[Ok, so I knew I’d bookmarked this before https://pinboard.in/u:robertogreco/b:cdbab9e1853e
but I am keeping it here anyway ]

“When I express any shred of doubt about whether I deserve or am qualified for something, people often try to reassure me that I am just experiencing impostor syndrome. About 10% of the time, it’s true. Amelia Greenhall’s excellent piece, however, has inspired me to clear up a big misconception about what is happening the other 90% of the time.

While there are a few situations that make me feel insecure, I am, for the most part, an excellent judge of what I’m capable of. Expressing a reasonable amount of doubt and concern about a situation that is slightly outside my comfort zone is normal, responsible behavior. Understanding my limits and being willing to acknowledge them is, in fact, one of my strengths. I don’t think it should be pathologized alongside the very real problem of “impostor syndrome”.

In fact, it is the opposite behavior—the belief that you can do anything, including things you are blatantly not qualified for or straight up lying about—should be pathologized. It has many names (Dunning-Krueger, illusory superiority), but I suggest we call it blowhard syndrome as a neat parallel. Blowhard syndrome is all around us, but I have a special fondness in my heart for the example my friend Nicole has taxidermied on her Twitter profile.

Just to be clear, I’m not mad at anyone who has tried to reassure me by telling me I have impostor syndrome, and I recognize it as a real problem that lots of talented people struggle with. But I am furious at a world in which women and POC are being told to be as self-confident as a group of mostly white dudes who are basically delusional megalomaniacs. We’re great the way we are, level-headed self-assessments and all. Stop rewarding them for being jackasses.

My totally reasonable amount of self-confidence is not a syndrome; dudes’ bloated senses of self-worth and the expectations we’ve built around them are. Correct accordingly.”

"On March 18, 2004, Katamari Damacy was released on the PlayStation 2. The game was unlike anything else, and a sequel soon followed a year later. In 2009, Katamari’s creator Keita Takahashi released Noby Noby Boy. A year later, he left Bandai Namco and shortly after that, Japan as well.

I’d always wondered why Takahashi up and left Japan, moving first to Canada and then to the United States. As someone who left his own home country to live abroad, I could understand the desire to reside elsewhere. But why would the man behind one of the most important Japanese games of the 21st century leave the Japanese game industry? (CORRECTION 2:55 pm ET: The previous sentence originally said 20th century. Sadly, Katamari did not exist back then.)

During this year’s BitSummit in Kyoto, I asked Takahashi about his decision and about his experiences as an expat. Even though Takahashi speaks quite good English, he and I conversed in Japanese. Takahashi’s manner was relaxed. His sense of humor was dry and refreshingly blunt. Below are excerpts from that conversation.

“After I left Namco, I got an offer in Vancouver, asking if I wanted to work on an online game called Glitch,” Takahashi said. “I thought there was no reason for me not to go.”

Glitch was a 2D browser game that was launched on September 27, 2011, but shuttered a year later in December 2012. According to Takahashi, the game’s developer, Tiny Speck, started focusing more on a real-time collaboration platform that would ultimately become Slack. Tiny Speck has since been renamed Slack Technologies.

Didn’t you think of getting on the Slack team?

“There’d be nothing for me to do, right?,” Takahashi laughed, “I’m a game designer.”



With the project over, Takahashi decided not to return to Japan, but instead move to the US and began work on Wattam. It is slated for release on the PS4 this year.

When you move to a different country, your ideas of what’s typical, standard or even normal are challenged on a regular basis. It’s not just the food or the language, but the deeper you go into a culture, further differences await that strike at the core of your newfound home.

Now living in San Fransisco, Takahashi mentioned how his son goes to the local school. The experience is not only new for his son, but also for Takahashi. It’s a grade school experience that is vastly different from the one Takahashi had as a child: Kids in America doesn’t carry randoseru like in Japan and aren’t required to learn specific kanji characters each year.

Of course, the United States is different, but with another frame of reference for comparison, those variations are fascinating. And Takahashi seems to enjoy the gaps that exist between the two cultures as well as the universality that joins us all as humans.

“I often wonder why America and Japan were so different,” Takahashi said. “Why are they so different? They are different.”

“Take the YouTube clips of the Kingdom Hearts III reveal,” he continued. “I don’t know if they’re staged or not, but the reactions among Americans are so happy. There is really isn’t anything quite like that in Japan—maybe, just one percent of the reactions in Japan was like that.”

“Americans have much more confidence than Japanese people do. I always wonder where that comes from.”

It’s a mystery, I said.

“I don’t know if this is good or bad, but Japanese people seem to lack self-confidence or are worried about what others think,” said Takahashi.

Of course, I said, Japanese people have confidence in themselves, but they just don’t show that to others.

“I think so, too,” he said. “I guess it’s the differences in the cultures. In America, the teachers don’t get mad, unless the kid is really bad. They praise the children to help them develop. They have so much respect for each individual child. So I think this kind of education has a big impact on society.”



These differences manifest themselves in how people live and work.

“In America and Canada, people really put a clear separation between their work lives and their private lives.”

People in Japan say they often feel compelled to be at the office, even when their work is done to keep up the appearance of work.

“The amount of hours people work in the game industry in Japan and the US is totally different. Of course, the hours are longer in Japan.”

When Takahashi was at Namco, he said he was always working, even during the New Year’s holidays, when the entire country is on vacation.

That’s no good, I said.

“No good at all.”

When did you leave Namco?

“When I made Katamari, I was able to go abroad and everyone liked the game, and I was shown all these games that people made. I could really feel their passion, which I did not feel at all from the people at Namco.”

A passion for game creation?

“Right. They love games and so they make them. So, why do I have to make games for these Namco folks who thinking about money? It was a waste of time. The world is so big. I thought I could make different games. That was the biggest reason.”

So, I guess Namco thinks more about games as product?

“When they merged with Bandai...” The two companies merged in 2006, with Bandai bringing a whole host of IP licenses, like Gundam.

And then, was there less creativity?

“Yeah, and there was internal politics, too. It was all a pain to deal with.”

After all these years outside Japan, I asked Takahashi if he ever planned to return to Japan.

“If I returned to Japan, I don’t think I’d be able to find work.”

Wait. What? No. The guy created Katamari Damacy. Surely he could get a job at a Japanese game company.

Takahashi isn’t convinced. “There would be nowhere I could get work, right? Where could I get a job if I returned to Japan?”

Anywhere, I said. He could work in design, art and a whole variety of fields.

“I don’t think it would be possible,” Takahashi said.

You really should have more self-confidence!

“I don’t have any,” Takahashi replied with a laugh. “I think I’m someone who sticks out from the herd, I have a distinct style and I make games that reflect that. So the moment I quit Namco, I thought I wouldn’t be able to work for a big company in Japan again.”

The decision to leave Bandai Namco was brave but leaving Japan was even more courageous. It’s hard leaving your home country, working in a new environment, navigating a different language and culture. But doing so leads to self-reflection about oneself. Your outlook expands, you learn and you grow. Hopefully. But it can be an uneasy decision to take that big first step.

I asked him if he was worried when he quit Namco.

“Yeah...”

About how it would turn out? I asked.

“I was unsure,” he said. “but I knew that the only option I had was to continue moving forward.” And to do that, he had no choice but to leave."

"Proponents of standardized testing and privatization in education have sought to prove their effectiveness in improving education with an abundance of evidence. These efforts, however, can have dangerous side effects, causing long-lasting damage to children, teachers, and schools. Yong Zhao, Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas, will argue that education interventions are like medical products: They can have serious, sometimes detrimental, side effects while also providing cures. Using standardized testing and privatization as examples, Zhao, author of the internationally bestselling Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World, will talk about his new book on why and how pursuing a narrow set of short-term outcomes causes irreparable harm in education."

"But a distinctly Norweigan rule for their youth sports may strike a particular chord with many Americans. (This one included: I’m a youth sports parent, and wrote a TIME cover story on the booming kid sports industry last summer).

Ovrebo says that in Norway, organized youth sports teams cannot keep score until they are 13. “We want to leave the kids alone,” says Ovrebo. “We want them to play. We want them to develop, and be focused on social skills. They learn a lot from sports. They learn a lot from playing. They learn a lot from not being anxious. They learn a lot from not being counted. They learn a lot from not being judged. And they feel better. And they tend to stay on for longer.”"

"As readers of this blog well know, Project Based Learning is a hot topic in education these days. The progressive teaching method is being touted as one of the best ways to engage 21st-century students and develop a deeper understanding of content as well as build success skills such as critical thinking/problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and self-management.

At the Buck Institute for Education, we think PBL is even more than that; it can be absolutely transformative for students who experience enough high-quality PBL in their K-12 years. They gain not only understanding and success skills but also confidence in their ability as independent learners and a greater sense of their own efficacy and power.

PBL is transformative for teachers and schools, too, as they create real-world connections to learning, change school culture, and guide students to successfully complete high-quality projects. And teachers who use PBL regularly can experience “the joy of teaching,” which they may not – make that likely will not – in a test-prep, drill-and-kill environment.

You’ll notice I use the term “high-quality” twice in the above, which points to a real concern we have at BIE. We don’t want PBL to become yesterday’s news, another education fad for which much is promised and little delivered. This is why BIE developed and promotes the Gold Standard PBL model: to help ensure PBL’s place as a permanent, regular feature of 21st century education for all students.

If it’s not done well, I see PBL facing three dangers:

1. Unprepared Teachers & Lack of Support
Teachers who are not prepared to design and implement projects effectively will see lackluster student performance and face daunting classroom management challenges. Shifting from traditional practice to PBL is not a simple matter of adding another tool to a teacher’s toolbox. PBL is not just another way to “cover standards” that’s a little more engaging for students. PBL represents a different philosophy about what and how students should learn in school, and many teachers and school leaders do not yet realize its implications. It was born in the progressive education movement associated with John Dewey, with more recent ties to constructivism and the work of Jean Piaget. Adding to this situation is the fact that most teachers teach the way they were taught, and did not experience PBL when they were students – so they don’t have a vision for what it can be.

