Category Archives: Web/Tech

Assorted links…

1. Roger Ebert reflects on death and mortality. He says he memorized this quote:

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

2. An old interview with Virginia Postrel that captures her worldview nicely. For example:

There are two competing visions of knowledge. In the book, I talk about them as trees: Stasists see knowledge as a tall, spindly palm tree—one long trunk with a few fronds on top. Dynamists, by contrast, envision knowledge as a spreading elm tree—lots of dispersed knowledge, communicated through complex channels, often at a great distance. We benefit from things other people know that we don't. And a lot of knowledge is hidden.

3. Is tendency for entrepreneurship genetic? Nurture once again fails to rear its hopeful head.

4. Is there an education bubble? By the number of AP tests being taken, yes. "A simple but powerful way to determine whether or not there's a irrational bubble is to look for a lot of people who are participating in a trend who have no business doing so."

5. William Saletan rounds up recent discussion on race, genes, bias, and fairness. Count on Steve Sailer to challenge conventional wisdom.

6. The always worthwhile Laura Miller reviews the new books on concentration and focus in the age of Twitter. We are wired to like the shiny.

7. Should you keep your goals to yourself if you want to achieve them? "A series of experiments shows that when others take notice of our plans, performance is compromised because we gain a premature sense of completeness about the goal."

I maintain a large information diet. I've gotten questions about information diet at least a dozen times over the past few months so I thought I'd detail how I think about this part of my life.

I'm a fast reader and quick at processing and synthesizing information, so I do a lot of original sourcing of articles. What I read and how much time I devote to it depends on what I'm doing day-to-day. A friend of mine likes to say you can either "keep up with stuff" or you can "do stuff" — while I don't think the two are as mutually exclusive as this implies, it is true that if you're in production mode you necessarily have to downshift on consumption.

Regardless of my mode I hold some principles dear.

First, I never try to keep up with breaking news. I don't care if I hear about something a couple days after everyone else. Besides, when you find out about something a few days after it happened you get to read an analysis versus a mere summary.

Second, I think actively about how I'm consuming my news and information and implement systems and processes accordingly. I never log onto a news web site and randomly surf. Nor do I pick up random magazines to flip through or buy books at airports. Instead, I think about what sources of information consistently provide the highest quality content and when in my schedule it makes sense to consume the content. For example I've found reading my RSS reader when cooling down from a work-out or while eating lunch at my desk is a perfect match of activity and physical location. With books, I am selective about what I read and am always armed with a book of my choosing when faced with downtime.

Third, I use meta-filters to pick up stuff that falls outside of my "intentional zone." Instead of reading all the various book review newspaper sections, I read the Amazon book blog which each Monday does a summation of Sunday’s book reviews. Instead of sifting through all the newspapers each day or trying to keep up with the best magazines, Slate does a daily round-up of what's in the major U.S. newspapers and a weekly round-up of what's in the major U.S. magazines. Arts & Letters Daily and Bookforum are two other terrific meta sources of smart articles. I also use friends. One friend reads Tucker Max's delicious feed and tags the best from it (and I read his feed). Another friend reads Forbes and sends me relevant stuff. And so forth.

Here are the key channels through which information flows for me:

RSS

60 feeds in high priority folder, such as:

• Marginal Revolution – Daily links and thoughts on economics, arts, education, and life.
• Feld Thoughts – Entrepreneurship and life from a VC's perspective
• Overcoming Bias – Cognitive biases that distort our quest for truth!
• The Happiness Project -Thoughtful insights on the pursuit of happiness.
• Infectious Greed – Daily takes from Paul K. on finance, business, entrepreneurship, and media.
• Marty Nemko – Good career advice and other provocative musings

50 feeds in medium priority, such as:

• Amazon Book Blog – Roundup of book and publishing industry news
• EconLog – Excellent economic and libertarian commentary.
• James Follows – Commentary on world affairs from the longtime Atlantic Monthly reporter.
• George Packer – Commentary on world affairs and politics from the New Yorker reporter
• Venture Hacks – Tips for entrepreneurs
• Slate – All new Slate articles, which I love.
• Neurolearning – Research at the intersection of cog science and learning.

40 feeds in low priority, such as:

• Justine Musk – Well written reflections on the writerly, recently-divorced life
• Lessons Learned – Entrepreneurship deep thoughts by Eric Ries
• Aguanomics – All things water and economics.
• Cognitive Daily – Regular postings about cognitive science and research.
• Gulliver – The Economist's blog on business travel and travel industry in general.

I’ll look at my high priority once a day. Medium and low usually about 4 times a week and I scan the headlines and read maybe 40% of the posts.

