hyperconnected and hyperobsessed

Thinker, doer, iconoclast, professional loudmouth.

Also organisational comms guy, design thinker, user experience and service designer, collaborator, sketchnoter. Open government advocate. TEDizen. Husband. Dad. WoW player. INTP. Crossfitter. Rugby tragic.

This site collects links, books, stories, media and other things I consider interesting for some reason. It's neither work-focussed or personal but happily blurs the two.

See http://about.me/trib/ for greater detail and links to other things.

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    A piece of lovely cake (you’ll get it in the end).

    Source youtube.com

    Musical Tesla Coils!

    Source youtube.com

    Because music is powerful.

    Source youtube.com

    “While sifting through Von Schönwerth’s work, Eichenseer found 500 fairytales, many of which do not appear in other European fairytale collections.”

    Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany | Books | guardian.co.uk

    Awesome. Humanity is about stories.

    Source Guardian

    Smart is sexy: it's time to make curiosity hot again. Join me.

    Hells, yes.

    [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
    Jurassic Park Theme (1000% Slower)

    It’s really quite beautiful.

    1,262,287 Plays

    Source soundcloud.com

    Dear CEOs and senior managers, it’s no longer ok not to know how Social Media works | It's Not About the Books

    Not just libraries. Any business.

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    A Week at the Airport Alain De Botton As someone who loves travel, and is endlessly intrigued by the happenings at international airports, Alain De Botton’s A Week at the Airport is a delightful window into the culture apart that this feature of the modern world embodies. For anyone who has not yet entered De Botton’s philosophical world via his writings, A Week at the Airport is short enough, at a little over 100 pages, and put together so nicely (the author has a skilled and touching turn of phrase, deployed as needed), that it’s the perfect gateway into his longer and deeper works. Assembled as a series of observations by De Botton and anecdotes from the denizens of this odd other place, A Week at the Airport is a pleasant and well worth it short diversion that should be on your reading list. I finished wanting a longer, deeper tale. I’m giving it 4/5.

    A Week at the Airport

    Alain De Botton

    As someone who loves travel, and is endlessly intrigued by the happenings at international airports, Alain De Botton’s A Week at the Airport is a delightful window into the culture apart that this feature of the modern world embodies.

    For anyone who has not yet entered De Botton’s philosophical world via his writings, A Week at the Airport is short enough, at a little over 100 pages, and put together so nicely (the author has a skilled and touching turn of phrase, deployed as needed), that it’s the perfect gateway into his longer and deeper works.

    Assembled as a series of observations by De Botton and anecdotes from the denizens of this odd other place, A Week at the Airport is a pleasant and well worth it short diversion that should be on your reading list. I finished wanting a longer, deeper tale.

    I’m giving it 4/5.

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    I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld) Terry Pratchett A big, fat 5/5 for this, the final Tiffany Aching book, from me. As she does for my friends, Nathan and Courtney, the young Miss Aching appeals no end; she is moral, caring, a thinker and understands that while she has a place in the world, it is often complicated by difficult or potentially unpopular decisions. Though Pratchett originally wrote this subset of the Discworld novels for a younger audience, there’s absolutely no reason they ought not be on the reading list of any Discworld fan. Nay, any fantasy fan. With the Tiffany Aching books, Pratchett has moved beyond the (very excellent, mind you) silliness and satire present in many of his earlier pieces to a more profound, gentle humor laced with more than a condiment level of humanity. It’s a great read, no matter whether you’re a fan of the author or genre or not.

    I Shall Wear Midnight (Discworld)

    Terry Pratchett

    A big, fat 5/5 for this, the final Tiffany Aching book, from me.

    As she does for my friends, Nathan and Courtney, the young Miss Aching appeals no end; she is moral, caring, a thinker and understands that while she has a place in the world, it is often complicated by difficult or potentially unpopular decisions.

    Though Pratchett originally wrote this subset of the Discworld novels for a younger audience, there’s absolutely no reason they ought not be on the reading list of any Discworld fan. Nay, any fantasy fan.

    With the Tiffany Aching books, Pratchett has moved beyond the (very excellent, mind you) silliness and satire present in many of his earlier pieces to a more profound, gentle humor laced with more than a condiment level of humanity.

    It’s a great read, no matter whether you’re a fan of the author or genre or not.

