IdeaFestival

Google's non-search business: human resources strategy?

Bruno Giussani at Lunch over IP suggests that Google's non-search business is in part a human resources strategy designed to keep some awfully bright employees engaged.

Wayne

Wealth of networks: peer or price produced?

Responding to points made by Nicholas Carr, Yochai Benkler makes a bet on whether two years from now "the most influential web sites" in a given category are peer or price produced.

Benkler gets to the bottom line here:

There is an abiding skepticism, born of many years in the industrial age, about the sustainability and plausibility of nonmarket-based cooperation and productive collaboration. We have now, on the other hand, almost two decades of literature in experimental economics, game theory, anthropology, political science field studies, that shows that cooperation in fact does happen much more often than the standard economics textbooks predict, and that under certain structural conditions non-price-based production is extraordinarily robust.

There is some good give and take in the comments section of the post.

This one will be interesting to watch.

Wayne

People! Who needs 'em?

Knowledge@Wharton is out with a couple of articles on the X-factor at work, relationships.

The mindset we bring from home affects the day's work performance more profoundly than developments on the job. It's a dynamic that organizations don't take seriously enough. Secondly, broken trust at work is hard to restore, particularly when co-worker deception is involved.

In both cases, obvious work and organizational performance penalties apply.

Wayne

Moved to think

Science Blog reports on a new study that demonstrates while people may feel empathy for those in distress, they are more likely to help the person if he or she is part of their group.

What can I learn from this?

One, it's old news. And I'm guilty. But if methodology makes meaning, I'll play along. Should you find me in need along the side of the road, please don't pass me buy. Love me for my left prefrontal cortex.

Wayne

Number by color

Via Johnnie Moore here is a lovely story on a mathematical savant who computes in color.

Like Johnnie, the philosophical question grabs me. Namely: whence knowing?

Of late I've been reading some of cognitive psychologist Alison Gopnik's material describing the role of causality in learning. From her work with children she believes that we learn by mapping causal relationships, not by categorizing similarities. As she describes in this paper, it's causality that permits us to distinguish between a snake and water hose. Both may appear similar, but only one may bite. The other will not. 

I thought of that when reading how numbers affect Daniel Tammet. Then there is this touching conclusion to the Guardian story:

'I do love numbers,' he says. 'It isn't only an intellectual or aloof thing that I do. I really feel that there is an emotional attachment, a caring for numbers. I think this is a human thing - in the same way that a poet humanises a river or a tree through metaphor, my world gives me a sense of numbers as personal. It sounds silly, but numbers are my friends.'

And GK Chesterton? Savant?

Thanks Johnnie for the link.

Wayne

Geek. Proud.

Marketer and social media mogul Steve Rubel was one of the first bloggers to really make clear to me that the whole blogging, syndicating, shared media fuss meant one thing: I owned the presses. Rubel really loves conversational media and it shows, providing an endless stream of little tips that have helped me navigate the digital landscape.

Check out Monday's post embracing your inner geek.

Wayne

Learning, doing, same mental process

The Seed magazine article "How we know" illustrates that to a remarkable degree that we understand by doing.

The human mind understands the world by interacting with it. When we see an inanimate object that we are familiar with, our mirror neurons instinctively imagine what they could do with that object. A tennis racquet causes our cells to imagine swinging it; a violin causes our cells to imagine playing it.... A separate brain imaging study has shown that our mirror neurons can even be activated by the sound of words. When we say "tennis" or "violin" or "algebra," cells in our motor cortex automatically get excited.

Helpful. But this sentence nails the idea for me:

From the perspective of our brain, learning and doing are just two different verbs that refer to the same mental process.

Wayne

Technorati: neuroscience, cognition

No media, please

New York University associate professor of journalism and PressThink blogger Jay Rosen has announced an open source journalism project. NewsAssignment.net will work the news long tail, matching stories with writers.

Rosen calls the project "journalism without the media."

Wayne

Technorati Tags: newsassignment.net, journalism, media

I'll be happy later

Having provided a link (top right of the IF blog) to a TED book recommendation - Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness" - I took a little side trip over to Amazon to read the reviews.

I found Malcolm Gladwell plugging the book. He says that given the amount of time we devote to weighing different futures in our heads in an attempt to be happy,

why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

Gladwell calls the book a psychological detective story about one of life's great mysteries. And he and Chris Anderson at TEDblog both call Daniel Gilbert a gifted and funny writer.

I'll just call the book sold.

Wayne

"Global philanthropic superpower"

Comparing its budget to the entire budget of the United Nations, Bruno Giussani calls the Gates Foundation the first global philanthropic superpower. This kind of apolitical wealth is a new development in history. The interplay between mega philanthropies and the world's government institutions, many of which are hardly in a position to put that much money to good use, will be interesting.

Wayne

Technorati Tags: philanthropy