Schools and districts need to provide teachers with opportunites for extensive and ongoing professional development, from workshops provided by experts (like BIE’s) to follow-up coaching, to work in their professional learning communities. Policies around grading, pacing guides, benchmark assessments, and more will need to be re-examined. It also means having longer class periods or blocks of time for project work, and rearranging how students are assigned to classrooms to allow for shared students for secondary-level multi-subject projects. And – I can’t stress this enough – teachers will need LOTS of time to plan projects and reflect on their practice. This means changing school schedules to create collaborative planning time, re-purposing staff meetings, perhaps providing (paid) time in the summer, and finding other creative solutions. All of this is a tall order, I realize, but these are the kinds of changes it will take for PBL to stick.

2. PBL-Lite
Many teachers and schools will create (or purchase from commercial vendors) lessons or activities that are called “project-based” and think they’re checking the box that says “we do PBL” – but find little change in student engagement or achievement, and certainly not a transformation. I’ve been seeing curriculum materials offered online and in catalogs that tout “inquiry” and “hands-on learning” that, while better than many traditional materials, are not really authentic and do not go very deep; they do not have the power of Gold Standard PBL. (For example, I've seen social studies "projects" from publishers that have kids writing pretend letters to government officials - instead of actually taking action to address a real-world issue - and math "projects" where students go through a set of worksheets to imagine themselves running a small business, instead of actually creating a business or at least an authentic proposal for one.)

With materials that are PBL-lite, we might see some gains in student engagement, and perhaps to some extent deeper learning; many of these materials are in fact better than the traditional alternatives for teaching the content. But the effects will be limited.

3. PBL Only for Special Occasions or Some Students
PBL might be relegated to special niches, instead of being used as a primary vehicle for teaching the curriculum - or being provided equitably for all students. I’ve heard about really cool projects that were done in “genius hours” or “maker spaces” or Gifted and Talented programs, or by A.P. students in May after the exams are over… but most students in the “regular program” did not experience PBL. Or schools might do powerful school-wide projects that do involve all students once a year or so, but the teaching of traditional academic subject matter remains unchanged. If this happens, the promise of PBL to build deeper understanding, build 21st century success skills, and transform the lives of all students, especially those furthest from educational opportunity, will remain unfulfilled."

"The Black Outdoors: Humanities Futures after Property and Possession seeks to interrogate the relation between race, sexuality, and juridical and theological ideas of self-possession, often evidenced by the couplet of land-ownership and self-regulation, a couplet predicated on settler colonialism and historically racist, sexist, homophobic and classist ideas of bodies fit for (self-) governance.

The title of the working group and speaker series points up the ways blackness figures as always outside the state, unsettled, unhomed, and unmoored from sovereignty in its doubled-form of aggressively white discourses on legitimate citizenship on one hand and the public/private divide itself on the other. The project will address questions of the "black outdoors" in relationship to literary, legal, theological, philosophical, and artistic works, especially poetry and visual arts.

Co-convened by J. Kameron Carter (Duke Divinity School/Black Church Studies) and Sarah Jane Cervenak (African American and African Diaspora Studies, UNC-G)"

…

[Fred Moten (31:00)]

"Sometimes I feel like I just haven't been able to… well, y'all must feel this… somehow I just can't quite figure out a good way to make myself clear when it comes to certain things. But I really feel like it's probably not my fault. I don't know that it's possible to be clear when it comes to these kinds of things. I get scared about saying certain kinds of stuff because I feel like sometimes it can seem really callous, and I don't want to seem that way because it's not because I don't feel shit or because I don't care. But let's talk about it in terms of what it would mean to live in a way that would reveal or to show no signs of human habitation.

Obviously there's a field or a space or a constraint, a container, a bounded space. Because every time you were saying unbounded, J., I kept thinking, "Is that right?" I mean I always remember Chomsky used to make this really interesting distinction that I don' think I ever fully understood between that which was bounded, but infinite and that which was unbounded, but finite. So another way to put it, if it's unbounded, it's still finite. And there's a quite specific and often quite brutal finitude that structures whatever is going on within the general, if we can speak of whatever it is to be within the general framework of the unbounded.

The whole point about escape is that it's an activity. It's not an achievement. You don't ever get escaped. And what that means is whatever you're escaping from is always after you. It's always on you, like white on rice, so to speak. But the thing about it is that I've been interested in, but it's hard to think about and talk about, would be that we can recognize the absolute horror, the unspeakable, incalculable terror and horror that accompanies the necessity of not leaving a trace of human inhabitation. And then there's the whole question of what would a life be that wasn't interested in leaving a trace of human habitation? So, in church, just because my friend Ken requested it, fuck the human. Fuck human inhabitation.

It's this necessity… The phrase I use sometimes and I always think about specifically in relation to Fannie Lou Hamer — because I feel like it's me just giving a spin on a theoretical formulation that she made in practice — is "to refuse that which has been refused to you." That's what I'm interested in. And that doesn't mean that what's at stake is some kind of blind, happy, celebratory attitude towards all of the beautiful stuff we have made under constraint. I love all the beautiful stuff we've made under constraint, but I'm pretty sure I would all the beautiful stuff we'd make out from under constraint better.

But there's no way to get to that except through this. We can't go around this. We gotta fight through this. And that means that anybody who thinks that they can understand how terrible the terror has been without understanding how beautiful the beauty has been against the grain of that terror is wrong. there is no calculus of the terror that can make a proper calculation without reference to that which resists it. It's just not possible."

"This medicine can reduce fever, but it can cause a bleeding stomach. When you buy a medical product, you are given information about both its effects and side effects. But such practice does not exist in education.

“This program helps improve your students’ reading scores, but it may make them hate reading forever.” No such information is given to teachers or school principals.

“This practice can help your children become a better student, but it may make her less creative.” No parent has been given information about effects and side effects of practices in schools.

“School choice may improve test scores of some students, but it can lead to the collapse of American public education,” the public has not received information about the side effects of sweeping education policies.

Educational research has typically focused exclusively on the benefits, intended effects of products, programs, policies, and practices, as if there were no adverse side effects. But side effects exist the same way in education as in medicine. For many reasons, studying and reporting side effects simultaneously as has been mandated for medical products is not common in education.

In this article just published in the Journal of Educational Change, I discuss why education must learn the important lesson of studying and reporting side effects from medical research. Side effects in education occur for a number of reasons.

First, time is a constant. When you spend time on one task, you cannot spend the same amount on another. When a child is given extra instruction in reading, he/she cannot spend the same time on arts or music. When a school focuses only on two or three subjects, its students would not have the time to learn something else. When a school system only focuses on a few subjects such as reading and math, students won’t have time to do other and perhaps more important things.

Second, recourses are limited. When it is put into one activity, it cannot be spent on other. When school resources are devoted to the common core, other subjects become peripheral. When schools are forced to only focus on raising test scores, activities that may promote students’ long-term growth are sidelined.

Third, some educational outcomes are inherently contradictory. It is difficult for an educational system that wishes to cultivate a homogenous workforce to also expect a diverse population of individuals who are creative and entrepreneurial. Research has also shown that test scores and knowledge acquisition can come at the expense of curiosity and confidence.

Fourth, the same products may work differently for different individuals, in different contexts. Some people are allergic to penicillin. Some drugs have negative consequences when taken with alcohol. Likewise, some practices, such as direct instruction may work better for knowledge transmission, but not for long term exploration. Charter schools may favor those who have a choice (can make a choice) at the costs of those who are not able to take advantage of it.

American education faces many uncertainties today. But one thing is certain: we will see a slew of new policy proposals as states implement the Every Student Succeeds Act and whatever actions the new administration may take, in addition to the mind-boggling number of products, programs, and services already vying for the attention (and money) of parents, schools, and education systems. When making decisions about policies and products, we should ask for information about their adverse effects in addition to evidence of effects.

What works can hurt!"

"

Now how about this: We know that greenhouse gases are producing destabilizing changes in the Earth’s climate. And that human beings evolved from other species over millions of years. And that Barack Obama is a Christian. And that Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with the death of Vince Foster.

Large numbers of Americans deny those and many other assertions. Why? Because the trustworthiness of the authorities that make the claims has been under direct and continuous attack for the past several decades — and because the internet has given a voice to every kook who makes a contrary assertion. What we’re left with is a chaos of competing claims, none of which has the authority to dispel the others as untrue.

—Damon Linker [https://theweek.com/articles/645664/rise-american-conspiracy-theory ]

Most of what Damon says here is exactly right, but he’s leaving out another major factor: the toxic combination of habitual arrogance and habitual error that afflicts so many of our “authorities.” Consider the amazingly inaccurate track record of expert economic forecasters [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/finance-why-economic-models-are-always-wrong/ ]. Consider the vast claims made by neuroscientists wielding fMRI machines — machines that consistently yield false results [http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/algorithms-used-to-study-brain-activity-may-be-exaggerating-results/ ]. And consider the constant cheerleading for expert bullshit from much of the media.

It is true that “the trustworthiness of the authorities that make the claims has been under direct and continuous attack for the past several decades” — but it is also true that some of those authorities deserve to be attacked, and indeed to be attacked more strongly than they are. So in this situation, what is the ordinary person to do? How is she supposed to tell the difference between the reliable expertise of climate scientists and the unreliable “expertise” of yet another neuroscience charlatan? Isn’t it perfectly understandable that in such a noisy environment she will say, “Yeah, right, ‘experts’ — who needs that crap?”"

"Much of our current mood of uncertainty has specific causes. Some of it is due to the consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown. The resultant rise of zero-hour contracts, exploitative internships and the Sisyphean labour of so-called portfolio careers has made the future seem head-spinningly uncertain. That mood is also due to the agenda, pursued by successive governments, of introducing choice into public services, from education to hospitals. The reason I was sitting in a school hall listening to a headteacher make her case to look after my daughter for five years was that the government has extended choice to state education. Thanks to that policy, I’m encouraged to explore a dizzying array of choices (girls only, mixed, grammar, mixed, faith, academy, comp) and yet I’m uncertain which is the best option. My only consolation is what Bertrand Russell wrote in The Triumph of Stupidity: “In the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” The parents who know, with vexing self-confidence, which school would be best for their little horrors are really deluded, while I’m a genius because of my very uncertainty. That must be what’s happening."