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    The Road Cormac McCarthy Try as I might to go into reading McCarthy’s The Road without preconceptions, I just couldn’t do it completely. I’d seen the film, I knew of other friends who read it and had varying (though broadly positive) responses to it, and had looked at a bunch of the reviews on Goodreads. Let alone the fact that it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner (amongst a not-inconsiderable list of other awards). That all said, I think I largely managed to read the book without those collective factor weighing overmuch upon me. No small feat. McCarthy’s book touches so many factors - the Hero’s Journey, a road tale, father-son relationships, dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, cautionary tales of what might happen if Mankind continues on our merry way, environmentalist warnings of a world denuded of its biosphere. The richness of all of these intersecting at once, and the interesting style of McCarthy’s writing, which is stripped very bare but remains full of depth and meaning, makes The Road something more than just an interesting piece of fiction; rather, it’s an artwork in and of itself. Possibly (if not certainly) the bleakest tale I’ve read in a good long while, The Road should be something we all read. It may not necessarily be to everyone’s taste, but should be read. 5/5 from me.

    The Road

    Cormac McCarthy

    Try as I might to go into reading McCarthy’s The Road without preconceptions, I just couldn’t do it completely. I’d seen the film, I knew of other friends who read it and had varying (though broadly positive) responses to it, and had looked at a bunch of the reviews on Goodreads. Let alone the fact that it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner (amongst a not-inconsiderable list of other awards).

    That all said, I think I largely managed to read the book without those collective factor weighing overmuch upon me. No small feat.

    McCarthy’s book touches so many factors - the Hero’s Journey, a road tale, father-son relationships, dystopian fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, cautionary tales of what might happen if Mankind continues on our merry way, environmentalist warnings of a world denuded of its biosphere. The richness of all of these intersecting at once, and the interesting style of McCarthy’s writing, which is stripped very bare but remains full of depth and meaning, makes The Road something more than just an interesting piece of fiction; rather, it’s an artwork in and of itself.

    Possibly (if not certainly) the bleakest tale I’ve read in a good long while, The Road should be something we all read. It may not necessarily be to everyone’s taste, but should be read.

    5/5 from me.

    “This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude.”

    The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance: Scientific American

    Source scientificamerican.com
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    The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business Umair Haque I’ve never been one to conform, and Havas Media Lab Director and HBR blogger, Umair Haque isn’t either. The radical re-imagining of economics and capitalism he proposes in The New Capitalist Manifesto is an idea for the 21st Century, rising out of the ashes of a still-burning post-Industrial economy. Illustrating his new economics through comparisons between old economics (and the companies living off it) and the new “betterness”-based economics, Haque argues extensively and convincingly that what organisations need to do in the 21st Century to continue to survive is focus on an operational model: The twenty-first century capitalist’s agenda, in a nutshell, is to rethink the “capital”—to build organizations that are less machines, and more living networks of the many different kinds of capital, whether natural, human, social, or creative. And, second, to rethink the “ism”: how, when, and where the many different kinds of capital can be most productively seeded, nurtured, allocated, utilized—and renewed. What we need, then, is a new generation of renegades, laying deeper, stronger institutional cornerstones. Haque’s argument resonates super-powerfully with me. While I certainly don’t have the chops to have written The New Capitalist Manifesto, it articulates many of the arguments I’ve put to people in the past 10 years; business today is no longer sustainable in the way it was before. It can’t go on cannibalising profits and circulating the same money (and making more and more “pretend” money that only exists in a computer somewhere. Business needs to act to add real social value and not only make money but make social goods as well, as Haque suggests, the paradigm needs a shift thus: Loss advantage: From value chains to value cycles •Responsiveness: From value propositions to value conversations •Resilience: From strategy to philosophy •Creativity: From protecting a marketplace to completing a marketplace •Difference: From goods to betters I can’t recommend The New Capitalist Manifesto strongly enough, and also highly recommend Umair Haque’s new, short ebook, Betterness, which extends his articulation of some of the themes in this book. If it was mathematically possible to give a book 6/5, I would give it here.

    The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business

    Umair Haque

    I’ve never been one to conform, and Havas Media Lab Director and HBR blogger, Umair Haque isn’t either. The radical re-imagining of economics and capitalism he proposes in The New Capitalist Manifesto is an idea for the 21st Century, rising out of the ashes of a still-burning post-Industrial economy. Illustrating his new economics through comparisons between old economics (and the companies living off it) and the new “betterness”-based economics, Haque argues extensively and convincingly that what organisations need to do in the 21st Century to continue to survive is focus on an operational model:

    The twenty-first century capitalist’s agenda, in a nutshell, is to rethink the “capital”—to build organizations that are less machines, and more living networks of the many different kinds of capital, whether natural, human, social, or creative. And, second, to rethink the “ism”: how, when, and where the many different kinds of capital can be most productively seeded, nurtured, allocated, utilized—and renewed. What we need, then, is a new generation of renegades, laying deeper, stronger institutional cornerstones.

