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Recently finished Peter Thiel's Zero to One . Found it very useful for examples of massive US-centric growth companies, but not very useful for business growth in Africa.  However, it did highlight for me the problem I've been facing with Lateral Labs - there is a really difficult area in between Day 1 of a Sole Proprietorship and Day X of a Limited Company with investors. That is, growing a company to a level where it can consistently sustain itself (people and everything else) as well as turn a profit.  Not all Sole Proprietorships make money, but even fewer make enough money to stop relying on the founder.

So much to think about here, but needed to throw  this link in here along with the following quote: “We have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogues that make the most of technology; that adding 21st century technologies to 20th century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching.” This is not news, especially not in Tanzania. But thinking broadly about the situation, here is what will be on my mind for the rest of the day: Why is technological innovation in education surpassing the needs of those who teach and learn today? If technology is made up of tools that support needs, what needs is ed tech supporting? What will it take for pedagogy to adapt practice + content to current tools? Or is this a reverse-logic problem?

Two recent observations: First, it makes sense to me that a manager should hire/work with staff that have better skills than the manager him/herself. Otherwise, if the manager was better-skilled, then managing would be an unproductive use of time (as opposed to operating). Second, the hiring tradition in TZ seems to cultivate an opposite scenario, one in which managers are often better-skilled than their supervisees. Getting things done, therefore, is commonly a function of the manager's direct input in operations. 

I return, about 6 months later. No, I didn't forget about my blog, nor the people that may (read: may never) read it. Oh no. What I may have forgotten is how valuable an activity blogging can be.  Where I work now , time is of the essence. Here's an Edward Said nightmare: We are trying to sell to people who have very little to spend; they need to be in many places at once, and are not as mobile as society may think they are. They are sensitive to change, but are demanding about their aspirations. So when it comes to our products, services and sales routes, we are constantly moving, shifting, trying.  That leaves me with little time to think and do the things I write about here.  I used to think this situation was a binary choice and, therefore, a problem. However, I have come to think of the "binary" in a different way: It isn't about time; it's about ideas.  A friend once told me that I would either spend the rest of my life building someone...

Many clients I build websites for seem to think a website is like a press release; that once it's first iteration is complete, no further work is needed. But digital communication is becoming more adaptive to every-minute interactions, similar to how we change our voices' volume level, tone and pitch depending on where we are talking. In other words, digital forms of communication need to be adaptive, which changes the one-version-works-forever way of thinking. Particularly, more effort needs to go into watching peoples' responses to your deployment and having conversations with them. Out of this, new tweaks need to be made as you progress over time, creating space for new conversations at every turn. 

You play games in life (*) for one of two reasons: either you like what happens when you finish the game, or you enjoy making moves within it. * Assuming there can be games within "life", even if one thinks life is a game.

Who demands education and who supplies it? In this post, I refer to "education" as formal education, that is the learning that takes place in school classrooms. There is a consistent tendency among people and institutions today to assume that education is demanded by students and their parents or guardians and supplied by teachers and schools. So, when anything happens to go well in education - a certain year showing exceptionally good results, or a surge in engineering professionals - schools are rewarded. Similarly, when anything devastating happens in education - a year of terrible results, or an increase in exam-time suicides - schools are blamed.  But this assumption begs a question: Where is the students' and parents' or guardians' demand for education rooted? Is it an esoteric demand that comes from within the household at any given inspirational moment? Or is it an exoteric demand that comes from outside the household, nudging the household itself ...

I was intrigued by this blog post at the Economist titled On "bullshit jobs" . It explores how administrative work today compares to assembly line jobs in the past. One part of this blog post reads: "The issue is that too little of the recent gains from technological advance and economic growth have gone toward giving people the time and resources to enjoy their lives outside work. Early in the industrial era real wages soared and hours worked declined. In the past generation, by contrast, real wages have grown slowly and workweeks haven't grown shorter." It is easy to see that time and resources are both in shortage across anyone you meet, anywhere in the world. So as this author frames the argument, I think jobs or any kind of work is always about using one's time and resources in the most efficient possible way. The problem for me is in definitions. How do each of us define "efficient"? It is likely to be very diverse: For one person, e...

The following thoughts were inspired by a discussion I had at work today, particularly on how we want to market our brand versus market our customer (who happens to be the "average" citizen). If we think about "work" or large amounts of physical or mental energy dispensed on a focused task, we can imagine that it might involve the following to reach critical scale: A workforce; A communicative function; Some capital; The ability to transcend time; among other things. Both individuals and institutions can have a workforce; the individual has him or her self and institutions have members or employees. Both individuals and institutions can have a communicative function; the individual has voice and and institution has the media. Both institutions and individuals can have capital as well.  Considering this basic list, it seems the only difference between institutions and individuals is factor # 4 - the ability to transcend time. While individuals a...

