Comments for Ben Casnocha

Comment on Reading in Print vs. Electronic by Jude

Jude — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:47:10 +0000

I’m a 57-year-old librarian, so I’ve read plenty of print books. I also write book reviews, so you might say that in part, I read for a living. It is *so* much easier to read a book in e-format (in my case, on a Kindle). I can speed read more efficiently; I comprehend more; I can use a search to find every mention of a word. I have a hard time facing print books now–they’re unwieldy, uncomfortable, and impractical. I still own a few, but fewer all the time.

Comment on Reading in Print vs. Electronic by Stan James

Stan James — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:37:48 +0000

So true! Related to skimming, e-books also make it difficult to”flip.” With physical books, it’s so easy to stick a finger in the book where you are, and be sure you can get back to it. That is, to flip back to the back to see a picture of the author, or flip back to the first chapter to re-read something important to the current text.

I’ve wasted way too much time attempting to skim, looking for where I was reading in the first place!

Comment on Reading in Print vs. Electronic by Zoelle

Zoelle — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:27:06 +0000

This is what has always amused me about many of the discussions around digital vs print content! So many people are unaware that the codex (the technology of the bound book, that is) was invented specifically to escape the forced linearity of the scroll, which was so heavy and unwieldy to roll and unroll that you really couldn’t easily move any direction but incrementally forward within the text. Of course, now browsers have “scroll bars” and while clearly navigation is nothing so difficult as with original scrolls, there is still a loss that is frequently overlooked…

Comment on Reading in Print vs. Electronic by Tyrese

Tyrese — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:10:48 +0000

I am a fan of print reading! Print reading ftw!

Comment on Notes from Books About Jobs and Work by Janet

Janet — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:39:18 +0000

Matthew Crawford makes a solid argument about the nature of work and how little work with our hands is valued. How many white collar desk jobs are truly fulfilling and intellectually rewarding when we are literally pushing paper all day long or staring at the computer all day long? If future college graduates enter the workforce those lucrative or attractive jobs society emphasizes and value will challenge them mentally, they are in for a surprise.

I think part of our economy’s decline is the shift from being a manufacturer to a consumer. There is so little product created thanks to rising costs and cheap labor from China. We continue to import useless junk yet export wines, waste product and recycling. Where’s the innovation in those commodities? Trade jobs actually help exercise our brain by forcing us to calculate, evaluate and using our sheer mental force to make decisions.

If there was more of a balance in our society and some reward in these hands-on jobs I have a feeling our economy and society would be in a better state.

Comment on One Earth by Ben

Ben — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:50:12 +0000

Become an astronaut or drop acid. Sounds like the same consciousness boost.

Comment on Book Reviews From Our Book Giveaway by Evan Jacobs

Evan Jacobs — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:03:55 +0000

Hi Ben,

Congrats on the success of “The Start-up of You”. For those of us who use e-readers, would you consider adding the book to Kindlegraph.com so we can get a digital signature from you?

Thanks,
Evan Jacobs, Founder
http://www.kindlegraph.com

Comment on Book Reviews From Our Book Giveaway by David

David — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:36:21 +0000

Thanks for the recommendations. Just added them to my AMZN.com wishlist.

Comment on The Jammed Career Escalator: Old Premises, New Realities by Mark Brophy

Mark Brophy — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:53:04 +0000

The Bay Area model of working requires a great expense of networking time because job turnover is twice as high as the rest of the country, but Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he wishes he had kept Facebook in Boston so that he could have spent less recruiting employees. People in Austin, Seattle, Boulder, and Boston are better off allocating their time to mastering technical skills than to meeting new people.

The jammed career escalator is unrelated to the question of whether more networking is the secret to future career success. Careers jam because the government consumes 45% of the economy, compared to 50% during the Second World War, and incurs more than a trillion dollars of new debt each year. No socialist economy ever prospers because centralized planners cannot efficiently exploit the decentralized information created in a complex dynamic system. See Hayek’s essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society” for a detailed discussion. It not only applies to macroeconomics, but also to the creation of new businesses such as Wikipedia. Founder Jimmy Wales cites the essay, which he read as an undergraduate, as central to his thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project.

Jammed careers will persist as long as voters disparage the importance of liquidating debt and drastically shrinking government. Radical new thinking may frighten people, but progress is never easy.

Comment on Notes from Books About Jobs and Work by Trevor

Trevor — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 03:18:35 +0000

Thought rarely mentioned, how is black community fairing out in all this?