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Is Intelligence Artificial?
“Intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns, recognize relationships, reason about it and make a prediction or plan an action. That’s what intelligence is. It has nothing to do with general intelligence, intelligence is just solving problems.” That's Jensen Huang's definition of the word. Huang is CEO of Nvdia Corporation, an American multinational technology…
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Reclaiming Personal Power
“Look, part of the whole technique of disempowering people is to make sure that the real agents of change fall out of history, and are never recognized in the culture for what they are. So it's necessary to distort history and make it look as if Great Men did everything — that's part of…
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How Language Informs Narrative and Influences Culture
“All subject are a form of discourse,” says Neil Postman. It makes sense. Because you need language and conversation to discuss biology, physics, chemistry, history, geography, astronomy, etc. Dialectic is valuable, whether you're arguing to win, or have a loftier goal: that to understand. Cicero first said that the purpose of education is to…
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The Art of Crap-Detection
Neil Postman delivered his speech, “Bullshit and the Art of Crap-Detection” at the National Convention for the Teachers of English [NCTE], November 28, 1969, in Washington, D.C. [This below is the full transcript with no additions or comments on my part. After having read Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology and other books…
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Everything Here Apparently Needs Us
“In business, we forget that we are human. Many strong leaders think they should not be friends with their colleagues. I like to be friends with my colleagues,” says Nokia's CEO Risto Siilasmaa. “You get through a crisis because you care so much.” “The way I used to think was: he who cares wins,” echoes…
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System Failure: When Narrative and Execution Fail to Align
Customer experience surveys tell you nothing about how you truly did. People often want to do the right thing. But your system is bankrupt, forcing binary, or no choices. Leaving customers in limbo. Fix your systems, or they'll keep chipping away at your carefully-crafted, expensive narrative. The problem is often designed right into the…
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What Kind of Problem is it?
John Bernoff received an inquiry for help with Slack writing. As he describes, “the director of engineering for a major technology company” reached out to inquire about doing a workshop. I do different kind of work, so my answer would have been different. I agree that Slack is not technically just about writing. Josh suggests…
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Has Your Business Language Lost its Commercial Roots?
When I came across “in my neck of the woods” in Richard Brautigan's The Revenge of the Lawn, I was intrigued. Do woods have necks? I filed the expression right next to “being on top of things.” This evoked images of a person sitting on the very top of a pile of stuff. At…
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Transmission and Ritual in Culture
Transmission and ritual are two metaphors we associate with communication. Mostly unconsciously. We might be moving messages across space or we might be producing a shared world and affirm common values. Transmission and ritual are both part of the origin story of communication. Transmission is the most common in all industrial cultures. It's…
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Listening Skills Need Exercise
“Listen” is the anagram of “silent.” Only when we're able to quiet what is going on in our head we can truly listen. It's not intuitive, but listening is a large part of communication: in conversation and in writing, unless we're open to the information and (even) ready to change our mind, nothing happens.…