Dormant ties....................

 Dormant ties* are the neglected value in our networks, and givers have a distinctive edge over takers in unlocking this value.

-Adam Grant, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success

*Dormant ties are people you used to see often or knew well but with whom you have fallen out of contact.

Interesting paragraphs.........................

     Lucas shook his head;  he disagreed.  The disagreement was fundamental, and generally divided cops everywhere.  Some believed in underlying social order, in which messages got relayed and people kept an eye out, and bosses reigned and buttonmen were ready to take orders, and a network connected them.  And some cops believed in social chaos, in which most events occurred through accident, coincidence, stupidity, cupidity, and luck, both good and bad.  Lucas fell into the chaos camp, while Mallard and Malone believed in the underlying order.

-John Sandford, Mortal Prey

Opening paragraphs.........................

Once upon a time, nearly two and a half centuries ago, there was a secret network that tried to change the world.  Founded in Germany just two months before thirteen of Britain's American colonies declared their independence, the organization came to be known as the Illuminatenorden - the Order of the Illuminati.  Its goals were lofty.  Indeed, its founder had originally called it the Bund der Perfektibilisten (the League of the Perfectibles).  As one member of the Order recalled its founder saying, it was intended to be:

      an association that, through the most subtle and secure
      methods, will have as its goal the victory of virtue and
      wisdom over stupidity and malice; an association that will
      make the most important discoveries in all fields of science
      that will teach its members to become both noble and great,
      that will assure them of the certain prize of their own
      complete perfection in this world, that will protect them 
      from persecution, the fates and oppression, and that will
      bind the hands of despotism in all its forms.

The Order's ultimate objective was to 'enlighten the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice'.  'My goal is to give reason the upper hand,' declared the Order's founder.  Its methods were, in one respect, educational.  'The sole intention of the league', according to its General Statues (1781), was 'education, not by declamatory means, but by favouring and rewarding virtue'.  Yet the Illuminati were to operate as a strictly secret fraternity.  Members adopted codenames, often of ancient Greek or Roman provenance;  the founder himself was 'Brother Spartacus'.  There were to be three ranks or grades of membership - Novice, Minerval and Illuminated Minerval - but the lower ranks were to be given only the vaguest insights into the Order's goals and methods.  Elaborate initiation rites were devised - among them an oath of secrecy, violation of which would be punished with the most gruesome death.  Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whose real identity they did not know.
     At first, the Illuminati were tiny in number.  There were only a handful of founding members, most of them students.  Two years after its creation, the Order's total membership was just twenty-five.  As late as December 1779, it was still only sixty.  Within just a few years, however, membership had surged to more than 1,300.

-Niall Ferguson,  The Square and the Tower:  Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook

Homo informaticus..................

This was the situation in Egypt before the uprising of January 25, 2011.  This is the situation in China today.  The wealth and brute strength of the modern state are counterbalanced by the vast communicative powers of the public.   Filters are placed on web access, police agents monitor suspect websites, foreign newscasters are blocked, domestic bloggers are harassed and thrown in jail—but every incident which tears away at the legitimacy of the regime is seized on by a rebellious public, and is then broadcast and magnified unto criticism goes viral.

The tug of war pits hierarchy against network, power against persuasion, government against the governed: under such conditions of alienation, every inch of political space is contested, and turbulence becomes a permanent feature of political life. . . .

But the rise of Homo informaticus places governments on a razor's edge, where any mistake, any untoward event, can draw a networked public into the streets, calling for blood.  This is the situation today for authoritarian governments and liberal democracies alike.  The crisis in the world that I seek to depict concerns loss of trust in government, writ large.  The mass extinction of stories of legitimacy leaves no margin for error, no residual store of public good will.  Any spark can blow up any political system at any time, anywhere.

-Martin Gurri,  The Revolt of the Public

Hierarchy vs Network....................

The incumbent structure is hierarchy, and it represents established and accredited authority—government first and foremost, but also corporations, universities, the whole roster of institutions from the industrial age.  Hierarchy has ruled the world since the human race attained meaningful numbers.  The industrial mind just made it bigger, steeper, and more efficient.  From the era of Rameses to that of Hosni Mubarak, it has exhibited predictable patterns of behavior:  top-down, centralizing, painfully deliberate in action, process-obsessed, mesmerized by grand strategies and five-year plans, respectful of rank and order, but contemptuous of the outsider, the amateur.

Against this citadel of the status quo, the Fifth Wave has raised the network;  that is, the public in revolt, those despised amateurs now connected to one another by means of digital devices.  Nothing within the bounds of human nature could be less like a hierarchy.  Where the latter is slow and plodding, networked action is lightning quick but unsteady in purpose.  Where hierarchy has evolved a hard exoskeleton to keep every part in place, the network is loose and pliable—it can swell into millions or dissipate in an instant.

Digital networks are egalitarian to the brink of dysfunction.  Most would rather fail in an enterprise than acknowledge rank or leaders of any sort. . . . Networks succeed when held together by a single powerful point of reference—an issue, person, or event—which acts as  a center of gravity and organizing principle for action.

Typically, this has meant being against.  If hierarchy worships the established order, the network nurtures a streak of nihilism.

-Martin Gurri,  The Revolt of the Public

About networking......................

     Since you need to have a network to be successful, can you build one and still feel good about yourself?  Even if you're an introvert?
     To answer these questions, let's take a look at Adam Rifkin.  In 2011, Fortune magazine named him the best networker in Silicon Valley.  Guess what?  Adam's a shy introvert.  He's also the nicest guy you'll ever meet.  In fact, he goes by the nickname "Panda."
     What's Panda's secret to networking?   Be a friend.  Yeah, it's that simple.  Networking isn't just a skill anybody can learn.  It's a skill you already know.  Make friends.

-Eric Barker,  Barking Up The Wrong Tree:  The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

On giving and interest....................

"It is better to give than to receive.  Look for opportunities to do something for the other person, such as sharing knowledge or offering an introduction to someone that person might not know but would be interested in knowing.  Do not be transactional about networking.  Do not offer something because you want something in return.  Instead, show a genuine interest in something you and the other person have in common."

-Adam Rifkin, as quoted by Eric Barker

I would not have guessed it..................

...................................but, now that they have said it, this "biggest predictor" of business success makes much sense.

Apologizing to all my facebook friends.....

via

On networking.........................

"One of my all-time favorite quotes on networking comes from Peter Linneman. He says that in order to build a great network you must 'always do the very best you can to fulfill what you said you would do, help others simply because you can rather than because you believe it would indirectly benefit you, and do this for the next thirty years.' He’s dead on."
-Joe Stampone, as excerpted from this blog post

Shamans.....................................

"It is beyond belief that we know so little about how people get rich or poor, about how it is they come to dwell in comfort and health or die in penury and disease. Financial markets are the machines in which much of human welfare is decided; yet we know more about how our car engines work than about how our global financial system functions. We lurch from crisis to crisis. In a networked world, mayhem in one market spreads instantaneously to all others—and we have only the vaguest of notions how this happens, or how to regulate it. So limited is our knowledge that we resort, not to science, but to shamans. We place control of the world's largest economy in the hands of a few elderly men, the central bankers."
-Benoit Mandelbrot

Cohesion..................

"The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general comfort, a vast intertwining reticulation of wealth.  As the human frame, or, indeed any object in this manifold universe, is best kept together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion and the necessity, exercise, and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality, occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the principle of safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property owners."
-Walt Whitman

Ed note:  Confessing here to the need of looking up the meaning of "reticulation."  Mr. Webster believes it means "network."

Us Midwesterners admire plain speaking folk........

For some simple, no frills, straightforward advice on life/starting a career, please read this short interview with Bill Poorvu.  Excerpt here:

"Don’t take yourself too seriously. There’s a lot to learn.  You will make  mistakes. Be willing to work hard, network, try to keep learning, and don’t ever accept it when somebody says do it because that’s the way it’s always been done."

Haven't the faintest idea what they are talking about, but apparently it's hot.....