…

"What the headteacher meant, I suspect, when she said she would prepare children for jobs that don’t yet exist, is that kids should emerge from her school literate, numerate, with some experience of coding, probably little French but maybe some Mandarin, be unlikely to respond to a teacher telling them to pipe down by pulling a knife and generally able to initiate social interactions without going pre-verbal or sub-automatic. But most of all, I suspect she was extolling the virtues of a very old way of being, one set out by the poet John Keats nearly 200 years ago, when he wrote about “negative capability” – roughly, the ability to thrive in uncertain circumstances – of which more later."

…

"Good for Jonathan Fields. His life story is a homily to mastering uncertain conditions. There is, though, another option. Instead of mastering uncertainty, go with the proverbial flow and accept that uncertainty is the cosmic deal. Keats, when he coined the phrase “negative capability”, imagined something along these lines. Negative capability, he supposed, was “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” – and Keats took that passivity or willingness to let things remain uncertain to be essential to literary achievement."

…

"In 1996, Belgian Ilya Prigogine, a Nobel laureate, argued in The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature that uncertainty is an inherent cosmic expression, deeply embedded within the core of reality. To be fair, Buddhists got there before Prigogine. But what is striking is that some psychologists have applied the Nobel laureate’s thoughts on uncertainty in physics to our human lot. We may think we’re particularly cursed, that our current uncertainty is an unusual fate, but rather, uncertainty is deeply embedded in the structure of reality. In the face of that (possible) truth, what’s the best solution to living in uncertainty? Acceptance – even of the very anxiety we feel in the face of that uncertainty."

"May-Li talks about the importance of prototyping work and designing with empathy."

"One day I walk up to campus. I stand outside the door of Doug’s office, ogling his nameplate, thinking: “Man, he sometimes sits in there, the guy who wrote Leaving the Land.” At this point in my life, I’ve never actually set eyes on a person who has published a book. It is somehow mind-blowing, this notion that the people who write books also, you know, *live*: go to the store and walk around campus and sit in a particular office and so on. Doug shows up and invites me in. We chat awhile, as if we are peers, as if I am a real writer too. I suddenly feel like a real writer. I’m talking to a guy who’s been in People magazine. And he’s asking me about my process. Heck, I *must be* a real writer."

…

"For me, a light goes on: we are supposed to be—are required to be—interesting. We’re not only *allowed* to think about audience, we’d *better*. What we’re doing in writing is not all that different from what we’ve been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones’ particular charms. To say that “a light goes on” is not quite right—it’s more like: a fixture gets installed. Only many years later (see below) will the light go on."

…

"Doug gets an unkind review. We are worried. Will one of us dopily bring it up in workshop? We don’t. Doug does. Right off the bat. He wants to talk about it, because he feels there might be something in it for us. The talk he gives us is beautiful, honest, courageous, totally generous. He shows us where the reviewer was wrong—but also where the reviewer might have gotten it right. Doug talks about the importance of being able to extract the useful bits from even a hurtful review: this is important, because it will make the next book better. He talks about the fact that it was hard for him to get up this morning after that review and write, but that he did it anyway. He’s in it for the long haul, we can see. He’s a fighter, and that’s what we must become too: we have to learn to honor our craft by refusing to be beaten, by remaining open, by treating every single thing that happens to us, good or bad, as one more lesson on the longer path.

We liked Doug before this. Now we love him.

Toby has the grad students over to watch A Night at the Opera. Mostly I watch Toby, with his family. He clearly adores them, takes visible pleasure in them, dotes on them. I have always thought great writers had to be dysfunctional and difficult, incapable of truly loving anything, too insane and unpredictable and tortured to cherish anyone, or honor them, or find them beloved.

Wow, I think, huh."

…

"I notice that Doug has an incredible natural enthusiasm for anything we happen to get right. Even a single good line is worthy of praise. When he comes across a beautiful story in a magazine, he shares it with us. If someone else experiences a success, he celebrates it. He can find, in even the most dismal student story, something to praise. Often, hearing him talk about a story you didn’t like, you start to like it too—you see, as he is seeing, the seed of something good within it. He accepts you and your work just as he finds it, and is willing to work with you wherever you are. This has the effect of emboldening you, and making you more courageous in your work, and less defeatist about it."

…

"End of our first semester. We flock to hear Toby read at the Syracuse Stage. He has a terrible flu. He reads not his own work but Chekhov’s “About Love” trilogy. The snow falls softly, visible behind us through a huge window. It’s a beautiful, deeply enjoyable, reading. Suddenly we get Chekhov: Chekhov is funny. It is possible to be funny and profound at the same time. The story is not some ossified, cerebral thing: it is entertainment, active entertainment, of the highest variety. All of those things I’ve been learning about in class, those bone-chilling abstractions theme, plot, and symbol are de-abstracted by hearing Toby read Chekhov aloud: they are simply tools with which to make your audience feel more deeply—methods of creating higher-order meaning. The stories and Toby’s reading of them convey a notion new to me, or one which, in the somber cathedral of academia, I’d forgotten: literature is a form of fondness-for-life. It is love for life taking verbal form."

…

"Toby is a generous reader and a Zen-like teacher. The virtues I feel being modeled—in his in-class comments and demeanor, in his notes, and during our after-workshop meetings—are subtle and profound. A story’s positive virtues are not different from the positive virtues of its writer. A story should be honest, direct, loving, restrained. It can, by being worked and reworked, come to have more power than its length should allow. A story can be a compressed bundle of energy, and, in fact, the more it is thoughtfully compressed, the more power it will have.

His brilliant story “The Other Miller” appears in The Atlantic. I read it, love it. I can’t believe I know the person who wrote it, and that he knows me. I walk over to the Hall of Languages and there he is, the guy who wrote that story. What’s he doing? Talking to a student? Photocopying a story for next day’s class? I don’t remember. But there he is: both writer and citizen. I don’t know why this makes such an impression on me–maybe because I somehow have the idea that a writer walks around in a trance, being rude, moved to misbehavior by the power of his own words. But here is the author of this great story, walking around, being nice. It makes me think of the Flaubert quote, “live like a bourgeoisie and think like a demigod.” At the time, I am not sure what a bourgeoisie is, exactly, or a demigod, but I understand this to mean: “live like a normal person, write like a maniac.” Toby manifests as an example of suppressed power, or, rather: *directed* power. No silliness necessary, no dramatics, all of his considerable personal power directed, at the appropriate time, to a worthy goal."

…

"What Doug does for me in this meeting is respect me, by declining to hyperbolize my crap thesis. I don’t remember what he said about it, but what he did not say was, you know: “Amazing, you did a great job, this is publishable, you rocked our world with this! Loved the elephant.” There’s this theory that self-esteem has to do with getting confirmation from the outside world that our perceptions are fundamentally accurate. What Doug does at this meeting is increase my self-esteem by confirming that my perception of the work I’d been doing is fundamentally accurate. The work I’ve been doing is bad. Or, worse: it’s blah. This is uplifting–liberating, even—to have my unspoken opinion of my work confirmed. I don’t have to pretend bad is good. This frees me to leave it behind and move on and try to do something better. The main thing I feel: respected. Doug conveys a sense that I am a good-enough writer and person to take this not-great news in stride and move on. One bad set of pages isn’t the end of the world."

…

"On a visit to Syracuse, I hear Toby saying goodbye to one of his sons. “Goodbye, dear,” he says.

I never forget this powerful man calling his son “dear.”

All kinds of windows fly open in my mind. It is powerful to call your son “dear,” it is powerful to feel that the world is dear, it is powerful to always strive to see everything as dear. Toby is a powerful man: in his physicality, in his experiences, in his charisma. But all that power has culminated in gentleness. It is as if that is the point of power: to allow one to access the higher registers of gentleness."

…

"I am teaching at Syracuse myself now. Toby, Arthur Flowers, and I are reading that year’s admissions materials. Toby reads every page of every story in every application, even the ones we are almost certainly rejecting, and never fails to find a nice moment, even when it occurs on the last page of the last story of a doomed application. “Remember that beautiful description of a sailboat on around page 29 of the third piece?” he’ll say. And Arthur and I will say: “Uh, yeah … that was … a really cool sailboat.” Toby has a kind of photographic memory re stories, and such a love for the form that goodness, no matter where it’s found or what it’s surrounded by, seems to excite his enthusiasm. Again, that same lesson: good teaching is grounded in generosity of spirit."

…

"One night I’m sitting on the darkened front porch of our new house. A couple walks by. They don’t see me sitting there in the shadows.

“Oh, Toby,” the woman says. “Such a wonderful man.”

Note to self, I think: Live in such a way that, when neighbors walk by your house months after you’re gone, they can’t help but blurt out something affectionate."

…

"I do a reading at the university where Doug now teaches. During the after-reading party, I notice one of the grad writers sort of hovering, looking like she wants to say something to me. Finally, as I’m leaving, she comes forward and says she wants to tell me about something that happened to her. What happened is horrible and violent and recent and it’s clear she’s still in shock from it. I don’t know how to respond. As the details mount, I find myself looking to Doug, sort of like: Can you get me out of this? What I see Doug doing gets inside my head and heart and has stayed there ever since, as a lesson and an admonition: what Doug is doing, is staring at his student with complete attention, affection, focus, love—whatever you want to call it. He is, with his attention, making a place for her to tell her story—giving her permission to tell it, blessing her telling of it. What do I do? I do what I have done so many times and so profitably during my writing apprenticeship: I do my best to emulate Doug. I turn to her and try to put aside my discomfort and do my best to listen as intently as Doug is listening. I … [more]

"I recently spent a semester teaching writing at an elite liberal-arts college. At strategic points around the campus, in shades of yellow and green, banners displayed the following pair of texts. The first was attributed to the college’s founder, which dates it to the 1920s. The second was extracted from the latest version of the institution’s mission statement:

The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.

leadership
service
integrity
creativity

Let us take a moment to compare these texts. The first thing to observe about the older one is that it is a sentence. It expresses an idea by placing concepts in relation to one another within the kind of structure that we call a syntax. It is, moreover, highly wrought: a parallel structure underscored by repetition, five adverbs balanced two against three.

