Interrelativity

Category: Books

  • Oriah and Buber, I and Thou: Bringing All Of Who I Am to Blogging

    I’ve been listening nearly exclusively to (and occasionally blogging about) David Whyte’s inspiring words in his audiobook, Clear Mind, Wild Heart, on my iPod for the past several months. Having finished my sixth cycle through [my rip of] his 6 CD set, I decided to listen to Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s audiobook, Your Heart’s Prayer  ……

  • On Virginity, Vulnerability and Vaccines

    Last night, I discovered of The Virginity Project (via Shel Israel’s blog), a book project in which Kate Monroe is compiling a list of stories about how, when and why people lost their virginity. On the drive in this morning, I heard a segment on NPR‘s Morning Edition entitled "Young People and Sex: Parents, Can…

  • Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivations: Doing the Right Things for the Right Reasons

    I was recently talking with a friend about the contrast between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and offered to send him an email with some of the inspiring things I've been reading about this topic lately. Having just blogged about mutual inspiration, and how blogging provides a channel for telling the stories we make up about…

  • Mutual Inspiration and the Wealth of Networks

    I have been very slowly reading and digesting The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, by Yochai Benkler. It is truly a labor of love. The more I read, the more I am convinced that this is book is / will be a significant part of the canon for the paradigm…

  • Self-Reflection vs. Self-Expression

    How does technology’s facilitation of self-expression, instant communication and constant connectivity affect our inclination and ability to think for ourselves, assume personal responsibility and unite for social action? Sherry Turkle explores these and other questions in an interview with Liz Else published in a September 2006 New Scientist article entitled "Living Online: I’ll Have to…

  • Work, Liberty and the Pursuit of Pleasure

    I blogged a bit about Living Without A Goal recently and went down a path I didn’t originally anticipate, focusing on utility and value and appreciation in life. I’d intended to say more about James Ogilvy’s views on work, but once I was plumbing the depths of what makes life meaningful, valuable and worthwhile, I…

  • Living Without a Goal: Mattering Without Being Useful

    God and Marx are both dead. Relativism has dethroned absolutism. In our postmodern world, how do we create meaning in our lives now in the absence of externally defined Grand Goals? In Living Without a Goal: Finding the Freedom to Live a Creative and Innovative Life, author James Ogilvy encourages us to adopt a more…

  • “Always Do Your Best”: Always or Never?

    Don Miguel Ruiz’ Four Agreements, and the book he wrote about them, have had a powerful influence on my perceptions, thoughts, feelings and actions (reflected in a number of blog posts, as well as the Values statement for Interrelativity, my closed-down start-up) over the two years since I first encountered them: Be Impeccable With Your…

  • 1984, Big Brotherhood, Hierarchies, Power and the American Way

    I just finished re-reading 1984 (the Centennial Edition), by George Orwell, and as he himself says The best books are those that tell you what you already know. 1984 depicts a dystopian future wherein three superstates — Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia — are engaged perpetual warfare, which is used to maintain the poverty and ignorance…

  • Bruce Sterling on Shaping Things through SPIMES: Technosocial Transformations for a Sustainable World

    Bruce Sterling’s keynote at UbiComp 2006 inspired me to go back and re-read his book Shaping Things, in which he introduces the notion of SPIMES — physical objects with digital histories that can be recorded and tracked through SPace and tIME. I didn’t think all the ideas from this book shined clearly through in his…