Where there are people, there is gossip, fightin’ words, praise, criticism, and for every great idea, thousands of good ones are left in its wake. Twenty years ago, you’d have to sit by a water cooler to figure out what your employees were saying. I now work for a company that captures criticisms and great ideas in real-time, digitally, not only with everyone’s consent but with their excited participation, too. And those insights translate into dollars every single day. This is only the beginning of the “digitize everything” age. Thousands of photos posted every second, much of the same (Eiffel Tower, 31 million images; Lady...

Everyone loves to talk about children. Children are the future (so buy this product). Invest in your children (so accept this school budget). Children must be prepared for tomorrow (so give me another term). What about the rest of us? We are the currently employed, the ones who are busy creating the future today, the ones who are paying for the educations of tomorrow. Self-help books are old hat. Self-help sites are in. There are three veins of modern digital learning that are available at low or no-cost for adults. Choose Your Own Adventure (Course) When I decided to go to the University of Southern California, it was after begrudging...

The biggest myth is common sense, since what’s common to you may not be common to me. Some important tips for the digital life: 1) If you get an email telling you to tell about your friends about something, don’t. It’s probably hyperbole to begin with, if not outright false, and is probably part of the 73% of spam (http://bit.ly/zbzoHI) that takes up our Internet. But even if it is true, the better forum is Facebook… 2) …and even then: if it’s an online petition, a cause of some sort, there’s no need to invite all your friends to the “TBD Awareness Signature Drive” “event” that starts at midnight and ends in two...

The 2008 election was monumental in part because a relatively young candidate was raising money and awareness using the Internet, his Blackberry, and Twitter. Four years later, having survived the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, America is poised for another round of technological greatness. All the coolest, most innovative stuff requires some form of technology, from cellphones and cars to industrial manufacturing and architectural design. Consumers and customers are increasingly an active part of corporate strategy (http://bit.ly/18jWbT) and, indeed, are becoming themselves empowered through technology to create the world...

I lived and worked in a small Chinese city for a year, returning to the NY metro area in late 2006. A large part of my return came from a then-new appreciation for America’s civil liberties, which are far too often taken for granted by the average American. I know: I was one of them. I changed my tune after enduring the subtle terror of Big Brother in China (). We’re taught through dystopian literature (like 1984) and the US media’s propagandized coverage of dictatorships (like North Korea) that the specter of totalitarianism is brutal, blatant, and impossible to happen here. The true story is far more insidious and far more terrifying...