A spatial structure, the sentence also suggests a temporal sequence. Thinking clearly, it wants us to recognize, leads to thinking independently. Thinking independently leads to living confidently. Living confidently leads to living courageously. Living courageously leads to living hopefully. And the entire chain begins with a college that recognizes it has an obligation to its students, an obligation to develop their abilities to think and live.

Finally, the sentence is attributed to an individual. It expresses her convictions and ideals. It announces that she is prepared to hold herself accountable for certain responsibilities.

The second text is not a sentence. It is four words floating in space, unconnected to one another or to any other concept. Four words — four slogans, really — whose meaning and function are left undefined, open to whatever interpretation the reader cares to project on them.

Four words, three of which — “leadership,” “service,” and “creativity” — are the loudest buzzwords in contemporary higher education. (“Integrity” is presumably intended as a synonym for the more familiar “character,” which for colleges at this point means nothing more than not cheating.) The text is not the statement of an individual; it is the emanation of a bureaucracy. In this case, a literally anonymous bureaucracy: no one could tell me when this version of the institution’s mission statement was formulated, or by whom. No one could even tell me who had decided to hang those banners all over campus. The sentence from the founder has also long been mounted on the college walls. The other words had just appeared, as if enunciated by the zeitgeist.

But the most important thing to note about the second text is what it doesn’t talk about: thinking or learning. In what it both does and doesn’t say, it therefore constitutes an apt reflection of the current state of higher education. College is seldom about thinking or learning anymore. Everyone is running around trying to figure out what it is about. So far, they have come up with buzzwords, mainly those three.

This is education in the age of neoliberalism. Call it Reaganism or Thatcherism, economism or market fundamentalism, neoliberalism is an ideology that reduces all values to money values. The worth of a thing is the price of the thing. The worth of a person is the wealth of the person. Neoliberalism tells you that you are valuable exclusively in terms of your activity in the marketplace — in Wordsworth’s phrase, your getting and spending.

The purpose of education in a neoliberal age is to produce producers. I published a book last year that said that, by and large, elite American universities no longer provide their students with a real education, one that addresses them as complete human beings rather than as future specialists — that enables them, as I put it, to build a self or (following Keats) to become a soul. Of all the responses the book aroused, the most dismaying was this: that so many individuals associated with those institutions said not, “Of course we provide our students with a real education,” but rather, “What is this ‘real education’ nonsense, anyway?”"

…

"So what’s so bad about leadership, service, and creativity? What’s bad about them is that, as they’re understood on campus and beyond, they are all encased in neoliberal assumptions. Neoliberalism, which dovetails perfectly with meritocracy, has generated a caste system: “winners and losers,” “makers and takers,” “the best and the brightest,” the whole gospel of Ayn Rand and her Übermenschen. That’s what “leadership” is finally about. There are leaders, and then there is everyone else: the led, presumably — the followers, the little people. Leaders get things done; leaders take command. When colleges promise to make their students leaders, they’re telling them they’re going to be in charge.

“Service” is what the winners engage in when they find themselves in a benevolent mood. Call it Clintonism, by analogy with Reaganism. Bill Clinton not only ratified the neoliberal consensus as president, he has extended its logic as a former president. Reaganism means the affluent have all the money, as well as all the power. Clintonism means they use their money and power, or a bit of it, to help the less fortunate — because the less fortunate (i.e., the losers) can’t help themselves. Hence the Clinton Foundation, hence every philanthropic or altruistic endeavor on the part of highly privileged, highly credentialed, highly resourced elites, including all those nonprofits or socially conscious for-profits that college students start or dream of starting.

“Creativity,” meanwhile, is basically a business concept, aligned with the other clichés that have come to us from the management schools by way of Silicon Valley: “disruption,” “innovation,” “transformation.” “Creativity” is not about becoming an artist. No one wants you to become an artist. It’s about devising “innovative” products, services, and techniques — “solutions,” which imply that you already know the problem. “Creativity” means design thinking, in the terms articulated by the writer Amy Whitaker, not art thinking: getting from A to a predetermined B, not engaging in an open-ended exploratory process in the course of which you discover the B.

Leadership, service, and creativity do not seek fundamental change (remember, fundamental change is out in neoliberalism); they seek technological or technocratic change within a static social framework, within a market framework. Which is really too bad, because the biggest challenges we face — climate change, resource depletion, the disappearance of work in the face of automation — will require nothing less than fundamental change, a new organization of society. If there was ever a time that we needed young people to imagine a different world, that time is now.

We have always been, in the United States, what Lionel Trilling called a business civilization. But we have also always had a range of counterbalancing institutions, countercultural institutions, to advance a different set of values: the churches, the arts, the democratic tradition itself. When the pendulum has swung too far in one direction (and it’s always the same direction), new institutions or movements have emerged, or old ones have renewed their mission. Education in general, and higher education in particular, has always been one of those institutions. But now the market has become so powerful that it’s swallowing the very things that are supposed to keep it in check. Artists are becoming “creatives.” Journalism has become “the media.” Government is bought and paid for. The prosperity gospel has arisen as one of the most prominent movements in American Christianity. And colleges and universities are acting like businesses, and in the service of businesses.

What is to be done? Those very same WASP aristocrats — enough of them, at least, including several presidents of Harvard and Yale — when facing the failure of their own class in the form of the Great Depression, succeeded in superseding themselves and creating a new system, the meritocracy we live with now. But I’m not sure we possess the moral resources to do the same. The WASPs had been taught that leadership meant putting the collective good ahead of your own. But meritocracy means looking out for number one, and neoliberalism doesn’t believe in the collective. As Margaret Thatcher famously said about society, “There’s no such thing. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” As for elite university presidents, they are little more these days than lackeys of the plutocracy, with all the moral stature of the butler in a country house.

Neoliberalism disarms us in another sense as well. For all its rhetoric of freedom and individual initiative, the culture of the market is exceptionally good at inculcating a sense of helplessness. So much of the language around college today, and so much of the negative response to my suggestion that students ought to worry less about pursuing wealth and more about constructing a sense of purpose for themselves, presumes that young people are the passive objects of economic forces. That they have no agency, no options. That they have to do what the market tells them. A Princeton student literally made this argument to me: If the market is incentivizing me to go to Wall Street, he said, then who am I to argue?

I have also had the pleasure, over the past year, of hearing from a lot of people who are pushing back against the dictates of neoliberal education: starting high schools, starting colleges, creating alternatives to high school and college, making documentaries, launching nonprofits, parenting in different ways, conducting their lives in different ways. I welcome these efforts, but none of them address the fundamental problem, which is that we no longer believe in public solutions. We only … [more]

[Transcript emerging here: https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2015/05/02/yong-zhaos-npe-speech-transcribed-part-i/ ]

"When a group of men and women took a science exam and scored the same, the women underestimated their performance and refused to enter a science fair, while the men did the opposite.

At Google, men were being promoted at a much higher rate than women — because they were nominating themselves for promotion and women were not.

And at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm currently on trial for gender discrimination, employees have described a culture in which the people who got ahead were those who hyped themselves and talked over others. Again, they were usually men.

The confidence gap between men and women is well documented. But it is also clear that a lack of confidence does not necessarily equate to a lack of competence (or the other way around.) So the challenge for workplaces is to enable people without natural swagger to be heard and get promoted.

At Kleiner Perkins, one solution was to give Ellen Pao, the former junior partner who is suing the firm, coaching to improve her speaking skills to participate in the firm’s “interrupt-driven” environment. Testimony is continuing in Ms. Pao’s lawsuit, and the jury hasn’t yet been given the case to decide whether Kleiner Perkins is liable.

But the interruption coaching raises an interesting question. Is it the employees’ responsibility to learn how to interrupt, or is it the employers’ job to create a culture in which people without the loudest voice or most aggressive manner can still be heard?

“On the one hand, we need to lean in and be more confident and put ourselves out there, and there is more hesitance to do that for women than men,” said Joyce Ehrlinger, a psychology professor at Washington State University and an author of the study that found that women underestimated their performance on the science exam.

“But there’s this issue of how women are perceived,” she said. “We don’t put ourselves out there because we know it’s not going to be accepted in the same way.”

It is “the double bind of speaking while female,” as Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive and “Lean In” author, and Adam Grant, a professor at the Wharton School, recently wrote in The New York Times.

People who coach executives on public speaking in Silicon Valley said interruption training was not common, but they said that to reach positions of power in the tech industry, people need to be able to aggressively speak in meetings. Coaching often includes work on how to effectively communicate in meetings and is sometimes described as assertiveness training. Kleiner has said it provided Ms. Pao with coaching so she could learn to “own the room.”

Venture capitalists describe typical partner meetings as full of verbal intimidation where the people who speak most confidently are the ones who succeed. Some women in the industry said that training such as Ms. Pao received would be helpful in that environment.

The confidence gap begins very early, Ms. Ehrlinger said, when parents overestimate the crawling ability of boys and underestimate that of girls, for example. It can be reinforced at work, where women are paid less than men and evaluated in more negative terms.

Some employers have figured out ways to address it, other than teaching women to interrupt. The show runner for “The Shield” banned interrupting during pitches by writers, Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Grant reported.

At Google, senior women began hosting workshops to encourage and prepare women to nominate themselves for promotion.

Women are often more comfortable asserting themselves when they talk about ideas in terms of a group, Ms. Ehrlinger said – describing a plan that has been vetted by multiple people or explaining how it would benefit the whole company, not just their own careers.

Still, in an age when the No. 1 piece of career advice is to build one’s personal brand, that is not necessarily a clear path to success, either."

[via: http://log.scifihifi.com/post/113466975721/at-kleiner-perkins-one-solution-was-to-give-ellen ]

"George Bernard Shaw said this:

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

It's discussed in a surprisingly chatty un-wikipedia-feeling wikipedia entry.

I always think about this when people discuss professionalisation.

This and Adam Smith:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.""

"When I express any shred of doubt about whether I deserve or am qualified for something, people often try to reassure me that I am just experiencing impostor syndrome. About 10% of the time, it’s true. Amelia Greenhall’s excellent piece, however, has inspired me to clear up a big misconception about what is happening the other 90% of the time.

