When I first started hearing the rhetoric right after 9/11/2001, that we were in a “war on terror,” I really didn’t want to be difficult. I mean, it was a horrible thing, people were passionate and grieving, and yeah I wanted revenge, or justice, or something.
But when I heard that, I thought, “I hope […]

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The Uses of Disaster (Harpers.org)
And when we look back at Katrina, we may see that the greatest savagery was that of our public officials, who not only failed to provide the infrastructure, social services, and opportunities that would have significantly decreased the vulnerability of pre-hurricane New Orleans but who also, when disaster did occur, put […]

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I just want to brag a little about my current employer.
While most places would be horrified that anyone might take a few minutes out of the day to check on the status of areas hit by Hurricane Katrina, my intranet just published a quick item with links to various resources (National Hurricane Center, Red Cross, […]

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I’ve wondered the bit Denham says in the last sentence quite a bit myself. So many vendors sell software, and services to help you integrate it, but they don’t do anything about change management or cultural conditioning for their clients.
Do they think that offering such a service would make their software look bad?
Or maybe they […]

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I’ve been rolling around in an orgy of reading on design and innovation lately. And JSB’s site is a fine treasure trove. I just heard him on Talk of the Nation, discussing China. I felt like calling in just to be a fan-boy, but figured that would just annoy the radio producer.
johnseelybrown.com: chief of […]

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Last night I was reading this article in the Guardian, that was published in 2002, about the “Millennium Challenge” wargame, where the military was outfoxed by the ex-marine consultant they hired to play the bad guy: Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Wake-up call. I got the link from a post over on Antonella’s […]

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Antonella asks Where did you get your news today? and explains how, after the 7/7 bombings in London, the truly visceral understanding of the news was to be found on the greater ‘net rather than in ‘official’ news channels like CNN.

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ACM Queue - A Conversation with Alan Kay - Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk—and much more.
He’s the guy who says great stuff like “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” as well as this chestnut that describes so perfectly the phenomenon so many of us experience in corporate life: […]

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It’s fun to see someone thinking out loud in their blog, and especially when it’s Weinberger.
Joho the Blog: NECC talk - New Shape of Knowledge

But in the digital age, we snip the connection between how we organize physical stuff and how we organize knowledge. Four principles of organization change: A leaf can be on many […]

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The Buzz Report: Five reasons social networking doesn’t work - CNET.com
I think this article kind of misses the point. Sure, social network websites as distinct businesses are dying off — I’m surprised anybody thought they’d make money doing it to begin with. It’s like selling ice in the Arctic.
The phenomenon of Social Networking isn’t dying […]

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IHT has a story about how the US has hit the watershed “majority broadband” point. US Leans to Broadband
As recently as six months ago, a majority of Americans were using dial-up connections at home. In the first quarter of this year, broadband connections for the first time overtook dial-up.
This is significant, I think, not […]

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Looks like a fab interview including John Seely Brown, at the “Supernova” conference. I haven’t read it yet, but Brown’s involved, so for me it’s a must-read anyway. Can Your Firm Develop a Sustainable Edge? Ask John Hagel and John Seely Brown
I got all excited for a minute when I saw it was connected to […]

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