I grew up in a corporate culture over almost quarter of a century, that highlighted the importance of not engaging in any communication with the outside world that would be embarrassing for the individual and/or the firm to see in the Wall Street Journal the next day.

In those days this applied of course to snail mail and all traditional forms of written communication, but now of course covers email, blogging and every eventual mode of digital communication.

Teenagers and college kids of course don't have the advantage of this warning, and if they do, are too convinced of their reputational immortality to worry otherwise.

And it's not just about their behavior on services like MySpace and Facebook, but their conduct all across the web, including services like instant messaging, SMS texting and the like. They are leaving reputational footprints that in many cases will be a matter of permanent record, potentially increasing their reputational mortality.

So it's an important distinction for us to keep in mind, and whenever appropriate, try and get them to "get it".

This could be a generational statement about the public opinion of the media. I guess it was appropriate that MySpace ended up in the hands of News Corp.

On MySpace and Reputational Mortality

One of the benefits of the Honors Lecture Series is that students can collectively experience the eclectic thoughts of MTSU's faculty. Thanks to John Paul's thematics, this experience also pushes the speakers to step outside our routine of thought and to consider a bigger picture. While the significance of what we say may not be so immediately obvious, I do hope there is something of a haunting curiosity awakened in you for the prospects and process of discovery conveyed in these honors lectures.

There are three points of this lecture.

One is to impress upon you that reliance on the electronic network is already inescapable as an information source.

Second is to suggest to you that the network is now essential in expanding your intellectual capital.

Third is to provide few elementary examples of a constructive learning network within the technology framework.

... Human interaction via electronic networks has much promise. I believe the promise is the new dynamics of access, speed, convenience, intelligent collaboration, and low costs associated with these attributes. But intelligence still has a dear price in time and study and thought. In this respect, I don't think electronic networks change the quality of intelligence. But the change in the mix of sources relied upon is already underway. Today and in the future, much more of our learning will be network dependent. The current challenge before faculty and students is to begin to craft a more comprehensive framework for this new reality.

Will this change the nature of truth? No, I think there will just be more of it. If truth is state of alignment with intellectual values and standards, then it is neither the alignment nor the standards or values about which I've been speaking. Rather than a state (read static), I think we have entered an era of dynamic adjustment to achieve our personal and collective intellectual aspirations. If the networking of truth can cause the collapse of communism, imagine what it can do in the construction of intelligence.

Dynamic Intelligence in the Networked World | MTSU Honors Lecture

Half of all workers are hired through personal referrals, and networks of social connections channel flows of capital, technology, and international trade. Sociologists and economists alike recognize that economic exchange is shaped by social networks, which propagate information and facilitate trust, but each discipline brings a distinct theoretical perspective to the study of networks. Sociologists have focused on how networks shape individual behavior, economists on how individual choices shape networks. The Missing Links is a bold effort by an interdisciplinary group of scholars to synthesize sociological and economic theories of how economic networks emerge and evolve.

Interweaving sophisticated theoretical models and concrete case studies, The Missing Links is both an introduction to the study of economic networks and a catalyst for further research. Economists Rachel Kranton and Deborah Minehart illustrate their field's approach to modeling network formation, showing how manufacturers form networks of suppliers in ways that maximize profits. Exemplifying the sociological approach, Ronald Burt analyzes patterns of cooperation and peer evaluations among colleagues at a financial organization. He finds that dense connections of shared acquaintances lead to more stable reputations. In the latter half of the book, contributors combine the insights of sociology and economics to explore a series of case studies. Ray E. Reagans, Ezra Zuckerman, and Bill McEvily investigate an R & D firm in which employees participate in overlapping collaborative teams, allowing the authors to disentangle the effects of network structure and individual human capital on team performance. Kaivan Munshi and Mark Rosenzweig examine how economic development and rising inequality in India are reshaping caste-based networks of mutual insurance and job referrals. Their study shows that people's economic decisions today are shaped both by the legacy of the caste hierarchies and by the particular incentives and constraints that each individual faces in an evolving labor market.

Economic globalization is forging new connections between people in distant corners of the world, while unsettling long-standing social relations. Anyone interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges of this era of rapid change will find a highly informative guide in The Missing Links.

The Missing Links

In this chapter, I provide a broad level overview of the economics literature on economic and social networks. The plan is to examine the evolution of that literature, and in doing so to provide an idea of the approaches that have been taken and the perspective from which networks have been analyzed. Given the objectives of this volume, I am not attempting to provide a detailed description of what has been asked and answered by the literature,1 but rather to examine what economists might hope to gain from the analysis, how their paradigm has influenced their approach and the questions that they have tended to ask, and some examples of the research. The discussion is aimed at a general audience, with no presumption of any familiarity with the economics literature.

The Study of Social Networks In Economics

How do decisions for the near future differ from decisions for the more distant future? Most economic models predict that they do not systematically differ. With online grocery data, we show that people are decreasingly impatient the further in the future their choices will take effect. In general, as the delay between order completion and delivery increases, customers spend less, order a higher percentage of "should" items (e.g., vegetables), and order a lower percentage of "want" items (e.g., ice cream). However, orders placed for delivery tomorrow versus two days in the future do not show this want/should pattern. A second study suggests that this arises because orders placed for delivery tomorrow include more items for planned meals (as opposed to items for general stocking) than orders placed for delivery in the more distant future, and that groceries for planned meals entail more should items than groceries for general stocking.

I'll Have the Ice Cream Soon and the Vegetables Later: Decreasing Impatience over Time in Online Grocery Orders

The debate is over. A consensus has been reached. On global warming? No, on how Democrats are favored on television, radio and in the newspapers.

Well, I'm glad that's over. Now we can focus on the media's unwavering attention toward the superficial and the sensational. And when I say "the media", I mean their audience, of course. In the market, you are what feeds you.

Even Harvard Finds The Media Biased

Lapham's Quarterly, alongside a companion radio show and weekly blog, extends his abiding interest of recent years: the theme of history's revenge upon those who ignore it. "Everything I've written," he told Kurt Andersen in 2005, "is a chronicle of the twilight of the American idea." Using historical texts to plumb our political, cultural, and economic moment, Lapham is now aiming to add a new chapter to his career-long act as ruling class scold.

Lapham: My purpose is to foster and encourage and delight in the acquaintance with history. I'm not being polemic; I'm trying to open it out. I want to say: Behold dear reader, what a wonderful archive and treasure one can find in the history of our long journey across the frontiers of four millennia.

I went around my circle and asked, what should I be reading, where should I be looking?

Q&A with Lewis Lapham

At 35% urbanization, Pakistan is the most urbanized country in South Asia. 50% urbanization is predicted in the next ten years. The Powers That Be and our city fathers have yet to see urban planning as anything other than a commercialization and moneymaking racket. We need to understand the invisible global networks to which we belong and the invisible global forces to which we are liable. Only then will we have an opportunity to face the challenges of the future. Lucky for us, Saskia Sassen is speaking at the National College of Arts in Lahore this Tuesday morning.

Urbanism, globalisation and Saskia Sassen

Virgil is back in the news ... (though it's sort of a year in review angle ...)

"A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything."

Google and Wikipedia are creating a generation of "intellectual sluggards incapable of moving beyond the Internet," with no interest in exploring non-digital resources.

About WikiScanner:

"It was dead easy. I just combined two databases and -- poof -- you have these public relations disasters."

Use with caution: The perils of Wikipedia

"There are two Saudi Arabias. The question is which Saudi Arabia will take over."

For some reason I am drawn to recall this:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert