Group items tagged

"Managers tend to pick higher-risk options when forced to choose between competing alternatives to complex situations, according to researchers from the University of Guelph and University of Waterloo whose study was published recently in the Journal of Business Ethics. But when they're not forced to choose, managers tend to reflect more and solve problems with fewer negative consequences, says the study."

Is there a bright line between what you say in "real life" and what you say on social media sites like Twitter? If you are a public figure, a journalist, or an employee at a corporation, do your tweets reflect on your organization or are they merely personal opinions best ignored? Is a tweet "newsworthy" or is it something you say in the privacy of your own internet? Derek Andersen of Startup Grind thinks I'm "clueless" (and apparently every other author at Forbes) because I blogged about a tweet that one of EA's product managers made about Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. In the tweet, Kevin O'Leary called the franchise "tired." To me, this was an interesting display of rivalry.

The idea behind this conference is that individuals who feel their identities validated in public venues are better able to accept others' identities, and to analyze critically the social forces and experiences that have shaped their own. We would like to transform our campus into spaces for just this kind of critical exploration and sharing among students, staff, faculty, administrators, alumni, and emeriti of all backgrounds, majority and minority.

Instead of starting out a project saying "What a great opportunity to try this new technique!", we can ask instead, "Looking at the problem I'm trying to address, have I learned anything in the past that can help me develop the most appropriate solution?"

Alex Pang, a visiting fellow at Microsoft Research Cambridge, actively researches this area. Pang proposes a new paradigm called contemplative computing. Today he gave a talk on the idea at the Lift France 2011 conference and has published a PDF of it. You can also find a rough draft of his paper on contemplative computing. So can computers actually help improve our concentration and contemplation, instead of leading us into distraction? The problem, as Pang puts it, is that "Technologies that were supposed to help us think better, work more efficiently, and connect more meaningfully with others now interrupt us, divide our attention, and stretch us thin."