While there are a few situations that make me feel insecure, I am, for the most part, an excellent judge of what I’m capable of. Expressing a reasonable amount of doubt and concern about a situation that is slightly outside my comfort zone is normal, responsible behavior. Understanding my limits and being willing to acknowledge them is, in fact, one of my strengths. I don’t think it should be pathologized alongside the very real problem of “impostor syndrome”.

In fact, it is the opposite behavior—the belief that you can do anything, including things you are blatantly not qualified for or straight up lying about—should be pathologized. It has many names (Dunning-Krueger, illusory superiority), but I suggest we call it blowhard syndrome as a neat parallel. Blowhard syndrome is all around us, but I have a special fondness in my heart for the example my friend Nicole has taxidermied on her Twitter profile.

Just to be clear, I’m not mad at anyone who has tried to reassure me by telling me I have impostor syndrome, and I recognize it as a real problem that lots of talented people struggle with. But I am furious at a world in which women and POC are being told to be as self-confident as a group of mostly white dudes who are basically delusional megalomaniacs. We’re great the way we are, level-headed self-assessments and all. Stop rewarding them for being jackasses.

My totally reasonable amount of self-confidence is not a syndrome; dudes’ bloated senses of self-worth and the expectations we’ve built around them are. Correct accordingly."

"The trouble with ignorance is that it feels so much like expertise. A leading researcher on the psychology of human wrongness sets us straight."

…

"In many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge."

…

"Because it’s so easy to judge the idiocy of others, it may be sorely tempting to think this doesn’t apply to you. But the problem of unrecognized ignorance is one that visits us all."

…

"But I believe we already know what the Founding Fathers would think. As good citizens of the Enlightenment, they valued recognizing the limits of one’s knowledge at least as much as they valued retaining a bunch of facts. Thomas Jefferson, lamenting the quality of political journalism in his day, once observed that a person who avoided newspapers would be better informed than a daily reader, in that someone “who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” Benjamin Franklin wrote that “a learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.” Another quote sometimes attributed to Franklin has it that “the doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”

The built-in features of our brains, and the life experiences we accumulate, do in fact fill our heads with immense knowledge; what they do not confer is insight into the dimensions of our ignorance. As such, wisdom may not involve facts and formulas so much as the ability to recognize when a limit has been reached. Stumbling through all our cognitive clutter just to recognize a true “I don’t know” may not constitute failure as much as it does an enviable success, a crucial signpost that shows us we are traveling in the right direction toward the truth."

"“IF ECONOMISTS could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!” said John Maynard Keynes, a British economist. Despite their collective failure to predict the financial crisis, let alone follow Keynes’s injunction, economists are still very influential. They write newspaper columns, advise politicians and offer expensive consulting services to business-folk far more than other academics. A new paper* tries to explain why.

One reason, say the authors, is that economists have come to believe that they are superior. A survey in 1985 found that just 9% of graduate students in economics at Harvard strongly believed that economics was “the most scientific of the social sciences”. But as economics became ever more mathematical, its practitioners grew in self-confidence. By 2003 54% of the graduate economists studying at Harvard strongly agreed with the statement. A glance at a popular blog for doctoral students in economics, econjobrumors.com, gives a taste of the contempt in which its users hold other disciplines. Sociologists “play around with big important ideas without too much effort or rigour,” one econo-nerd asserts.

The authors point out that economists demonstrate their self-belief in subtler ways too. Articles in the American Economic Review cite the top 25 political-science journals one-fifth as often as the articles in the American Political Science Review cite the top 25 economics journals. Another study found that American economics professors were less likely than their peers in other subjects to agree with the notion that “interdisciplinary knowledge is better than knowledge obtained by a single discipline.”

The odd thing, the authors argue, is that we believe in economists almost as much as they believe in themselves. Journalists and politicians seek strong arguments and clear answers. Most academics are reticent types: historians, for instance, question whether you can learn anything from history. “For a moderate fee,” jokes Deirdre McCloskey, an economic historian, “an economist will tell you with all the confidence of a witch doctor that interest rates will rise 56 basis points next month or that dropping agricultural subsidies will increase Swiss national income by 14.8%.”"

[Sad and discuoraged that 1 & 2 are advice for academic writing.]

"1. Search for red flags in your writing. When you read your drafts, look for words that hedge your argument: maybe, possibly, perhaps, suggest, could, might, may, appears, seems, seemingly. Circle them to see if you’re overusing them. If you are using them to couch your argument, get rid of them. You don’t need to signal that you’re not sure about what you’re arguing. If your argument is unsound, you’ll get comments back from reviewers that say so.

2. Don’t hide behind other authors or texts, no matter how amazing they are. There’s a fine line between using Judith Butler’s arguments to bolster your own and simply restating what she has said while adroitly avoiding making your own claim. I’ve seen a lot of essays with so many citations and paraphrases that the reader has a hard time figuring out where the author’s own voice begins and the famous theorist’s ends. (This is, sometimes, at the heart of the problem of finding one’s voice – see my earlier column for tips on locating yours.) Revise your chapters and articles so that your own argument takes center stage; everyone else is in a supporting role.

3. When you receive comments on a draft, read them and then put them away for at least a day. I recommend a full week. In that time, remind yourself that criticism of your arguments, your structure, or your evidence is not criticism of you as a person. Your work is completely separate from your self-worth. The comment, “This needs work. Your argument is weak,” does not mean: “You need work. You are weak. You are too dumb to write this.” Learn to spot the difference between what is being conveyed in the comments on the page and your distorted interpretation of what isn’t being said. Don’t read between the lines. Only rely on concrete evidence. Until someone tells you, explicitly and directly, “You aren’t good/talented/smart enough to do this,” proceed in good faith that you are.

4. Finally, don’t quit for the wrong reasons. Don’t quit writing or avoid working on your dissertation or book or article because you think you’re not a good enough writer, or you can’t find your argument or structure, or you think everyone else is having an easier time of it. I promise you that you are, you will, and they aren’t. Really. Just write."

"Part of the reason these two quotes interest me is that I've been thinking a lot about origin stories and creation myths. I've been thinking about how we recognize and choose the imagery and narratives — the abstractions — that we use to re-tell a story. There's nothing a priori wrong with those choices. We have always privileged certain moments over others as vehicles for conveying the symbolism of an event."

…

"I've been thinking about history as the space between the moments that come to define an event. History being the by-product of a sequence of events pulling apart from each, over time, leaving not just the peaks a few dominant imagery but the many valleys of interpretation.

When I think of it this way I am always reminded of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics in which he celebrates "the magic in the gutter". The "gutter" being the space between frames where action is unseen and left to imagination of the reader. These are the things I think of when I consider something like the 9/11 Memorial and the construction of a narrative around the event it commemorates.

Not much is left to abstraction and so it feels as though the memorial itself acts as a vacuum against interpretation, at all. It is a kind of "Interpretation-Roomba" that moves through your experience of the venue sucking up any space in which you might be able to consider the event outside of the master narrative."

…

"After the panel some of us went out for drinks and for people of a certain it was difficult not to fall prey to moments sounding exactly like our parents and saying things like: The kids today, they don't know what it was like back in the day when all we had were bulletin board systems... I mention this for a couple reasons.

The first is to ask the question: Is a slow network akin to no network at all? It is hard to imagine going back to the dial-up speeds of the 1990's Internet and I expect it would be a shock to someone who's never experienced them but I think we would all do well to keep Staehle's comments about the time to broadcast and the time to relay in mind.

The second is that as we were all sitting around the table waxing nostalgic about 28.8 Kbps modems I remember thinking: Actually, when I first discovered the web I wanted the next generation to be able to take this for granted. I wanted the "kids" to live in a world where the Internet was just part of the fabric of life, where it didn't need to be a philosophical moment everytime you got online.

The good news is that this has, by and large, happened. The bad news is we've forgotten why it was important in the first place and if it feels like the Network is governed by, and increasingly defined, by a kind of grim meathook fatalism I think maybe that's why.

Somewhere in all the excitement of the last 20 years we forgot, or at least neglected, the creation myth and the foundational story behind the Network and in doing so we have left open a kind of narrative vacuum. We have left the space to say why the Network exists at all to those who would see it shaped in ways that are perhaps at odds with the very reasons that made it special in the first place."

…

"A question I've been asking myself as I've been thinking about this talk is: Does a littlenet simply transit data or does it terminate that data? Is a littlenet specific to a place? Are littlenets defined by the effort is takes to get there? That seems a bit weird, almost antithetical to the idea of the Network, right?

Maybe not though or maybe it's less about littlenets acting like destinations or encouraging a particular set of rituals but instead simply taking advantage of the properties the Network offers to provide bespoke services. For example, what if bars ran captive portal networks that you couldn't get out of, like Dan Phiffer's Occupy.here, but all they did was offer access to a dictionary?

That might seem like an absurb example at first but let it sink in for a minute or two and if you're like me you'll find yourself thinking that would be kind of awesome. A dictionary in a bar is a polite of saying We're here to foster the conversation on your own terms rather than dictate it on ours.

A dictionary in a bar would be a "service" in the, well, service of the thing that bars don't need any help with: conversation, socializing, play. People aren't going to stop frequenting bars that they don't have dictionaries in them, but a bar with a dictionary in it is that much better.

If a littlenet does not terminate then does it or should it engage in traffic shaping? What separates littlenet from a fake cell phone towers? What about deep packet inspection (DPI) ? What about goatse? If a littlenet does not drink the common carrier Kool-Aid is it still a Network or just gated-community for like minded participants?

None of these problems go away just because a network is little and, in fact, their little-ness and the potential ubiquity of littlenets only exascerbates the problem. It casts the questions around an infrastructure of trust as much as an infrastructure of reach in to relief.

We have historically relied on the scarcity and the difficulty of access to the tools that can manipulate the Network at, well, the network layer as a way to manage those questions of trust. Ultimately, littlenets force those larger issues of how we organize (and by definition how we limit) ourselves as a community to the fore. It speaks to the question of public institutions and their mandates. It speaks to the question of philosophy trumping engineering.

It speaks to the question of how we articulate an idea of the Network and why we believe it is important and what we do to preserve those qualities."

