Is Google making us stupid, as Nicholas Carr and others have told us? I don’t think so. Instead, it is making us differently intelligent. Carr, et al are simply judging this difference, the new type of intelligence, against the old standards.
In his article The War On Flow, 2009: [...]
On February 17, 1986, shortly after excusing himself from the ice for a breather from the hockey game he was playing with my brothers and some friends, my father collapsed and died from “massive coronary failure”. Had he lived, today would have been his 70th birthday.
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Every now and then someone will write an article – or a comment on an article – that pins the cause of autism on “overprotective” parents. These parents – also known as “helicopter parents” – are so involved in their kids lives, the argument goes, that they warp them [...]
Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.
These seven words make up the entirety of the “eater’s manifesto” that is the subtitle of Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Of course, if the “doing” were as easy as the “saying”, Pollan wouldn’t [...]
T&T mom Heather has created this t-shirt to help us all show our pride in and support for all of the athletes representing the US at the upcoming World Championships and World Age Group Competition.To help me plan out the direction and content for the Tramp and Tumble blog over the next couple of months I created a mind map to collect and sort the various topics that I want to discuss there. One of the things that I love about Mind [...]
Occasionally I’m asked what I think about being the parent of an autistic son. Over the years (about 16 now) I’ve had the chance to give it some thought, and I have to say that although my opinions on quite a few things related to autism have evolved – and [...]
Starting today (a completely arbitrary date, though we have been considering it for a while), the focus of the Tramp and Tumble Blog will be on the USA Gymnastics Junior Elite Olympic Trampoline and Tumbling program. We will use our new Twitter account to continue [...] 
After posting the story last night about USAG Going Social, I realized that I should probably "socialize" this blog just a little bit, too. So you can now find The Tramp and Tumble Blog on Twitter at username @tntblog.
Earlier this year, I came across Michael Rubin’s book Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolutionat my local St. Louis County Library branch. What an unbelievable find of a book. In some great stories, and lots of detail, Rubin tells the early history of [...]
On vacation over the last couple of weeks I spent a lot of time with my own kids teenagers, and had the opportunity to watch a lot of other parents’ interactions with their kids. The following thought occurred to me while driving home last week:
A big part of a parent’s [...]
Another of my posts from the past, on a similar theme as my re-post last night of Knowledge in translation. This time, the translation in question is that between the language of autism and the language of the non-autistic.
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WHAT IS YOUR LANGUAGE
Everyone has their own [...]
I revisited the following, originally posted in July ‘07, after putting Douglas Hofstadter’s Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language back onto my currently-reading list. It is still relevant, so thought it worth sharing again. With any [...]
I’m working on a new post to address the question “Is modern technology ‘dumbing down’ America’s youth?“, as posed in the most recent edition (22 July 09) of the local news weekly - West News Magazine. (The html version of the article isn’t available as of my writing [...]
Talking with a friend this morning about the idea of “use it or lose it”, I told a story about a conversation I had a couple of years ago with my son on the subject of lunar eclipses. I wrote about that conversation not long after it happened, and [...]
Several years ago (has it really been almost 5 years?!?) I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog post entitled “My dad is a knowledge worker“:
While I was reading Martin Roell’s Terminology: “Knowledge Worker”, a TV commercial I saw a while back came to mind: elementary school students were telling [...]
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of my discharge (honorable, in case you’re wondering) from active duty as a US Army officer. It was while serving in the Army, both on active duty and later in the Army Reserves, that I was first exposed to and practiced knowledge management [...]
As a follow up to my last post, The importance of forgetting, it seemed appropriate to republish the following, which I originally posted in March 2007.
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Yesterday I mentioned that one of my key mind mapping tools is Personal Brain. If you’ve ever used the Brain, you know that “mind map” is a bit of an understatement of its capabilities and how easy it is to accumulate a lot of knowledge [...]
A mind map is a great tool, and mind maps should be a key part of any knowledge/concept worker’s tool kit. To supplement the hand drawn maps that are scattered throughout my notebooks and across whiteboards, I primarily use two pieces of mind mapping software: MindManager (Pro 6) [...]