In the last few years since I completed grad school, I have been thinking about why history seems more difficult to reminisce than the future is to look forward to. But this Economist blogpost  from the other day highlights some new research in this area. "They used to think that time does not have a direction, at least at the subatomic level, though they now agree that it does. Ordinary people, of course, have always known this. Nearly all cultures have a version of the arrow of time, a process by which they move towards the future and away from the past. According to a paper to be published in Psychological Science this has an interesting psychological effect. A group of researchers, led by Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago, found that people judge the distance of events differently, depending on whether they are in the past or future."  It's interesting how the psychology of time has been found to work similarly to the sound of moving objects. Event...

"...it would seem that today’s worldwide web of musical interaction might be best interpreted and expressed through the very tools and technologies that artists and audiences are using to create and engage their music..." - Wayne Marshall on Musically Expressed Ideas About Music (Thanks SS and TZHH !)

In different areas of work - whether they be private or public - we tend to chase measurements of demand. That is, what do people want? But we are growing increasingly aware that peoples' actions do not always reflect their ideal desires (thanks UK and Nudge ). In light of this awareness, it appears that the question we should be asking is, rather than what do people want, what do people do? 

More images of the pursuit for gold at the Boston here .

What influences our preferences? Sure, there are prevailing conditions that influence our economic interests (thanks, BK). But what about preferences of luxury goods, such as extra food, extra clothing, music, visual art, conversation, etc?

A friend of mine pointed out something tonight that has loosely been on my mind lately: We look at, hear and feel life through a lot of screens and even more interfaces today, and increasingly we seem to rely on these very screens and interfaces to give us the whole picture. Doesn't this run the risk of shortening the experience of life itself? Is this even a risk at all? (Thanks, Ender.)

If we can accept that different communication systems are embedded in different cultural arrangements, then the social relations which make the arrangements up become a central concern. We may borrow from concepts explored in political economy as well as community development literature. Amartya Sen [1] outlines five critical functions of the media in society: To enable direction contribution from the public; To enable information to be disseminated to the public; To protect public voice; To facilitate the formation of public value; and To enable public reasoning. Here, Sen does not attempt to theorize communication. He assumes much of it: That it is increasingly 2-way, that sometimes the public talks and other time the public is talked to, and that values are inherent in these relations. By these assumptions, he makes a strong argument of the media in support of democratic, just societies.  Similarly, Paolo Friere [2] assumes that modes of communication -...

Time seems to be on a rough schedule these days. A few quick observations from various encounters with people, texts and situations over the last several weeks: - Media technologies and the social contexts they flow through are inextricably linked. - You learn when you feel and say that you have learned. - Instinct is usually the most reliable source of verification for decisions. There may be two levels of instinct - one that is akin to short-term realities, and another that is longer-term. TBC.

The New York Times Redefining the Meaning of No. 1 By DAVID J. ROTHKOPF Published: October 8, 2011 David J. Rothkopf is the author of the forthcoming “Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government — and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead.” HERE in America, we seem to be more interested in finishing first than we are in figuring out what race we ought to be in. The refrain is insistent, from President Obama on down. He, like others in both parties, urges us on — to build or educate or invest or cut the deficit — so that “America can be No. 1 again.” We want to be No. 1 — but why, and at what? The size of our economy is one measure of success, but it’s not the only measure. Isn’t the important question not how we remain No. 1 but rather, what we want to be best at — and even, whether we want to lead at all? But we are Americans and we seem to think the rest of the world looks best when framed in our rear-view mirror. We outstrip the world by many measures but lag, sometime...

Yesterday I came across this blog post at the World Bank Institute by Rakesh Rajani. Rakesh raises some important questions, namely: Who are the experts who work with development? What systems do they follow to do their work? Do those systems yield the broad outcomes we expect? He also recommends understanding citizen knowdo : "So,what if instead of thinking of bringing in experts to fill in gaps in a community’s or a country’s capability, we identified how people are already analyzing problems and getting things done ? This approach need not romanticize what ordinary people can do or actually do, but rather make their everyday, pragmatic knowhow—and knowdo —a starting point for development. The purpose of development then would not be to create and apply expert solutions, but rather to help enrich the conditions in which people can do more of what they already do well –by making it easier to get, compare, and share information; learn from each other and from outsiders ...

"It's all part of the de-ideologising of mainstream discourse. You know who's ahead three points in the polls, but you have no idea why you should care." Read more from Ted Rall's opinion piece on Al Jazeera here .