Category: Quotes

June 15, 2011

On Learning and Teaching

When I’m learning quickly everything is great. I feel good about myself and my abilities and I throw myself into learning as much as I can.

On the other hand when I’m learning slowly (hitting a “plateau”) I often get frustrated or discouraged. Nothing I try seems to speed up my ascent out of these plateaus. It seems like the only thing that works is time and practice of what I already know.

I think the reason for this is that once I learn a bunch of new concepts my brain needs some time to process them. I can learn the concepts and use them if I concentrate, but it’s not effortless. I think the reason I finally start learning quickly again after some time is that I’ve internalized the previous concepts and now I can move on to more difficult ones which build on the previous ones.

Steve Losh – On Learning and Teaching.

June 13, 2011

Evan Williams on blogging

But that made sense to me because it was not that the technology was new, it was that we had figured out this medium, at least one of the native forms of what the Web was good for. It was about freshness and about frequency, and it was about the democratization of media and giving power to everybody and the universal desire for personal expression and the attraction to a real, compelling personal voice.

Evan Williams – Founders at Work

June 12, 2011

The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap

As we’ve made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we’ve actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there’s a huge cohort that’s just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it.

Seth Godin – The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap

June 10, 2011

College for $99 a month

Imagine if Honda, in order to compete in the American market, had been required by federal law to adopt the preestablished labor practices, management structure, dealer network, and vehicle portfolio of General Motors. Imagine further that Honda could only sell cars through GM dealers. Those are essentially the terms that accreditation forces on potential disruptive innovators in higher education today.

College for $99 a Month

June 8, 2011

An Ode to Software

Put another way, writing a weblog full time is not unlike farming. Lots of chores and lots of busy work that take up time every single day, but the fruit of that labor is seasonal.

Shawn Blanc – An Ode to Software.

May 29, 2011

Our Digital Ethos

I disavow the notion that technology should change our lives. Technology should improve our lives in small, meaningful ways. It should nudge, provoke, surprise, inform, and yes, connect on a grand scale. But it should not presume to know too much.

Nathan Heleine – Our Digital Ethos

May 17, 2011

Running Towards

A few years ago when traveling I had a meal at a tapas bar on a slow Tuesday night, and struck up a conversation with the chef in the open kitchen. She told me that the key to a good meal is matching the chef’s time: take as much time to eat the dish as it took to prepare it. I always filed it away in my head, but never quite knew how to classify the sentiment. It’s just within the past few days that I’ve understood that the reason I liked the thought so much was because of how kind it seemed. To match attention is to be kind.

Frank Chimero – Running Towards.

May 16, 2011

What Books Will Become

We’ll debundle books into their constituent bits and pieces and knit those into the web, but the higher level organization of the book will be the focus for attention — that remaining scarcity in our economy. A book is an attention unit. A fact is interesting, an idea is important, but only a story, a good argument, a well-crafted narrative is amazing, never to be forgotten.

Kevin Kelly – What Books Will Become.

May 15, 2011

Gina Trapani on community

If you can create a culture of teaching and learning within your community like what went on when Greg showed us git, your project will take off. Those moments are more important to the humans involved than any app feature.

Gina Trapani – Your Community Is Your Best Feature.

May 11, 2011

Merlin Mann on service

Your whole definition of how well that experience went is how little you had to deal with them.

Merlin Mann talking about customer experiences in the service industry in Back to Work #8.