to get deeper into this really cool subject. Enjoy!
Buzzography 