Why has innovation slowed down? (Or has it?)
I do not like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My reason is that while it seems sensible, it’s largely made…
Category: Culture
What I learned at the Civil Rights Museum / MLK
The hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th 1968, is now the primary site of the…
How To Get Out Of A Bad Habit
I regularly take the the top voted question from readers and answer them in a post. With 62 votes, today’s winner…
Why You Are Not Drowning In Data
[This essay appeared in issue #9 of Offscreen magazine] We love to blame the world because the world can’t…
A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture”
I enjoyed Brian Chesky’s recent post Don’t Fuck Up The Culture, where he proclaims to the employees of Airbnb…
How do *you* eat Pho?
I rarely write about food here, but eating and cooking are two of my favorite things. Pho, Vietnamese rice…
Should you ban Woody Allen’s films?
The resurfacing of Woody Allen’s past is sad from many perspectives, amplified by how a daughter and a family…
Why Speed Reading Is For Fools
‘There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”…
When Did You Last Change Your Mind?
When was the last time you changed your mind about something important? As children we changed our minds frequently…
What is the nature of friendship in an era of Facebook? An opinion
I’m back on the reader suggestion horse, and what a fun horse it is. The current top voted question…
Can Free Speech Survive The Social Media Mob? (Video / Slides)
Thanks to SeattleSMC for hosting me to speak at Seattle City Hall on Free Speech and The Social Media Mob. Additional…
Compiled list: Legal cases related to online harassment & free speech
In preparing for my lecture on Free Speech and Social media, I’ve been looking for examples where these issues…
Social Media, Free Speech and the Mob: input wanted
I was invited to speak at Seattle’s Social Media Club on Wed 1/22 (registration here) on the topic of Free…
Working For Free: An Argument
Tim Krieder, author of the excellent We Learn Nothing, wrote in the NYTimes about the mistake of working for…
Should you marry and have kids?
In a series of posts, called Ask Berkun, I write on topics people submit and vote for. Here’s an old…
You are not what you measure
On the day you die, what will your friends and family remember about who you were? At work, they…
On Free Speech vs. Religious Respect: in five sentences
Either people believe in free speech or they don’t. Some cultures do, but many do not. It’s inevitable that…
9 ways to understand how ideas spread
A reader named Niko, who is working on a PhD in social network analysis, asked me for my favorite…
The Idiot Theory of News
One of the simplest stories for a reporter to tell is “An important idiot did something stupid.” This can…
How to understand the media (Review of The Influencing Machine)
We often talk about “the media” as if it were as singular monolithic thing, which it isn’t. Any argument…