Davos Newbies

Nicholas Carr on the overhyping of Wikipedia: “They have taken the encyclopedia out of the high school library, where it belongs, and turned it into some kind of totem of ‘human knowledge.’ Who the hell goes to an encyclopedia looking for ‘truth,’ anyway? You go to an encyclopedia when you can’t remember whether it was Cortez or Balboa who killed Montezuma or when you want to find out which countries border Turkey. What normal people want from an encyclopedia is not truth but accuracy.”

I spend most of my working hours these days helping organizations understand and improve their ability to innovate. A small niggling problem has arisen. For years, the standard image for the creation of ideas (I hate jargon like ideation) has been the incandescent light bulb. But now it’s also a symbol of inefficiency and wasted energy. The compact fluorescent has taken over my house, and it should take over many others.

Now I read that this may just be a blip. We should all move to LEDs. I have to read Brilliant: Shuji Nakamura and the Revolution in Lighting Technology to figure this one out.