…

"It goes like this: If we liken the network to weather what does it mean to think of its climate as too hostile for any one person to survive in isolation? What would that mean, really? I have no idea and I recognize that this is one line of argument in support of a benevolent all-seeing surveillance state but perhaps there are parallels to be found in the way that cold-weather countries organize themselves relative to the reality of winter. Regardless of your political stripes in those countries there is common cause in not letting people face those months alone to die of exposure.

I really don't know how or whether this translates to the Network in part because it's not clear to me whether the problem is not having access to the Network, not having unfettered access to the Network (think of those Facebook-subsidized and Facebook-only data plans for mobile phones) or that the Network itself, left unchecked, is in fact a pit of vipers.

Should the state suspend reality in the service of a mandate for the Network the way that they sometimes do for universal health care or, if you live in the US, the highway system? Is that just what we now call network neutrality or should we do more to temper the consequences of assuming the Network is inherently hostile? To activiely foster a more communitarian sensibilities and safeguards?

You're not supposed to say this out loud, particularly in light of events like the Snowden revelations, but the reality is that societies announce that 2+2=5 because "reasons" all the time."

…

"My issue is that we have spent a good deal of the last 500 years (give or take) trying to make visibility a legitimate concern. We have spent a lot of time and lot of effort arguing that there is a space for voices outside the dominant culture and to now choose to retract in to invisibility, as a tactic, seems counter-productive at best and fitting the needs of people who were never really down the project at worst.

The only reason many of know each other is because we were willing, because we desired, to stick our head above the parapet and say "I am here". Acting in public remains complicated and is still decidedly unfair for many but if the creation myth of visibility is one of malice-by-default then we might have a bigger problem on our hands."

…

"The problem I have with littlenets is that I want to live in a world with a "biggernet" that doesn't make me sad or suspect or hate everyone around me. The concern I have with littlenets is that they offer a rhetorical bluff from which to avoid the larger social questions that a networked world lay bare. And that in avoiding those questions we orphan the reasons (the creation myths) why the Network seemed novel and important in the first place.

There's a meme which has bubbling up more and more often these days, advanced by people like Ingrid and others, that perhaps libraries should operate as internet service providers. That the mandate of a publicly-minded institution like a library is best suited to a particular articulation of the Network as a possibility space.

Libraries lend books on the principle that access to information is value in and of itself not because they know what people will do with that knowledge. Libraries have also been some of the earliest adopters of littlenets in the service of that same principle in the form of electronic distribution hubs. I bet some of those littlenets even have dictionaries on them.

So, despite my reservations and in the interests of defaulting to action maybe we should all endeavour to run our own read-only littlenets of stuff we think is worth preserving and sharing. If the politics and the motives surrounding the Network are going to get all pear-shaped in the years to come then maybe littlenets are our own samizdat and the means to save what came before and to say as much to ourselves as to others: This is how it should be."

"It is also no accident that David Eggers is full of shit."

"Smarm should be understood as a type of bullshit, then. It is a kind of moral and ethical misdirection."

"The old systems of prestige are rickety and insecure. Everyone has a publishing platform and no one has a career."

"What carries contemporary American political campaigns along is a thick flow of opaque smarm."

"Romney clambered up to a new higher ground, deploring the divisiveness of dwelling on his divisiveness."

"Through smarm, the "centrists" have cut themselves off from the language of actual dispute. In smarm is power."

"A civilization that speaks in smarm is a civilization that has lost its ability to talk about purposes at all."

"Joe Lieberman! If you would know smarm, look to Joe Lieberman."

"The plutocrats are haunted, as all smarmers are haunted, by a lack of respect. On Twitter, the only answer to "Do you know who I am?" is "One more person with 140 characters to use.""

"To actually say a plain and direct word like "corrupt" is more outlandish, in smarm's outlook, than even swearing."

"Anger is upsetting to smarm. But so is humor and confidence."

"Immense fortunes have bloomed in Silicon Valley on the most ephemeral and stupid windborne seeds of concepts. What's wrong with you, that you didn't get a piece of it?"

[Adding some additional Red Burns links here:

"Interview with Red Burns on failure and risk"
https://vimeo.com/4061922

"Technology is Not Enough: The Story of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program"
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/dec/15/technology-not-enough-story-nyus-interactive-telec/

"Click on the image above to view the presentation that Red would give to welcome incoming classes at ITP."
http://creativeleadership.com/2013/08/24/red-burns/

***** Direct link to that presentation (.pdf): http://creativeleadershipblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/reds_2010_ver3.pdf ]

[Update 18 November 2013: See also

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/focus-on-people-not-tech-and-other-impt-lessons-for-interaction-design-and-life/
and http://thegovlab.org/rip-red-burns-2/ ]

"“Nobody wants to buy therapy anymore…They want to buy a solution to a problem.” This is something Truffo discovered in her own former private practice of 18 years, during which she saw a shift from people who were unhappy and wanted to understand themselves better to people who would come in “because they wanted someone else or something else to change,” she said. “I’d see fewer and fewer people coming in and saying, ‘I want to change.’”"

"I explained that I could help him with clarity but couldn’t guarantee his timeline. The day before our appointment, he called again and told me he found a relationship coach to help sort things out. She gave him a four-session-package guarantee.

There’s not a lot I can do when this happens, primarily because therapists, governed by a board, can’t make outcome claims the way coaches can."

"“For most people who seek therapy, they find a feeling of catharsis in sharing their story of suffering with an objective, caring therapist. On the other hand…"

"On the basis of publications supporting the hypothesis that student ratings of educators depend largely on personality variables and not educational content, the authors programmed an actor to teach charismatically and non substantively on a topic about which he knew nothing. The authors hypothesized that given a sufficiently impressive lecture paradigm, even experienced educators participating in a new learning experience can be seduced into feeling satisfied that they have learned despite irrelevant, conflicting, and meaningless content conveyed by the lecturer. The hypothesis was supported when 55 subjects responded favorably at the significant level to an eight-item questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the lecture. The study serves as an example to educators that their effectiveness must be evaluated beyond the satisfaction with which students view them and raises the possibility of training actors to give "legitimate" lectures as an innovative approach toward effective education. The authors conclude by emphasizing that student satisfaction with learning may represent little more than the illusion of having learned."

"the scientists, the economists and neuroscientists and psychologists who I've been studying and writing about are really challenging the idea that IQ, that standardized test scores, that those are the most important things in a child's success."

"There are two stages [of parenthood] and it's hard to tell where the transition goes from one to the other. When kids are really young — when they're in their first year or two of life — my sense from the research is you can't be too loving. ... What kids need at that point is just support, attention, parents who are really attuned to the child's needs. But at some point somewhere around 1, or 2 or 3, that really starts to change and what kids need is independence and challenge. And certainly as kids get into middle childhood and into adolescence, that's exactly what they need. They need less parenting. ... They need parents to really stand back, let them fall and get back up, let them fight their own battles."

"Don't forget that I've had a lot more confirmation of my right to think and speak than most women, and I've learned that a certain amount of self-doubt is a good tool for correcting, understanding, listening, and progressing -- though too much is paralyzing and total self-confidence produces arrogant idiots, like the ones who have governed us since 2001. There's a happy medium between these poles to which the genders have been pushed, a warm equatorial belt of give and take where we should all meet."

"Being told that, categorically, he knows what he's talking about and she doesn't, however minor a part of any given conversation, perpetuates the ugliness of this world and holds back its light."

"Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don't. Not yet, but according to the actuarial tables, I may have another forty-something years to live, more or less, so it could happen. Though I'm not holding my breath."

[Also as "The Problem With Men Explaining Things" at: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/08/problem-men-explaining-things-rebecca-solnit ]

"Friends have remarked to me that I “seem so confident” or that they “wish they could be as sure about things” as I am.

When someone says that to me, I get confused for a minute. Because I question myself all the time, wonder if I am doing the right things, and often think that I am really, really screwing things up. I used to never talk about those moments with other people. I felt pretty alone.

People have told me that I’m “argumentative,” or more politely “a little intense.” I tend to engage in conflict directly, and to resolve problems with people by talking or having arguments. I can be the type of conversationalist that’s a little scary to people who aren’t used to so much directness. But here’s the secret: I wasn’t born like this."

[Advice follows]

"Imagine receiving an electric drill to use at school—and the freedom to learn and explore while building things with it. That’s what happens at Brightworks, a year-old nonprofit private alternative school located in San Francisco’s Mission District.

The school is tiny—just 20 students between 6 and 13 years old—but it's building quite the reputation for its innovative learning philosophy. Brightworks takes its cues from the maker and tinkering movements, which do away with formal classroom instruction in favor of project-based experiential learning.

Students aren’t divided into traditional grade levels, either: The school allows kids to interact naturally across age groups—older students work on more sophisticated projects while younger ones learn primarily through play. And, instead of relying on tests to measure learning, the school's students create portfolios. …"

[Video embedded]

"We are normally blind about our own blindness. We're generally overconfident in our opinions & our impressions & judgments. We exaggerate how knowable the world is."

"There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. & in long-term political strategic forecasting, it's been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey."

"What psychology & behavioral economics have shown is that people don't think very carefully. They're influenced by all sorts of superficial things in their decisionmaking…procrastinate and don't read the small print. You've got to create situations so they'll make better decisions for themselves."

"When you analyze happiness, it turns out that the way you spend your time is extremely important. Decisions that affect how much time you spend with people you like are going to have a very large effect on how happy you are--not necessarily satisfied with your life but happy. So yes, I've learned things."

"It is a sad fact that much of what we do in our younger years at school acts as barrier to our future confidence and enjoyment. The main reason is that most people are made to feel that they are failures, or fall short of the required standards.

The component of play, spontaneity, & expression, are beaten out of us with the rigour of rules & traditions; a culture of compulsion prevails together with a morbid attraction to examination & assessment regimes. Our children suffer anxiety and stress; they become miserable & unresponsive. Retreating to private worlds, they seldom gain the confidence or the creativity to comprehend their suffering; the system's ultimate victory is that the children are unable to construct meaningful forms of rebellion.

Our obsession with competition, elitism, skills' acquisition, specialisation, and a functional / instrumental approach to learning plays a major role in inhibiting the majority of individuals from participation and creative growth…"

"Your sensitivity & tolerance improve only with practice. I wish I’d been given toy businesses to play w/ at school, just as playing w/ crayons taught my body how to let me draw.

