Apparently several days off with no planned activities = lots of reading. So here are a few more readings to add to the list:
First off I finished Starfish and the Spider. I would recommend this book if you are looking at the attributes of a decentralized organization.
Next I read Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin. This is a small book that reads more like a string of catch phrases and parables. It is thought provoking, but does not add to much to the readings that it references (Godin reference Gladwell’s books, Age of Heretics, and Here Comes Everybody).
Today I finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Although my least favorite of his three, it is still a worthy read. I read the acknowledgments before reading the book and I think that made it even more interesting. Basically, Gladwell had the experience of being stopped by police and questioned about looking a lot like a rapist that they were looking for. In actuality the only thing he had in common with the rapist was his hairstyle, which he kindly and carefully pointed out to the police officers when they showed him the sketch. Gladwell uses that experience as a jumping off point for looking at our snap judgements and examining ways in which they serve us well and ways they do us a disservice.
I am also listening to A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink on CD. I am interested that Pink defines “knowledge workers” in a different way than they have been described in Mark’s class. He seems to be making a lot the same main points as Mark, but using a different lens to examine the issues. He focuses quite a bit on the argument that “knowledge work” (which he describes as left-brained professions such as accounting, law, medicine, etc) is being outsourced or replaced by machines. He uses that assessment to assert that the new area of job possibilities will be for right-brained professionals in careers that require creativity, emotional intelligence and design.
In addition, I just started Freakanomics on CD as well as Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, which is a very thought-provoking read by a PhD in philosophy who left a Washington think tank to run his own motorcycle repair business in Richmond, VA.
My Terrible Life Choice 