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The Psychology of Compression Thinking
The Psychology of Compression Thinking (Video 7 minutes) The Psychology of Compression Thinking The basic points of Compression Thinking have changed little over the past five years. Their internal logic and consistency seem sound. But they are not trending on social media. Shifting from advanced economic norms remains a bridge too far to perturb the […]
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Effective Learning is Inefficient
The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do by Edward Tenner Edward Tenner, researcher of history and critic of technology, writes regularly for The Atlantic. Noted for a prior book, Why Things Bite Back, Tenner popularized the idea of unintended consequences. Examples from today’s leading edge to ancient times illustrate The Efficiency Paradox. In it, […]
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Is it All Empty Vanity?
Are We All Avatars in a Big Simulation? Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, translated by Jean Glaser and Sheila Faria Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard was a French philosopher, a contributor to post-structuralism, along with the better-known Jacques Derrida. This bores anyone not deep into philosophy, so why dig into it? Because Simulacra and Simulation is […]
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Is Truth Just a Better Lie?
Truth by Doc Hall (Video 7 minutes) Is Truth Just a Better Lie? The arts of human deception have ever resided within us. On-line technology multiplies opportunities to practice them. Every morning before breakfast I trash a half-dozen or more e-mail scams. Fifty years ago no one began scamming you until you were awake. Scams […]
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The Viral Ugliness of Internet Trolling
Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right by Angela Nagle Angela Nagel is an Irish social critic specializing in the subcultures of the on-line interactive world, something that this reviewer and probably most readers don’t do. Tracking the logic warping feedback loops of troll wars is time-consuming […]
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Being Roiled and Rolled by Big Data
Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data Hardcover by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge Schönberger is a professor at Oxford and Ramge is a technology writer who has by-lines in The Economist. This book is not their first dance with Big Data. Their objective was to unveil its possibilities to those of us not […]
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Toxic Assets
Toxic Assets (Video 3 minutes) Toxic Assets by Doc Hall The basic thinking behind our system of business is piling up problems faster than we can resolve them. It is has become so toxic that neither money nor magic technology can sustain it. We have to detox human thinking and rethink what we must become. […]
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Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by Andrew Newberg
Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality by Andrew Newberg Andrew Newberg is an MD and Professor of Emergency Medicine and Radiology, and Director of Research, Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia (how does he cover all this?). Neurotheology, just out, is his newest book. The book attracted […]
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Fables from the Bees
Fables of the Bees (Video 5 minutes) Fables from the Bees by Doc Hall We can learn a lot from bees. Complex and intriguing, the little critters have inspired many human analogies to their habits of life. However, fables about bees may also be highly biased. Bee fables, like the bees themselves, need to be […]
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Stop Favoring Quantity Over Quality
An old adage is that if all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail. General managers experience this as a “silo problem.” Each functional specialist has a different perspective, but few comprehensively grasp the situation, and personal experience shapes our thinking (worked for me). Not inquiring more broadly and deeply confines […]
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Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen
More Than a Structural Economic Problem Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick J. Deneen Patrick Deneen is Professor of Political Science at Notre Dame with a record of public service before academic life. His writing references ancient religion and classical studies, roundly debated by other liberal arts academics. Politically, Deneen is an all-around offender, excoriating both […]
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Lost Skills = Lost Hope
Lost Skills = Lost Hope by Michael Hall America in 1790 was a nation where most people were able to learn productive life skills by observation, mentorship, apprenticeship and human curiosity to seek and self-learn when rudimentary education was not available. Small communities developed as self-supporting with the skills of almost everyone involved. Most people […]
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A Purpose in Common
A New Normal (Video 5 Minutes) A Purpose in Common Our present economic system is not only driving nature to the brink, it appears to be driving us nuts. Instead of bending nature to keep our economy growing, we need to upend our economic thinking to regenerate nature. To do this, no top-down mandate will […]
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Technofeudalism?
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, by Mark Fisher The initial promise of this book was a unique critique of economics. It is that. It is not a structural, fix-the-problems proposal, but an artful expression of anguish from a guy descending into depression because of “the system.” In 2017 at age 48 he took his […]
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Fear of Self-Organization: Kropotkin’s Ghosts
The Conquest of Bread, by Peter Kropotkin First written in 1892, this book was probably revised for 20 years or so afterward. It baldly asserts issues yet unresolved, not only why history evolved as it did then, but how it might evolve now, in the context of environmental dangers unknown at that time. Born to […]
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Fake Wealth
Wealth (Video 5 minutes) Fake Wealth Peek into Snopes, the fact-checking service, and some entries imply that a fake claim is so incoherent that its own illogic clearly refutes it. But people believe it anyway. Snopes is swamped by fake news from sites that spread outlandish tales, often unwittingly paid for by advertising. Perpetrators claim […]
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Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt
Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt: The Solution of the Economic Paradox by Frederick Soddy (1933) Frederick Soddy was a noted scientist of the early 20th century who won a Nobel Prize in 1921 for developing radioisotopes. By 1933, he was well aware, with Einstein and others, of the potential in nuclear energy. But after 1921, […]
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Kids These Days
Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials by Malcolm Harris Malcolm Harris is a 29-year old millennial and a good writer explaining Millennial malaise. The Millennial generation is the first to be pinched in large numbers in the bind of the American economic system. Our economy is supposed to be the greatest, […]
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“Omnilog” and Deep Reflection
Deep Reflection and Omnilog (Video 6 minutes) “Omnilog” and Deep Reflection Regular readers of this page know that the Compression Institute advocates radical change toward regenerating ecology. Progress toward that is evident, but slow. To speed it up, we need a radical change in us, faster than human societies have ever changed before. Is that […]
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How It Is, or How It Shouldn’t Be?
The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene This book is 18 years off the press, but it was recommended by Lonnie Wilson as being highly popular with business readers, so I read it, or most of it. Robert Greene, the author, has made a career of writing power-oriented books about the arts of deception. […]
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Jackson Rising, by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya
A Plan for a New Economy? Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi, by Kali Akuno and Ajamu Nangwaya This book drew interest because of rumors that Jackson, MS was a rapidly rising experiment in localized economies dedicated to restoring ecology. The authors are editors of a collage of […]
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Preparing for the Unthinkable
Preparing for the Unthinkable (Video 5 minutes) Can Compression Thinking help navigate a future limited by resource shortages and ecological degradation? Such foreboding seems unthinkable. How can we defy our human instincts and learn to think about the unthinkable – and prepare for it? We react better to “unthinkable” disasters if we think about preparing […]
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Be Prepared
The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why by Amanda Ripley All the way through, Amanda Ripley’s book reminded this reviewer of the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared. And for what? For anything, of course. The expanded explanation is, “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do […]
