Brain Pickings • 8 min read
Maria Popova studies some of Bertrand Russell’s writings—with asides from Frida Kahlo, Vera Rubin, and Heraclitus—and looks at how the quest for knowledge can be one for love or power.
Russell cautions that this shift from what he calls “love-knowledge” to “power-knowledge” is the single greatest hazard in the future of science, which is implicitly inseparable from the future of humanity. To protect science from such a shift, he suggests, is not only our duty but our only means of protecting us from ourselves.
The Atlantic • 6 min read
In past issues I’ve included a number of articles about how to read for better comprehension, how to remember more. This is a good read on why we forget so much of what we read and watch. There are also some hints of how our recall has evolved through history and technologies, that the brain remembers different things as the outside availability of the information has changed.
Perhaps the internet offers a similar tradeoff: You can access and consume as much information and entertainment as you want, but you won’t retain most of it.
IDEO U • 44 min video
I’m linking to an interview at IDEO U, part of a class with Eric Ries, but you can also see a shorter article version of that video at Co.Design. Both cover how thinking like a startup (including being a learning organization) can be good for large companies but also how it can be a challenge to keep that mindset as startups scale.
[C]ompanies that don’t embrace failure–they eventually get in a desperate position, where the only thing they can do is make a Hail Mary bet at the very end.” When companies reclaim learning as central to their long-term journey, they can design not only their products, but also their strategy.
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