Twitter

I follow about 150 people who update. I’ll check Twitter a couple times a day usually on my phone while on the go. This is mainly a stay-in-touch mechanism and it’s not a super high priority – I miss stuff. And I still encourage people to email me rather than send DMs or @replies if they want a response. Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter:

• Auren Hoffman
• Steve Silberman
• Andy McKenzie
• Colin Marshall
• TwitterLit
• John Byrne
• Max Marmer
• Penelope Trunk
• Chris Sacca
• David Weekly
• Jeff Nolan
• Mark Nolan

Print magazines

I get The Economist and the Atlantic Monthly in the mail and I frequently buy the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Harper's, and others at airports. I frequently read individual articles from the New Republic, National Review, Columbia Journalism Review, National Geographic, Business Week, and others.

Books

Books have the highest wisdom density of any medium. Here's my post How I Think About Books. Here are my favorite books from the past few years. The number of books I read depends on how much traveling I'm doing — the more time I spend on airplanes, the more books I read. I also have a Kindle 2 which I'm getting used to. For long drives I'll download an audiobook off iTunes.

Friends / Blog Readers

People send me articles, news, and provocative emails. For example, four people sent me the widely-circulated NYT op/ed last week on the follies of graduate school education. I don't like depending on other peope but it is a helpful overlay.

Why people hold opinions:

People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true (Whyte, 2004).

That's a quote that leads off Robin Hanson's paper called Enhancing Our Truth Orientation (pdf). If you're interested in issues of bias, truth, and particularly self-deception, it's required reading.

The opening sentence: "Humans lie and deceive themselves, and often choose beliefs for reasons other than how closely those beliefs approximate truth. This is mainly why we disagree. Three future trends may reduce these epistemic vices."

One trend that may reduce these epistemic vices is increased documentation and surveillance. It will soon be very inexpensive to video and audio record everything that happens in our lives. It is harder to lie or self-deceive when every word you have ever uttered has been recorded and time stamped.

Many bloggers voluntarily document their beliefs in a medium (the internet) that is public and permanent. A large repository of documented beliefs over time reduces the blogger's ability to self-deceive, and contradictions or hypocrisies are more easily exposed.

For example, a couple weeks ago I expressed my displeasure with the label "Spiritual but not religious." I described why I think it is a phrase too fuzzy for its own good. And yet, 3.5 years ago on this blog, I claimed the "spiritual but not religious" label for myself! I am forced to admit I've changed my mind.

Sure, disclosing your beliefs as you form them can leave you vulnerable, perhaps requiring embarassing about-faces, but ulitmately I think "intellectual transparency" of this sort leads to more honest living.

The other day a friend told me, "I didn't send you the article because I didn't want to overwhelm your email inbox." I replied, "You can never send me too much email!"

For people I know, there's no such thing as sending me too much email. The marginal cost of each additional email is minimal and I have gotten proficient at handling large volumes of it. For a slightly smaller circle of folks I apply the same principle for phone calls or text messages.

If I'm overwhelmed or don't have time, let me make that call and reply to say as much.

This is my approach for two reasons. First, I genuinely enjoy talking, brainstorming, and catching up with friends. Second, I think communication is really hard. Miscommunications happen all the time. Relationships end over miscommunications. While improving the quality and clarity of correspondence helps, I think increasing the raw quantity helps, too.

Even very busy CEOs maintain a "proactive open door" policy when it comes to email. Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, plasters his email address everywhere and regularly encourages employees, customers, and partners to email him anytime.

Bottom Line: I believe in overcommunication. As my friends know, my parting line on the phone or in-person is almost always, "Stay in touch."

(thanks to Brad Feld for teaching me this concept.)

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Join Ramit Sethi of IWillTeachYouToBeRich and me for a free, one-hour live video webcast this Saturday, May 2nd at 12 noon pacific time. We'll be talking about entrepreneurship, writing, careers, blogging, and answering your questions! Here are details.

When presenting ourselves to the world, we wear different masks depending on who's around. To our high school friends we'll act one way, to family we'll act a slightly different way, to our boss at work we'll act slightly different still.

Historically the most common distinction made between types of masks has been "personal" and "professional." It wasn't too long ago when once you left the office, work stopped. Now work follows you wherever you go. Telecommuting, etc. So knowledge workers find themselves wearing personal and professional hats at the same time, 24/7, from the office and from home.

In other words, technology is collapsing the masks we wear, making it harder to project different versions of our identity depending on the audience.

My theory: The most natural "you" is the version that gets presented when masks collapse. For example, host a dinner party with your mom, best friend from school, your boss from work, and a woman/man you're interested in dating. How do you act? What comes most naturally?

A public blog is another experiment in voice-synthesis and mask-collapse. I write one blog and all sorts of people read it, people with whom I would customize my presentation if we met in the real world. I slightly customize my vocabulary and personality if I meet a client versus my best friend from childhood. But I write only one blog, and even if I intend for it to be read by a particular constituency, I must remember that both my boss and friend can read it. Thus, the "you" that emerges on a personal blog represents a regression-to-the-mean synthesis, which may represent the most natural version of yourself.

(thanks to Stan James for helping generate this theory)