Do you tell people you blog? I was reflecting on this recently, after I inadvertently mentioned to a colleague that I had blogged about a topic

So you want your team to figure out how to use AI for the benefit of your company?

Paul McGowan makes stereos. To paraphrase his insight: The musicality isn’t a feature you add to an amplifier. It’s what’s left when you stop ruining it. To expand: Customer delig…

We evolved words on top of our primordial ability to have feelings. Words allow us to be specific, to understand a situation more completely and to teach. Our hunches and feelings still matter, but…

In simple situations with obvious metrics, transparency earns trust. Voting, for example, benefits from audit trails and inspectability. But transparency can also undermine trust. Walking through t…

Trick title. There are at least three kinds of “marketing” we ought to be teaching: Marketing from the point of view of the consumer. This is something every student should be taught, b…

Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac Real musicians…

Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘mark…

If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires pa…

Any gathering of more than two people involves compromise. Embracing this fact actually increases the utility of the event. It’s a trap to commit to making it perfect for everyone–we en…

If we choose you based on price, please don’t be surprised if we leave the moment someone else uses the same tactic on you. Low price is a temporary refuge for a marketer who has run out of u…

It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-gene…

It’s possible you use social media to grow your business. Or to enhance your career. Or maybe it’s to find delight and joy. When you add up all the tikking, tokking, tweeting and clicki…

A brief explanation of my pessimism about efforts to radically improve education.

If you’re not sure of the difference, you’re probably just doing your job. Perhaps, if you’re fortunate, your job is in sync with your work. But most of the time, our work is some…

Even if you’re not applying, this thought experiment gives a glimpse into how the world is about to be rewired. The top 10 most selective colleges in the US admit about 5% of those who apply.…

Ed-Tech Criticism. AI Refusal.

Peter Mommsen articulates the real good that small magazines can accomplish.

How to read harder books (and how to not get fooled by bad ones).

It’s useful and satisfying to have people go along with your wishes and your taste. But hoping that they’ll be delighted to do so and thank you for pointing out their previous errors mi…

Moore’s Law was stated 60 years ago, but it only became a law once its predictions came true. The reason that your laptop doesn’t cost as much as your house is that computer chips get r…

Adam Gustine articulates the value of an ordinary life doing ordinary work in an ordinary place.

If your toaster isn’t working, this is the first place to start. A combination of an easy first step and also the likelihood that it’s the problem. The troubleshooting for things not wo…

To quote the great Steve Wozniak, “Actual Intelligence.” The kind we’re born with and can develop if we choose. It’s worth more now than ever before. Alas, it’s rarely…

“CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI.” Aaron Levie, CEO, Box …

Not, “what do you think you can get?” Not, “what you’d be willing to live with…” Instead: If you were willing to be on the hook for the responsibility (if it wor…

AI is great when it extends your brain. It gets dangerous when it quietly replaces the part that was supposed to think.

Pick an ownable market.

For over ten millennia of the farming era, most folks saw themselves as tightly tied to small groups that lived in a largely alien and hostile world, under the thumb of empires and elites selected by tradition and power, elites not embarrassed by their privilege, interested in the general welfare, nor open to persuasion by argument.