Here it is after 530 pm on the East Coast, and I have hardly tweeted today and I haven’t facebooked and I haven’t checked into FourSquare anywhere and I certainly haven’t blogged, and I actually get this physical sensation of incompleteness, like a hunger, but not a hunger to eat but a hunger to share. And I’m struck with how powerful the imperative to share becomes once you’ve switched your mental model–from hoarding information for yourself to telling everyone everything you think you know. It’s like geometry or algebra–it’s exponential. In the first model, you take many instances of knowledge and reduce them to a factor of 1. In the second model, every unit of information is multiplied by the factor of infinity. Now I ask you, which is likely to be the more productive model?
Jonah Lehrer who writes on cognitive issues in his great blog The Frontal Cortex touches on the multiplying aspects of generosity in his piece from yesterday. Also check out this great piece from Signal Magazine about the Air Force’s emphasis on collaboration. They cite many reasons but of interest is the importance of collaboration to deal with the projected shortage of skilled labor in the decades ahead.
Oh and what was I doing today that kept me from being part of the great collaborative flow? Breaking in my new laptop. Transferring all the data. Figuring out what programs I’ll have to repurchase. GRRRRRRR…
RecoveringFed 