Category: Books
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Snoop: An Investigation into Possessions, Perceptions, Projections and Personalities
Sam Gosling‘s new book – Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You – blends an engaging and accessible overview of some of the key concepts and research findings in personality psychology and environmental psychology with what amounts to a collection of short detective stories. Snoopology, the art and science of determining “which of your tastes…
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The Paradox of Choice: Decisions, Happiness and Appreciation
In addition to seeding my last post – on Dark Nights of the Soul – by sending me a link to an evocative image, Yogi also sent me a link to a 20-minute video of Barry Schwartz giving a presentation on The Paradox of Choice a few years ago at a TED conference. The presentation…
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Dark Nights of the Soul
Maureen McHugh, a science fiction writer (who also enjoys "not science fiction" books), has written about the challenges of writing novels (and battling cancer) on her blog, No Feeling of Falling. She augmented her words – which unfold with exquisite openness and vulnerability – with a graphical depiction of the soul work involved in rising…
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Locked-in Syndrome: Diving Bells, Butterflies, Freedoms and Families
Amy and I recently saw The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (or, more properly, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon), during an unexpected extended layover in San Francisco. The movie is about the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, former editor of the fashion magazine Elle, who at age 43 suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed except for…
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Complimenting and Complementing: Great Management through Praising and Partnering
I recently finished “First Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently”, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, in which they emphasize the importance of discovering each individual’s unique constellation of talents – the things he/she cannot help but do (and do well) – and aligning those with appropriate roles – where…
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Altered States, Alienated Majesty, the Vigor of Wild Virtue and the Magnetic Attraction of Awakened People
I awoke yesterday morning, still feeling in a somewhat altered state, ruminating on Andrew Zolli‘s observation of the magnetic attraction of awakened people that permeates Pop!Tech. When I logged in, I found an email notifying me of a comment posted on a blog entry I wrote years ago, on Self-Reliance vs. Interdependence: Inherence, Adherence and…
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Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!
In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat…
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On Hineini, Team Spirit and Recognition
I’ve been reading a soon-to-be-published book on Digital Dharma: A User’s Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere, by Steven Vedro, which proposes an integration of spirituality and technology based on the seven chakras. I hope to post an entry on the book after I finish it, but one of the many gems I’ve encountered…
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Pervasive 2007: Approaching Everywhere, Everyone and Everything
I just attended my first International Conference on Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2007), and I have to agree with many of my friends who have been to both Pervasive and UbiComp that the conferences are very similar, differing primarily with respect to the time of year they are convened. Both focus on computing technology as it…