October 2, 2000

"Appearance and reality do not come with labels. Confronted with new tools, new cultures, new ways of telling stories, we are shaken from the complacent assumption that truth is simple and obvious."

Virginia Postrel
"Mine Eyes Deceive Me"
Forbes ASAP, 10/02/00

October 3, 2000

"Have you heard of the Nine Pregnant Women rule? It takes nine months to have a baby -- but you canīt get the job done in one month with nine pregnant women. That rule applies to any project: As you think about managing the time that you have available to complete a project, itīs critical that you identify which steps you must complete sequentially."

Scott Mills
Fast Company, November 1999

October 4, 2000

"Four and a half months after we are conceived, we are already beginning to hear. [Sound] is the first of our senses to be switched on . . . . But from the moment of birth onward, hearing seems to recede into the background of our consciousness and function more as an accompaniment to what we see. Why this should be, rather than the reverse, is a mystery: why does not the first of our senses to be activated retain a lifelong dominance of all the others?"

Walter Murch
"Stretching Sound to Help the Mind See"
The New York Times, October 1, 2000

October 5, 2000

"If you think dot-com means startup, think again. General Electric is a dot-com company. So are Ford and General Motors. If you think dot-com means selling goods and services over the Net, youīre only partly right. In reality, itīs a more cost-effective way to run nearly every aspect of your company."

Scott McNealy
Forbes ASAP,10/02/00

October 6, 2000

Knowledge management (KM) demands that people "share their best ideas freely, giving up a piece of their personal competitive advantage, often without getting credit. It also obliges them to use other peopleīs knowledge, which means admitting that somebody knows more than they do. Finally, it requires that they keep looking for ways to improve — whatīs good enough today will never be good enough tomorrow. KM calls on us to steal boldly and let others pilfer freely from us, day after day."

Jan Torsilieri and Chuck Lucier
"Steal This Idea!"
Strategy + Business, 3rd quarter 2000

October 10, 2000

"Many outstanding big-picture thinkers are always looking for, and burdened by, [the] search for perfection. But too often, the path to perfection leads to procrastination.

"Donīt let perfect ruin good."

Harry Beckwith
Selling the Invisible, 1997

October 11, 2000

Since the advent of the Internet, "both lies and truth travel faster and more freely. The result over the long run will likely be more disclosure, more discretion, and a better market for titillating lies as well titillating truths. But there will also be more reliable sources to help you tell the difference."

Esther Dyson
"I of the Beholder"
Forbes ASAP, 10/02/00

October 12, 2000

"Every so many years, literally one-half of your current job knowledge and skills become outdated and obsolete. . . . The occupational half-life in 1970 was estimated at somewhere between twelve and fifteen years. . . . Todayīs best estimates of occupational half-life are in the range of thirty to thirty-six months."

Jim Harris and Joan Brannick
Finding and Keeping Great Employees, 1999

October 13, 2000

DWL, a customer relationship management company based in Toronto, gives each of its 150 employees $1,000 per year to be used for "fun only." The expenditures must be approved in advance and documented by snapshots. Since 1996 when the program began, DWL has had a 96% employee retention rate.

Inc. Magazine, August 2000

October 16, 2000

"The peacockīs tail is a burden, unnecessarily bright and gaudy. The peacock could well be better off without it, in a way that you couldnīt say the cheetah would be better off wihtout its sprint or the wren without its camouflage. How do we explain this wild extravaganza that takes a lot of resources, doesnīt produce anything, is heavy to tote around, and marks the bird as a target for predators?

"Once you understand that sexual selection is displaying qualities like kindness or goodness, or is demonstrating that you can afford to give things away, then you understand the close connection between flamboyance and altruism. Altruism can be one of those evolved peacock feathers in our minds."

Helena Cronin, Co-director
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science,
London School of Economics
Fast Company, November 1999

October 17, 2000

Seniors on the Internet:

- Adults over age 55 are the fastest growing age group in the US

- This age group will increase from 60 million in 2000 to 75 million in 2010

- There will be 9.1 million seniors active online by the end of this year, almost 40% more than last year

- 22% of all Americans online are seniors

- Seniors spend an average of 8.3 hours per week online, more than any other age group

Business 2.0
September 19, 2000

October 18, 2000

"Play is the best way to learn because the learners do not fear the consequences of their thoughts and actions. In the end, they know that they are only playing with a representation of reality and not with reality itself."

Arie de Geus
Fast Company, July/August, 1999

October 19, 2000

"Assume that everyone prefers to feel important, needed, useful, successful, proud, and respected, rather than unimportant, interchangeable, anonymous, wasted, unused, expendable, and disrespected. Esteem needs and self-esteem needs are universal."

Abraham H. Maslow
Maslow on Management

October 20, 2000

"We have a dysfunctional relationship with technology -- a technologically intoxicated zone -- but we canīt see it because weīre inside it."

John Naisbitt
Knowledge Management, March 2000

October 23, 2000

"In this time of prosperity, itīs not just that money dominates America. Ambivalence about money dominates America. People are working harder than ever to get it, but then they worry about getting corrupted by it. These are the anxieties of affluence."

David Brooks
"The Way We Spend Now"
The New York Times Magazine
October 15, 2000

October 24, 2000
Public libraries and the Internet:

- 95% of public libraries offer Internet access to their communities

- The average library has about 8 computers available for public use, double the number available in 1998

- 36% of public libraries allow cardholders to access online databases from home or work

- 95% of public libraries have "acceptable use" policies for their public access computers, but less than 25% block or filter content

National Commission on Libraries and Information Science
September, 2000

October 25, 2000

"Human beings have a seemingly fundamental tendency to compensate for lower risks in one area by taking greater risks in another. . . .We donīt really want the safest of all possible worlds."

Malcolm Gladwell
"Blowup"
The New Yorker, June 3, 1996

October 26, 2000

According to Dr. Jody Heymann of the Harvard University Center for Society, schools still operate on a schedule designed to accommodate a 19th century agrarian economy. American children have 180 school days per year, compared with 213 in Germany and 220 in the Netherlands.

"If school textbooks and equipment were 100 years out of date . . . parents would protest. So why do they accept a school schedule that is a century behind the times?"

Lisa Belkin
"The Furtive 3 P.M. Phone Ritual"
The New York Times
October 25, 2000

October 27, 2000

"According to one estimate that has been widely repeated over the past few years, 80 percent of whatīs available on the Internet is in English. Some observers, however, have recently been warning that this may have been the high-water mark. Itīs not that English-speakers are logging off -- au contraire -- but that other people are increasingly logging on, to search out or create content in their own languages. . . . The consensus among those who study these things is that Internet traffic in languages other than English will outstrip English-language traffic within the next few years.

Barbara Wallraff
What Global Language?
The Atlantic Monthly, November, 2000

October 30, 2000

The "high-tech homeless" spend so much of their lives on the road that they have "crossed a strangely ancient modern line. They can no longer be described as simply doing a lot of business traveling. That implies return to a fixed nest. These wayfarers no longer have their human identity tied to place. . . .

"By embracing the technologies of the past ten years, they have adopted a lifestyle that has been in decline for 10,000 years.

"They have become nomads."

Joel Garreau
"Home Is Where the Phone Is"
The Washington Post, October 17, 2000

October 31, 2000

"Kissing a witch is a perilous business. Everybody knows itīs ten times as dangerous as letting her touch your hand, or cut your hair, or steal your shoes. What simpler way is there than a kiss to give power a way into your heart?"

Emma Donoghue
Kissing the Witch, 1997

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