“‘I fell in love with you that summer. I remember lying on the beach, looking up at the stars, and listening to you describe the way the world should be, the way the world would be. It was magical, prescient even. I’ve never stopped admiring your ability to not take the world as it is, […]
There was a time when I thought Michael V. Hayden and his ilk were scum, but, as Hayden himself acknowledges: “You can only dehumanize an enemy from a distance” (238). Once I let Hayden into my head, he gave my liberal, civilian ass a serious reality check. Despite its nonlinear format and a bevy of […]
“‘Highborn people make poor servants. They are disobedient, resentful, thoughtless, touchy, and they think they’re working hard even though they do less than everyone else––so they cause trouble among the rest of the staff.’ He shrugged. ‘This is my experience.’” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 6638 “We make much in […]
“I have often compared the current evolution of cyberspace to the last great age of globalization, the centuries of European discovery. That era, for all its accomplishments, jammed together the good and the bad and the weak and the strong in ways that had never been experienced before. What the Europeans got out it was […]
“It’s not just our safety but our character as a free people that is at stake here. Every nation is required to balance the needs of security with the needs of liberty. Thanks to James Madison and a bunch of his friends, we have planted our flag well on the side of liberty in that […]
“Hunger is the best seasoning.” ––The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, loc. 939 “We don’t have much time. Because our mind predisposes us to think of trends as linear, we often fail to grasp the urgency of the situation. The demand we place on the planet grows, like our economies, not linearly […]
“The walls of a cathedral had to be not just good, but perfect. This was because the cathedral was for God, and also because the building was so big that the slightest lean in the walls, the merest variation from the absolutely true and level, could weaken the structure fatally. Tom’s resentment turned to fascination. […]
Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening has the look of a graphic novel, but it’s actually a group of interrelated philosophical essays presented in comic book form. This stunning work of art presents a gauntlet of brain-teasers that challenge our assumptions about the nature of human perception and understanding. Sousanis’s central message––that we should learn to see from […]
“Fear breeds fear and trust breeds trust. Traditional hierarchies and their plethora of built-in control systems are, at their core, formidable machines that breed fear and distrust. Self-managing structures and the advice process build up over time a vast, collective reservoir of trust among colleagues.” ––Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the […]
“Our way of conducting business has outgrown our planet. Our organizations contribute on a massive scale to depleting natural resources, destroying ecosystems, changing the climate, exhausting water reserves and precious topsoils. We are playing a game a brinksmanship with the future, betting that more technology will heal the scars modernity has inflicted on the planet. […]