Quoting Ray Kurzweil, TEDxAustin co-curator Nancy Giordano opened the day by saying that as humans we’re prepared for linear change but completely unprepared for exponential change. We were certainly unprepared for the full day of potential change she and the TEDxAustin crew assembled in the Austin Music Hall on February 19th: Right Now. Giordano warned… Continue reading TEDxAustin 2011: Right Now.
On February 10th, 2011, Chuck D, Common, and Joan Morgan assembled in the brand new Student Activity Center at The University of Texas campus in Austin. It was an evening comprised of in-depth discussion, astute analysis, and the usual gripes. If you know me, you know that Public Enemy is one of my all-time favorite… Continue reading Hip-hop Then & Now: Chuck D, Common, and Joan Morgan Come to The University of Texas at Austin
If I had to pick a patron saint, a hero, or a single intellectual influence for my adult self, it would undoubtedly be Marshall McLuhan. If you’ve spent any time at all reading my work, you’ve seen his name and his ideas. Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! (Atlas & Co., 2010) is… Continue reading Distant Early Warning: Coupland on McLuhan
One of the key insights in Richard Florida’s latest book, The Great Reset (Harper, 2010) is that rapid transit increases the exchange of ideas and thereby spurs innovation. Where the car used to provide this mass connection, now it hinders it. Increasingly, our cognitive surplus is sitting traffic. Ideas are networks, Steven Johnson argues in… Continue reading The Essential Tension of Ideas
In The Young & The Digital (Beacon, 2009), Craig Watkins points out an overlooked irony in our switch from television screens to computer screens: We gather together around the former to watch passively, while we individually engage with the latter to actively connect with each other. This insight forms the core of Clay Shirky’s Cognitive… Continue reading Obscured by Crowds: Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus
