"Be like Socrates: assume people are unaware of their own ignorance (including yourself) and politely, warmly, probe to sort out the difference."

""Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection" by Neil Postman (Delivered at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, Washington, D.C.)"

"Working at the intersection of psychology and economics, Weber is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision making under risk and uncertainty. Recently, she has been investigating psychologically appropriate ways to measure and model individual and cultural differences in risk taking, specifically in risky financial situations and environmental issues. She describes her research as follows: "I try to gain an understanding and appreciation of decision making at a broad range of levels of analysis, which is not easy, given that each level requires different theories, methods and tools. So at the micro end of the continuum, I study how basic psychological processes like attention, emotion and memory (and their representation in the brain) influence preference and choice. At the macro end of the continuum, I think about how policy makers may want to present policy initiatives to the public to make them maximally effective. This range of topics and methods is challenging, but at least in my mind the different levels of analysis inform and complement each other." "

"Rebecca MacKinnon: Let's take back the Internet!" So what we need to recognize is that if we want to have a citizen-centric Internet in the future, we need a broader and more sustained Internet freedom movement.

"Most of what you do, think and believe is generated by parts of your brain to which you have no access. Here's the expose about the non-conscious brain and all the machinery under the hood that keeps the show going."

Robert K. Merton and Elinor Barber's The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity (English-language translation 2004) is the history of a word and its related concept. The choice of writing a book about a word may surprise those who are not acquainted with Merton's work, but certainly not those sociologists that have chosen him as a master. Searching, defining, and formulating concepts has always been Merton's main intellectual activity.

We've finally figured out how to monetize social interaction, and Rushkoff, an award-winning author and media theorist who writes and speaks regularly on these topics, has reservations.

Global Voices is a community of more than 300 bloggers and translators around the world who work together to bring you reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media. Global Voices seeks to aggregate, curate, and amplify the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore. We work to develop tools, institutions and relationships that will help all voices, everywhere, to be heard. Millions of people are blogging, podcasting, and uploading photos, videos, and information across the globe, but unless you know where to look, it can be difficult to find respected and credible voices. Our international team of volunteer authors and part-time editors are active participants in the blogospheres they write about on Global Voices."

"About Gapminder Fighting the most devastating myths by building a fact-based world view that everyone understands. Gapminder is a non-profit venture - a modern "museum" on the Internet - promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals."

"Connect Employees' Ideas With Management's Objectives Gain business results by encouraging social innovation Connecting employees' ideas with management's objectives is both a revolutionary opportunity and a significant challenge for organizations. Every single day, employees generate ideas for new businesses, products and process improvements. By implementing a social innovation strategy in your organization, you can automate the processes of pulling together expertise, experience, and authority of individuals to manage ideas forward into actual innovation projects, improving the quality of decision-making and accelerating the pace of innovation."

Ads Convince Consumers of Nonexistent Experiences Ads can make consumers believe they've tried products that they haven't or that don't even exist. Christopher Intagliata reports"

"We all love the power of email connecting people across continents. But... we're drowning in it. Every year it gets a little worse. To the point where we can get trapped spending most of our working week simply handling the contents of our in-boxes. And in doing so, we're making the problem worse. Every reply, every cc, creates new work for our friends and colleagues. We need to figure out a better way. "

No matter why you want to do it, there are simple and effective methods you can use to increase your cognitive thinking skills in useful and lasting ways.

"These inventive presentations promise to strengthen our human abilities. And, perhaps, to rationally evolve our shared human culture and teach us to wisely manage our world."

How to Disagree The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago, writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and increasingly they do-in comment threads, on forums, and in their own blog posts. Many who respond to something disagree with it. That's to be expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing. And when you agree there's less to say. You could expand on something the author said, but he has probably already explored the most interesting implications. When you disagree you're entering territory he may not have explored. The result is there's a lot more disagreeing going on, especially measured by the word. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier. The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to account for it. But though it's not anger that's driving the increase in disagreement, there's a danger that the increase in disagreement will make people angrier. Particularly online, where it's easy to say things you'd never say face to face.

"Wanna Solve Impossible Problems? Find Ways to Fail Quicker A case study in how an intractable problem -- creating a human-powered airplane -- was solved by reframing the problem. " So what's the lesson? When you are solving a difficult problem, re-frame the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.

There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume (hundreds of exabytes of data), but most of that information is uninteresting, out of date, inaccurate, or not relevant for you. The key to reducing information overload is to more efficiently find the data you want among the information that you don't care about.

Theories of Learning in Educational Psychology John Seely Brown: Cognitive Apprenticeship

An approach to teaching that leads with active questioning.

Digital Introspection and the Importance of Self-Knowledge MAR 18 2011, 11:00 AM ET By Shelley Hayduk As the world changes, for better or worse, we continue to assimilate new experiences and ideas that define who we are. With the advent of new social networking tools, we can join the web of digitized relationships to connect with people and share these views. But in addition to connecting outward we also need to turn inward to reflect on our ideas and the relationships that we hold implicitly in our own minds. The connections we make in our head are unique to every individual. It's a fascinating journey to try and understand what they are. So how do we examine ourselves -- our thoughts and experiences? One method is introspection, and it's going digital. SELF-ANALYSIS THROUGH LANGUAGE Language and writing are key vehicles for introspection. Many people keep diaries of their thoughts and experiences to get to know themselves. Some people even write autobiographies. In fact, a key premise of psychotherapy (in the Freudian sense) is to become explicitly conscious of your feelings and subconscious beliefs by talking through them, i.e capturing your understanding in language. In expressing underlying forces of your life through words you can identify relevant psychological angst and formulate a better way to live. In each case, we capture our feelings and implicit views with words, articulating their meaning through language. Now technology gives us the ability to take this a step further, but before we get to that, a word about mental models. YOUR MENTAL MODEL We are the aggregation of how all our thoughts, feelings and experiences connect. This gestalt forms a perspective of the world as we see it. It's kind of like a miniature version of the world in our heads -- a "mental model" if you will. We use our mental models to store, analyze and decide everything. When we make a decision we check our mental models and use them to try to predict what will happen in the

"I kept hearing this "critical thinking" over and over, so I asked one of the young artists, "What do you mean by 'critical thinking'?" She didn't even pause, "It means being able to see where I am standing and also where you are. It means having enough knowledge and research and discipline not to over-react if you disagree with me or if you dislike me or disrespect me but to pause, and think about who you are, and then help bridge the gap between us." "