I’ve written in these weeknotes before how I manage three budgets: cash, attention, risk. This is my attempt to explain how I feel about risk, and to trace the pathways between risk and cash. Attention, & how it connects, can wait until another day…

I said I wouldn’t speak about attention, but here’s a sneak peak of what I would say. Attention is the time of people in the studio, & how effectively it is applied. It is affected by the arts of project & studio management; it can be tracked by time-sheets & capacity plans; it can be leveraged with infrastructure, internal tools, and carefully grown tacit knowledge; and it magically grows when there’s time to play, when there is flow in the work, and when a team aligns into a “sophisticated work group.”
Attention is connected to cash through work."

"I was born in California…grew up w/ what I felt was a normal upbringing w/ normal values.

…speaking to a business school class…in Singapore…asked, “How many people would like to start their own company some day?” In a room of 50 people, only one hand…this question…in CA, 51 hands would have gone up…

…Their answers:…“Why take the risk? I just want security.”

“I spent all this money on school…need to make it back.”…“If I fail, it would be a huge embarassment to my family.”

Then I realized my local American culture…land of entrepreneurs & over-confidence. I had heard this before, but I hadn't really felt it until I could see it from a distance.

…When I told one that I left home at 17, she was horrified…“Isn't that horribly insulting to your parents? Weren't they devastated?”

…realized my local American culture again. The emphasis on individualism, rebellion, following your dreams. I had heard this before, but I hadn't really felt it until I could see it from a distance."

"The mistake in thinking that “entrepreneurship” belongs only to our capitalist values as a nation. Entrepreneurship has as much to do with our civic values and it does with our capitalist outings, and as such, profoundly and deeply belongs rooted in our schools. … The challenges we all face as our world changes as an ever quickening pace, as the old ways of doing things no longer hold, require a flexibility of spirit, a collaborative sense of purpose and the nimbleness to adapt to rapid change. There are few institutions in our society that are currently configured to handle this change. Schools, by the very fact that they teach the young - those who will have to see this change through, must take the lead in re-valuing and redefining the entrepreneurial spirit. Students must leave our walls with the confidence and skill to bring new ideas to bear on a society that desperately needs them."

"this video illustrates (literally!) the concept of Hip Hop Genius. these ideas are explored more fully in my book, Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education (hiphopgenius.org)

the drawings were done by Mike McCarthy, a student at College Unbound (collegeunbound.org), a school that exemplifies many of the values espoused in the film. the entire video was shot in College Unbound's seminar space, where Mike has built a studio for his company Drawn Along (drawnalong.com)."

"My work, clothing & fiber-based sculptures, collages, installations, & performances, explore use of textiles & clothing as conceptual modes of expression & pose fundamental questions about human condition in social & political realm…

I believe that what happens in my studio & living life as an artist are the single most important things I bring to the classroom. Artists must design their own pathways, work through plateaus in their work & understand that they will find themselves humbled by the very process of art-making.

I encourage my students to build their work w/ conviction, come face-to-face w/ truth of what they are attempting to create, & be open to experimentation.

I have been lucky to have been mentored by talented artists who taught me to challenge myself & build level of confidence & trust in my creative judgment…I hope to provide my students w/ knowledge that their art making holds the possibility for acting as a vehicle for change on a larger, global scale."

"There are a lot of ups and downs in the job of teaching. More downs than ups, lately, it seems. But still, I’m glad I got into it and have had an occasional glimpse of the good that can come from influencing someone to set goals and reach for things that might at first seem difficult to attain. When you teach elementary school, it takes a few years before the kids come back to tell you about these things. These visits are hugely meaningful to me since on a day-to-day level, it’s hard to see growth in so many things that really matter, like empathy, confidence, persistence, and goal-setting. And I wonder about the kids that don’t return with stories to tell – the ones who might have gained nothing meaningful from our time together. What could I have done differently to make that chemistry work? This question nags me…"

"We make important decisions every day -- and we often rely on experts to help us decide. But, says economist Noreena Hertz, relying too much on experts can be limiting and even dangerous. She calls for us to start democratizing expertise -- to listen not only to "surgeons and CEOs, but also to shop staff.""

"I give very few talks about anything. I am terrible at knowing what I know. I assume that most people in the audience of any conference I attend will know more than me about anything I could talk about. For similar reasons, I’m no good at thinking of things I could write about for magazines. You all know what I know.

It turns out that I need to run a website on a very specialised topic for eight years before I’m in a position to feel confident talking about it. This may be a little extreme."

[via: http://magicalnihilism.com/2011/02/21/phil-gyford-on-knowing-what-youre-talking-about/ ]

"Blueprint for a Bogey (10 February – 5 June 2011) includes art work from Glasgow Museums Modern Art Collection by Paula Rego, Eduardo Paolozzi and Graham Fagen shown alongside work by Glasgow based artists David Sherry and Corin Sworn and the collaborative project Women@Play.

The exhibition explores the shift from the intrinsic nature of play in children to how, as adults, we sometimes lose confidence and neglect to play. It also looks at the boundaries that adults impose on children’s play and how they approach and judge play for themselves. Where do those boundaries exist in everyday acts between play, work and creativity?

Why is play important and can it be seen as an end in itself?"

"This simple writing exercise may not seem like anything ground-breaking, but its effects speak for themselves. In a university physics class, Akira Miyake from the University of Colorado used it to close the gap between male and female performance. In the university’s physics course, men typically do better than women but Miyake’s study shows that this has nothing to do with innate ability. With nothing but his fifteen-minute exercise, performed twice at the beginning of the year, he virtually abolished the gender divide and allowed the female physicists to challenge their male peers."

"“Sometimes,” says Dr. Freeman, sitting in her airy office in central London, with toys on the floor and copies of her 17 books on the shelf, “those with extremely high IQ don't bother to use it.” The psychologist, who spent much of her own childhood as a wartime evacuee in Alberta, puts it bluntly in her book: “Success in school did not predict success outside of it.” Most of the world's highest achievers, she points out, were never identified as gifted children. A gifted child is just one who has advanced beyond his or her peers; it takes drive, application, perseverance and insight to turn that potential into exceptional adult success."

"Non-native speech is harder to understand than native speech. We demonstrate that this “processing difficulty” causes non-native speakers to sound less credible. People judged trivia statements such as “Ants don't sleep” as less true when spoken by a non-native than a native speaker. When people were made aware of the source of their difficulty they were able to correct when the accent was mild but not when it was heavy. This effect was not due to stereotypes of prejudice against foreigners because it occurred even though speakers were merely reciting statements provided by a native speaker. Such reduction of credibility may have an insidious impact on millions of people, who routinely communicate in a language which is not their native tongue."

"It looks, said Srivastava, as if “what is happening in America is a loss of self-confidence. We don’t want America to lose self-confidence. Who else is there to take over America’s moral leadership? American’s leadership was never because you had more arms. It was because of ideas, imagination, and meritocracy.” If America turns away from its core values, he added, “there is nobody else to take that leadership. Do we want China as the world’s moral leader? No. We desperately want America to succeed.”"

"1. Establish an individual set of values but recognize those of the surrounding community and of the various cultures of the world.

2. Explore their own ancestry, culture, and place.

3. Are comfortable being alone, yet understand dynamics between people and form healthy relationships.

4. Accept mortality, knowing that every choice affects the generations to come.

5. Create new things and find new experiences.

6. Think for themselves; observe, analyze, and discover truth without relying on the opinions of others.

7. Favor love, curiosity, reverence, and empathy rather than material wealth.

8. Choose a vocation that contributes to the common good.

9. Enjoy a variety of new places and experiences but identify and cherish a place to call home.

10. Express their own voice with confidence.

11. Add value to every encounter and every group of which they are a part.

12. Always ask: “Who am I? Where are my limits? What are my possibilities?”"

"Narcissists, new experiments show, are great at convincing others that their ideas are creative even though they're just average. Still, groups with a handful of narcissists come up with better ideas than those with none, suggesting that self-love contributes to real-world success.

Narcissism and creativity seem to go hand in hand. Creative people often appear self-important, hungry for attention, and unconcerned with others' ideas and opinions— all traits narcissists share. Think of Pablo Picasso, famous for his iconoclastic paintings but infamous for declaring, "I am God." Like Picasso, narcissists often rise to positions of importance in art, business, and other endeavors, suggesting that they have ability and ideas that others do not."

"smaller cities offer more opportunities for unstructured play…to hone general coordination, power, & athletic skills. These longer hours of play also allow kids to experience successes (& failures) in different settings…likely toughens their attitudes in general…important advantage of small towns…actually less competitive…allowing kids to sample & explore many different sports. (I grew up in big city,…sports career basically ended at 13. I could no longer compete w/ other kids my age.) While conventional wisdom assumes it’s best to focus on single sport ASAP, & compete in most rigorous arena…probably a mistake, both for psychological & physical reasons…While deliberate practice remains absolutely crucial, it’s important to remember that most important skills we develop at early age are not domain specific…real importance of early childhood has to do w/ development of general cognitive & non-cognitive traits, such as self-control, patience, grit, & willingness to practice"

"... but I have to say that all Americans are New Yorkers today, in the wake of Mayor Bloomberg's brave and eloquent defense of American tolerance, and the resilient strength of America's diverse society, in welcoming the vote that cleared the way for construction of a mosque near the site of Ground Zero. …

[clips from Bloomberg's speech]

Apart from the lofty sentiments, I love the plain "That's life" -- part of the thick-skinned, no-nonsense realism that Americans like to think exemplifies our culture, but doesn't always. Nothing is more admirable about this country in the rest of the world's eyes than the big-shouldered unflappable confidence demonstrated in that speech. Nothing is more contemptible than the touchy, nervous, intolerant defensiveness we sometimes show."

"10 things that were constantly reinforced during my 12 years of public school in America that had to be unlearned as an adult desiring to be an entrepreneur.

