By Maria Konnikova
March 8, 2014
Shared by Jeff Merrell, MSLOC Associate Director
""I HATE quotation. Tell me what you know," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his journal one spring day in 1849. He was talking about a very specific tendency. When we're faced with an issue that's meant to be thought provoking (in this particular case, immortality), we reach for the easy way out. "I notice," he writes, "that as soon as writers broach this question, they begin to quote." Quotation becomes a way not to add depth to your thinking, but to avoid thinking in the first place.
Welcome to the world of the Internet. What would Emerson have made of it? Examined from one perspective, it's a place that provides endless fodder for the type of anti-thought he despised. He would have shuddered to find himself quoted and requoted millions of times (make that millions plus one), often with little understanding of who he was or what he stood for. Decontextualized knowledge - snippets that stream past as links, tweets, posts, memes - dominates. "
Author: Phyllis Korkki
Date: April 12, 2014
Shared by: Jessica Catz, MSLOC Student
Who really makes the changes in an organization? It's not always the people with the highest executive titles. A growing body of research has pointed to the importance of informal leaders known to researchers as "brokers," who have the gift of connecting employees in productive new ways.
12/11/2013 by Oliver Burkeman
Shared by Georgianne Hewett, MSLOC Student
"ONE of our core values is to inject fun and quirkiness into everything we do," Neil Blumenthal, a founder of the online eyeglass retailer Warby Parker, recently told The New York Times. This is a philosophy currently enjoying a resurgence in the tech and retail industries, among others.