A few days ago while re-reading some parts of The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size I tweeted the following:
Is it possible that the problem isn’t too much information, but not enough info going into our subconscious to help us maintain context?
When I [...]
With high school and college graduation season in full swing, and as my son’s 18th birthday quickly approaches, it seems a fitting time to repost this blog entry I wrote for Left Brain/Right Brain back in October 2007. There was quite a [...]
Over the past week or so there have been several blogs that have helped me pull together a bunch of things I’ve been trying to connect in my mind for a while.
First was Harold Jarche’s post Working Together, in which he looked at Shawn Callahan’s ideas on [...]
This is a repost of The toys of today, the tools of tomorrow, which I originally posted in April 2008.
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The toys of today, the tools of tomorrow
At the end of a brief history of human communication, [...]
In a post earlier today, Jack Vinson reflects on six years of his blog Knowledge Jolt. Jack was one of the first bloggers I ever followed and was one of the reasons I first started blogging, also nearly six years ago in June 2003.
I’ve had a bit of [...]
Though perhaps a bit more rigorous in his approach, what Geoff Colvin has to say about deliberate practice in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else is not unlike what George Leonard says about “practice” in Mastery or [...]
In a tweet earlier today, @Think_Better makes the following suggestion:
Next time someone says, “That’s just the way it is,” try asking, “What would be an alternative?”
It is all too easy to get stuck in the rut of doing things the way they’ve always been done just because that [...]
I was catching up on some news this evening, reading about stem cells here in Missouri, with iTunes on shuffle, as usual. About half way through the article, Dream Theater’s song The Great Debate (from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence) came on. [...]
Read just about any book on how to improve your communications skills and you will find that one of the most important aspects of interpersonal communications is the ability to listen. Unless, of course, you are reading a book about helping autistic people “learn to communicate”, in which case it [...]
The topic of search engines came up during a recent conversation with Tony Karrer. I told him I use Google some (Google News is actually my browser start page), but that I’ve set the default in the Firefox search engine list to GoodSearch.
“Why use something other than [...]
In a recent post I asked if you, as an individual, have a coach. My question for today: Do you, as a leader of an organization, have a coach for your team(s)? If you don’t have a separate position for a coach, do you act as the coach for [...]
It may be true that “video killed the radio star” back in the early ’80s, but it looks like video games are coming the rescue here in the late ’00s. From the AP story Boom in music video games helps original artists:
Artists from Nirvana to the Red Hot Chili [...]
All too often I see people focusing on their own personal weaknesses or shortcomings. Worse still, many parents do the same thing with their kids and many employers with their employees.  I’ve often wondered why this is, why the focus on negativity when we, and the people around us, all [...]
After 10 days on Twitter I have 31 followers, am following 19, and have posted 74 updates. As one of his 100 conversations, Tony Karrer is interested to know how I use twitter for personal learning. I’m not sure I’m to the point where I’m doing any [...]
Like many others, I gave myself a 50 book challenge for 2008. (Actually my personal challenge went from 1 Dec 07 to 30 Nov 08, but that’s a minor detail.) Unfortunately, I only got through 40 books in the past 12 months (though some were as long as several [...]
Tony Karrer recently asked for recommendations of books for learning professionals (see #38 of his 100 Conversation Topics.)Â There are many good books in this category, but for the purposes of this conversation I have 4 recommendations.
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to [...]In November 2007, security consultant Bruce Schneier wrote an article for Wired.com entitled The War on the Unexpected, which he opened with the following paragraph:
We’ve opened up a new front on the war on terror. It’s an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it’s a [...]
I have a feeling that the question of work/life balance is going to be a consistent theme here, I know it is in my life.
In this video, Chris Brogan tells us of the importance of both work AND play. Even if you love your work, are passionate [...]
I wrote my recent post Take Me As I Am with a specific, and intentional, slant towards autism and autistic individuals. However, the feelings expressed are not limited to those with autism, as any young teenage rebel can attest.
