There is a central difference between the old and new economies:
the old industrial economy was driven by economies of scale;
the new information economy is driven by the economics of networks.

Information Rules by Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian
Quoted on Valdis Krebs’ very cool site about networks: www.orgnet.com

Snippet from a cross-campus conversation I heard today between two young co-eds:
I hate it when everybody generalizes about everything.

Like, totally…

According to some of the euphemisms we use to express our cultural taboo about being too accepting of death: my Uncle Dom this week passed on, checked out, went to a better place. From a Zen perspective, his life continues in new ways. How we understand death has everything to do with how we understand life. Every day our life as we know it continues in new ways, and much of what we call “our life” isn’t ours anyway, and it doesn’t require what we call “death” to notice or understand that.

If anyone is still curious about the state of imagination for American car makers, here’s William Ford Jr on the front page of the NY Times today: Hybrid technology is one that has great appeal because we don’t have to really invent anything … If these vehicles (flying off Japanese showrooms) don’t get customer acceptance, I really don’t know what we do next.

Grant us prudence in proportion to our power,
Wisdom in proportion to our science,
Humaneness in proportion to our wealth and might.

Thomas Merton, prayer read in the U.S. House of Representatives — April 12, 1962

I’d have to feel more gratitude than anything else. I’m probably in the intensist creative period of my life. Warren Zevon on his current experience of the end-phase of his life and career.

Commenting to glass master Henry Halem over beers this afternoon that in our culture, artists have a unique appreciation of dialogue as the fusion of opposites. His spin: while people in business, politics, and religion are always dealing with pieces of a whole — pitting one competitively against another, artists are always dealing with the integrity of wholeness.

Polled some people today: what would it take to prepare for peace? After a moment of quizzical hesitation, one reply: go to war. Yow…

Lunch today with Koshin Ogui who heads Chicago’s Midwest Buddhist temple. He suggests that religion is at the root of our political and cultural worldviews and that there are two genres of religions — mountain-field religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism) and desert religions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity). The ethos of desert religions is survival by resisting and opposing nature — the dualistic perspective; the ethos of mountain-field religions is survival by being in harmony with nature — the oneness perspective.

Book talk and signing tonight with the Chicago Fast Company Magazine Company of Friends, a really nice group and obvious connoisseurs of fine network serendipity. A pleasure to share happy conversational accidents with people who play well together in quantum fields.

Good questions emerged on the magic of dialogue in evoking the open space of new synergies between apparent opposites. Long live both-and.