My last post on faking it engendered some discussion that made it clear I hadn’t communicated my point very clearly. To paraphrase one uncharitable commenter, one interpretation is that I’m looking for ways to justify my tendencies towards self-aggrandizing attention-seeking egotism. And there’s certainly an element of that, as I thought I covered in that […]
Category: thoughts
Faking it
I have a bad habit of trying to fake knowledge when I don’t have it. Whether the topic is world politics or art history or technology or postmodern sociology, I like to pretend that I am knowledgeable on the topic and keep on talking. This habit drives some of my friends crazy, as they feel […]
Being a generalist
In a continuation of my reflections on my personal brand as a generalist, I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a generalist in corporate America. What is the value proposition that I as a generalist bring to companies and how can my skill set contribute to a company’s success? To put it more […]
US Open
The tennis US Open is held each year at this time in Flushing Meadows, in Queens. Each of the past two years I thought about going, but couldn’t quite convince myself to take a day off work to really enjoy it, plus I always figured I could do it next year. Alas, with the movers […]
Whuffie and social capital
I’ve been meaning to get around to reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow for a while now, and finally got around to it recently after downloading it to my iPhone (thanks, Stanza!). The most recent trigger to read it was from Tara Hunt, who is writing a book called The […]
Personal branding
Yesterday’s post on branding actually started because I have been thinking extensively about personal branding throughout my just-completed job search. Looking for a job entails trying to find a plausible intersection between one’s background and skills, one’s interests and career aspirations, and what a company needs. For a generalist like me, this gets particularly interesting […]
Branding
I have been thinking about the topic of branding on and off since talking with Noah Brier a few months ago. Noah pointed out to me the dizzying concept that a company does not control its brand directly – the brand is whatever people think of the company. In other words, a company can claim […]
True Enough, by Farhad Manjoo
Amazon link Based on my previous thoughts about the decline of Absolute Truth , it’s not surprising that I wanted to read a book that is subtitled “Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society”. Manjoo observes that we, the body politic, used to agree on what was happening and the problems we were facing, but […]
Information Rules, by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian
Amazon link Google books link, which appears to have most of the book’s content available (not surprising as Hal Varian is Google’s Chief Economist). According to the preface, this book arose because these two economics professors were perplexed by complaints that “economics was not much use in today’s economy” even as they were getting hired […]
A Whole New Mind, by Daniel H. Pink
Amazon link Official book site My friend Wes recommended this book to me after my social capitalist post where I claimed that we were moving from a world defined by technology to one defined by social connections. Daniel Pink’s book describes a similar transition from an emphasis on left-brain thinking towards right-brain thinking. Pink starts […]