    Haque’s argument resonates super-powerfully with me. While I certainly don’t have the chops to have written The New Capitalist Manifesto, it articulates many of the arguments I’ve put to people in the past 10 years; business today is no longer sustainable in the way it was before. It can’t go on cannibalising profits and circulating the same money (and making more and more “pretend” money that only exists in a computer somewhere. Business needs to act to add real social value and not only make money but make social goods as well, as Haque suggests, the paradigm needs a shift thus:

    • Loss advantage: From value chains to value cycles
    • •Responsiveness: From value propositions to value conversations
    • •Resilience: From strategy to philosophy
    • •Creativity: From protecting a marketplace to completing a marketplace
    • •Difference: From goods to betters

    I can’t recommend The New Capitalist Manifesto strongly enough, and also highly recommend Umair Haque’s new, short ebook, Betterness, which extends his articulation of some of the themes in this book. If it was mathematically possible to give a book 6/5, I would give it here.

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    The Swerve: How the World Became Modern Stephen Greenblatt Everything about The Swerve hits the right places for me - mysterious documents, Renaissance treasure hunters, the humanist movement - and it’s a real pleasure to read. Inspired into reading this book by attending the fantastic Renaissance exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia and it’s little cousin Handwritten at the National Library nearby, I was not disappointed. More than anything, reading The Swerve evoked memories of reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, minus the murderous activity, but with no less intrigue, church suppression and attempt to control the intellectual agenda. I’m now more than tempted to track down a good translation of Lucretius’ De rerum natura and read it, just to see what all the fuss is about. You’d have to imagine a professor of English literature can turn a word, and in Stephen Greenblatt we have someone who can do just that. He tells a rollicking tale, exploring not only the search and emergence of Lucretius’ epic, but also of the intrigue and harshness of the Papal curia and those in orbit about it. If the Renaissance, history, literature or humanism are at all your bag, I commend The Swerve to you unequivocally. It’s worth noting that there are extensive notes in the book, referenced back to the text. However, my copy had no forward referencing or footnotes, so they stand somewhat isolated in the physical book. The Kindle edition, however, uses extensive hyperlinking throughout; both forward to notes and back to the text. Oh, and if you are in Canberra, I cannot recommend highly enough that you visit both Renaissance at the National Gallery of Australia and Handwritten at the National Library. I can’t recommend it highly enough. 5/5.

    The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

    Stephen Greenblatt

    Everything about The Swerve hits the right places for me - mysterious documents, Renaissance treasure hunters, the humanist movement - and it’s a real pleasure to read. Inspired into reading this book by attending the fantastic Renaissance exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia and it’s little cousin Handwritten at the National Library nearby, I was not disappointed.

    More than anything, reading The Swerve evoked memories of reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, minus the murderous activity, but with no less intrigue, church suppression and attempt to control the intellectual agenda. I’m now more than tempted to track down a good translation of Lucretius’ De rerum natura and read it, just to see what all the fuss is about.

    You’d have to imagine a professor of English literature can turn a word, and in Stephen Greenblatt we have someone who can do just that. He tells a rollicking tale, exploring not only the search and emergence of Lucretius’ epic, but also of the intrigue and harshness of the Papal curia and those in orbit about it.

    If the Renaissance, history, literature or humanism are at all your bag, I commend The Swerve to you unequivocally.

    It’s worth noting that there are extensive notes in the book, referenced back to the text. However, my copy had no forward referencing or footnotes, so they stand somewhat isolated in the physical book. The Kindle edition, however, uses extensive hyperlinking throughout; both forward to notes and back to the text.

    Oh, and if you are in Canberra, I cannot recommend highly enough that you visit both Renaissance at the National Gallery of Australia and Handwritten at the National Library.

    I can’t recommend it highly enough. 5/5.

    “According to everything we know about the technology of the time, it shouldn’t exist. Nothing close to its sophistication appears again for well over a millennium, with the development of elaborate astronomical clocks in Renaissance Europe.”

    The Antikythera Mechanism: The Story of Humanity’s Oldest Analog Computer, circa 150 B.C. | Brain Pickings

    Source brainpickings.org

    “Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”

    Pablo Picasso

    Source underpaidgenius

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