1. Fit in instead of be original

2. Follow the rules instead of questioning why they exist

3. Helping others is cheating despite the fact that everything you do as a successful adult is a team effort

4. Have good handwriting instead of teaching me to type

5. Do it because the teacher said so, instead of teaching me to understand why doing it is important

6. Don’t challenge authority instead of teaching me that I deserve respect too

7. Get good grades in all my classes, even though I will never do trigonometry ever in life. (Sine these nuts. lol)

8. Don’t fail instead of teaching me to value trial and error

9. Debating and arguing with friends is a bad thing, instead of encouraging independent thought and self confidence

10. Be a generalist and learn things I hate, instead of developing my genius at things that i like.

More Dumbshit that I still dont understand.

*Getting to school late will be punished by making you stay home for 3 days…WTF

*Memorize stuff that now can be looked up on Google.

*Learn to do calculus by hand, despite being required to purchase a $200 calculator.

*Appearing smart is more important than being effective…. REALLY?

These are all that I can think of now. Feel free to add dumbshit you learned in the comments section."

"Even when you choose the thing that inspires you, the thing you believe in, work with colleagues you learn from, do good work, there’s going to be a level of fear involved. People will have opinions and negative reactions. But that fear means it’s worth it...

Each career change I’ve made has been based on this premise. Leaping from a known to an unknown is a way to stay relevant, moving, and continue learning...

People, both women and men, should be so fiercely passionate about good ideas that self-promotion is a natural extension. Otherwise, why is it worth doing in the first place? It’s when confidence and self-promotion are obfuscated from passion that the claims become flimsy and empty. Confidence can bridge the gap between desire and outcome as long as the integrity for what we believe and the authenticity of what we create remain in place. We have the ability to both do good work and to recognize it — the choice is ours to make. Confidence is good’s natural extension."

[via: http://blog.frankchimero.com/post/594165220/text-playlist ]

"Dunning & Kruger argued...“When people are incompetent in strategies they adopt to achieve success & satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions & make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of ability to realize it. Instead...they are left w/ erroneous impression they are doing just fine.”

"Those graduating from college soon will be in charge of our institutions. We should give these Millennials every support we can, despite their sense of entitlement."

"real reason you feel like a fraud is because you have been successful in taking a lot of information out of [shit you know don't know you don't know] & put it into [shit you know you don't know]; you know of a lot of stuff you don’t know...good news is that this makes you very not dangerous...bad news is that it also makes you feel dumb & helpless a lot of the time.

I hope that this helps if you find yourself sometimes feeling conflicted, recognizing the contradiction between your abilities & what other people say about your abilities. When you find yourself in a situation where you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t ever feel ashamed for not understanding something, even it seems like it should be obvious; if you don’t understand it, then it’s not obvious, plain & simple.

In fact, if you never feel clueless, & you always know better than everyone else, please let me know, so that I can be aware of how dangerous you are."

"I also believe that there are "unique and defining characteristics of entrepreneurs." Here are some of the ones I observe most frequently:

1) A stubborn belief in one's self

2) A confidence bordering on arrogance

3) A desire to accept risk and ambiguity, and the ability to live with them

4) An ability to construct a vision and sell it to many others

5) A magnet for talent"

"when I play in Sunday-morning soccer games, I can literally spot the people who’d probably be good managers and good people to hire ... if you give people really big jobs to the point that they’re scared, they have way more fun and they improve their game much faster. ... I like to bet on people, especially those who have taken risks and failed in some way, because they have more real-world experience. And they’re humble. I also like to hire people into one position below where they ought to be, because only a certain kind of person will do that — somebody who is pretty humble and somebody who’s very confident. This is another thing I really, really value: being a true meritocracy. The only way people will have the trust to give their all to their job is if they feel like their contribution is recognized and valued. And if they see somebody else higher above them just because of a good résumé, or they see somebody else promoted who they don’t think deserves it, you’re done."

"I have always thought Hans Christian Andersen should have written a companion piece to the Emperor’s New Clothes, in which everyone points at the Emperor shouting, in a Nelson from the Simpson’s voice, “Ha ha! He’s naked.” And then a lone child pipes up, ‘No. He’s actually wearing a really fine suit of clothes.” And they all clap hands to their foreheads as they realise they have been duped into something worse than the confidence trick, they have fallen for what E. M. Forster called the lack of confidence trick. How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”."

"When a studio is really working, people & ideas feed off one another. Code or design will reveal an opportunity or problem. An idea will be floated. Someone will take it, reference something they know (an unusual style of photography; rare game format from 80s; nature of time & space), spin it & throw it back. Ideas fold & stretch. & then, somehow, something simple and to the point will appear, & that’ll be the new direction. It doesn’t matter what people are working on, everyone has something to do. There a kind of multiplier effect, the more people are in flow, in the studio. What I try to concentrate on is enabling this studio-wide flow. When it’s working well I’m buoyant, exuberant. What blocks it? Concerns about direction, time, support, money; overwork; unhappiness; lack of confidence in the work; lack of openness to critique. How can it be steered? Enthusiasm & passion, examples & influences, shared values. What do we value? That which is: Popular. Inventive. Beautiful."

"What we are seeing… is what we see everywhere with Obama: a relentless empiricism in pursuit of a particular objective & a willingness to let the process take its time. The very process itself can reveal - not just to Obama, but to everyone - what exactly the precise options are. Instead of engaging in adolescent tests of whether a president is "tough" or "weak", we actually have an adult prepared to allow the various choices in front of us be fully explored. He is, moreover, not taking the decision process outside the public arena. He is allowing it to unfold w/in the public arena…What strikes me about this is the enormous self-confidence this reveals. Here is a young president, prepared to allow himself to be portrayed as "weak" or "dithering" in the slow & meticulous arrival at public policy. He is trusting the reality to help expose what we need to do. He is allowing the debate - however messy & confusing & emotional - to take its time & reveal the real choices in front of us."

"a lot of what we then considered "working hard" was actually "freaking out"...panicking, working on things just to be working on something, not knowing what we were doing, fearing failure, worrying about things we needn't have worried about, thinking about fund raising rather than product building, building too many features, getting distracted by competitors...& other time-consuming activities. This time around we have eliminated a lot of freaking out time. We seem to be working less hard this time...Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing."

“Initially suspecting that multitaskers possessed some rare and enviable qualities that helped them process simultaneous channels of information, Professor Nass had been ‘in awe of them,’ he said, acknowledging that he himself is ‘dreadful’ at multitasking. ‘I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy’ … ‘The core of the problem,’ Professor Nass said, is that the multitaskers ‘think they’re great at what they do; and they’ve convinced everybody else they’re good at it, too’.”

"As we work together to restore hope to the future, we need to include a new and strange ally—our willingness to be disturbed. Our willingness to have our beliefs and ideas challenged by what others think. No one person or perspective can give us the answers we need to the problems of today. Paradoxically, we can only find those answers by admitting we don’t know. We have to be willing to let go of our certainty and expect ourselves to be confused for a time. We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know. Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused. Or for asking more questions rather than giving quick answers. We’ve also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not. We don’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do."

[via: http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/willing-to-be-disturbed/ ]

"This goes some way towards explaining why a characteristic shared by many of these wrong-headed “experts” is an overweening self-confidence. All those brass-necked pundits whose self-assurance seems inversely proportional to their wisdom are merely the inevitable result of free markets, because selling certainty is easier than selling nuanced opinions that embrace complexity and doubt.

At first, this quirk of human psychology sounds like an interesting nugget of pop science, until you consider the cumulative cost of this cognitive error. If the result of this psychological quirk were restricted to football commentators embarrassing themselves before a Champions League final, no harm done. Unfortunately, the implications are rather more profound, and dangerous. ... The triumph of the competent over the confident, it would seem, is far from assured."

"EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It's a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people's self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice."

[paper here: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/facseminars/events/marketing/documents/ob_01_09_moore.pdf ]

"Confident writers work to get the words right. Delusional writers think they got the words right the first time. ...Confident writers know when to move on, and learn from their failures and successes. Delusional writers keep doing the same things, over and over, hoping for different outcomes. ... Confident writers work within the system, even though the system is flawed.

Delusional writers work outside of the system, even though they long to work within the system. ... Confident writers believe in persistence.
Delusional writers believe in talent."

"We [parents] become so confused, so conflicted, so fearful that unless we keep our children’s minds “on task,” aiming for the honor roll, the advanced placement courses, the grade-point average of life, we will damage their chances to access the next set of elite learning venues, be they the elementary school’s gifted-and-talented program, the high school’s honors classes, an Ivy League college, or a top-ranked graduate program. Such pressures can easily thwart our desire to see the children in our lives as happy, curious, confident, and enthusiastic learners. We see the contrast between how our children respond to the things they love to learn and how they resist or rebel against the boredom and inanity of much of their schoolwork. But we bite our tongues and (still confused) become complicit in the atrophy of our children’s learning spirit in furtherance of their academic careers. [The Game of School by Robert Fried, pp. 80–81]"

[book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0787973475 ]

"1. A brand is not a logo. 2. A brand is not an identity. 3. A brand is not a product. So what exactly is a brand? It's a persons gut feeling about a product, service or organization, because brands are defined by individuals, not companies, markets, or publics. It's a gut feeling because people are emotional intuitive beings. In other words, it's not what you say it is. It is what **they** say it is... We tend to base out buying choices on trust. Trust comes from meeting and beating customer expectations...A charismatic brand is a product, service, or organization for which people believe there's no substitute... Any brand can be charismatic...[just follow] five disciplines of brand building: Differentiate. Marketing today is about creating tribes. Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter?...Collaborate...Innovate...Validate...Cultivate."

[In many ways the message boils down to knowing who you are as an organization (your mission) and staying to true to that core definition.]

[via: http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/marketing-branding-education-ing/ ]

"Imposter syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence."

"Researchers have shown...that people tend to be poor judges of their own performance and often to overrate their abilities. Their opinions about how well they’ve done on a test, or at a job, or in a class are often way off others’ evaluations."

"*more fun, in most serious existential sense
*Diversity of intellectual playgrounds breeds confidence, not fear of unknown
*Boredom is failure
*In world of dogmatic specialists, generalist runs show
*Jack of all trades, master of none = artificial pairing"

"ruling class are taught to see themselves as talented and intelligent, irrespective of achievements/failures...working class tend to be more existentialist, believing that status has to be earned- continually..[thus] prone to depression"