In Generation Y in the Workplace Explained, guest poster [...]
It has taken me a while, but I’ve finally joined Twitter.  The catalyst behind getting me to join at this time is an event being organized by Bonnie Sayers called Autism Twitter Day, scheduled for Tuesday 16 December, a week from today. Mark your calendars! (Thanks to [...]
Last summer I picked up Chessmaster The Art of Learning for the PSP to take with me on my frequent business trips. One of the things that adds extra value to this game is the involvement of Josh Waitzkin. (You may remember [...]
I wrote recently about the Dream Theater song “Solitary Shell” and how it brought to mind the impressions many people have of autistic individuals. Tonight I popped in Dream Theater - Live at Budokan to help get the creative juices flowing. The [...]
Using the Cynefin framework, which I’ve also discussed here, Shawn at the Anecdote blog takes a look at the question of When should we collaborate? It’s always useful to define your terms before starting this kind of discussion, and Shawn obliges with the following:
So what is collaboration then? [...]
As someone who loves technology and gadgets, and loves figuring out how to make them useful, I’ve had a long interest in how the technology of the information age could change the way people - especially children - learn. This interest is compounded by the fact that I have two [...]
In Communications During Terrorist Attacks are Not Bad, Bruce Schneier calls Twitter a “vital source of information” during the recent attacks in Mumbai.  But not everyone agrees, as there were reports that Indian authorities were trying to get people to stop posting information, apparently fearing that the terrorists would be able [...]
Recently, Dave Snowden and Jack Vinson have both typealyzed their blogs: Dave’s is ENTP and Jack’s is INTJ. Since I’m not sure exactly how Typealyzer works, I wasn’t sure if I’ve got enough content here at this new blog (15 posts so far) to get a type, [...]
One of the more difficult parts of replacing a blog (or, in my case, two) with a new one is how to keep your current readers informed about the change and, ideally, how to keep them subscribed. Fortunately, FeedBurner has made this easy for me (or would [...]
When people with autism or other disabilities try to engage in face-to-face communications, it is often made difficult because of a bias, intentional or not, on the part of the other person in the conversation. Another aspect of the value of social media to autistic people and others with [...]
If you ask a competitive athlete if they have / need a coach the answers will likely range from “Yes” to “Of course” to “Are you kidding?”. If you ask a knowledge worker, or concept worker, the same question the answers will likely range from “No” to “Huh?” to [...]
The nature of knowledge work, and the value of the term itself, is a much discussed question. See, for instance, this conversation on the nature of knowledge work from earlier this year. Although I don’t believe that the term “knowledge worker” is irrelevant, I do share Tony Karrers’s [...]
A common misconception about autistic individuals is that they shun social contact, that they are all introverts. But in many cases it is simply the means - not the desire - to be social that eludes them. Face-to-face, real-time conversation can be difficult, but it is not because their [...]
According to Venkatesh Rao in his Enterprise 2.0 Blog post Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War, KM and SM are indeed at war, albeit an undeclared one. Kind of.
Following a brief history of events [...]
With all the talk about the ongoing global economic crisis and the desire to find out what caused it and how to “fix” it, I found myself wondering if this is something that we actually can figure out, especially while we are still in the middle of the situation.  I [...]
Stories earlier this week about President-elect Barack Obama and his Blackberry got me thinking about how our elected leaders and their staffs are (or not) using the potential of “stuff 2.0″ (”stuff” = “web”, “enterprise”, “KM”, etc) in the execution of their duties.
For example: It used [...]
In his book, Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi has a section entitled “Balance is BS”. The “balance” he is referring to is the work/life balance that so many people talk about. If you hadn’t read the rest of the book, or if you don’t know anything about Keith, [...]
Sitting through an attempted-murder-by-PowerPoint design review today, one of the presenters questioned whether or not some of his slides had animation builds on them or not. This most often resulted in him going forward a slide, apologizing, then backing up to where he wanted to be. It occurred to me [...]
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