Highlights §
- Technological change is not additive; it is ecological… . A new medium does not add something; it changes everything. In the year 1500, after the printing press was invented, you did not have old Europe plus the printing press. You had a different Europe. (Location 3767)
- Part 1 of this book was my attempt to elaborate this dynamic. In addition to defining the hyperactive hive mind workflow and explaining the various ways in which it diminishes our work lives, I looked closer at the complicated forces that made it ubiquitous (which turn out to have a lot to do with management theorist Peter Drucker’s early insistence on knowledge worker autonomy). As I argued: email made the hive mind workflow possible, but it didn’t make it inevitable. We’re not, in other words, stuck working this way. The title of this book, A World Without Email, turns out to be just an approachable shorthand for the more accurate portrayal of my vision: A World Without the Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow. (Location 3781)
- near the end of his life, Peter Drucker, the man who coined the term knowledge work, assessed the productivity of knowledge workers to be where manual labor was in 1900. In other words, we haven’t even scratched the surface of how best to operate in this new economic sector. (Location 3789)
- attention capital theory. Once you accept that the primary capital resource in knowledge work is the human brains you employ (or, more accurately, these brains’ capacity to focus on information and produce new information that’s more valuable), then basic capitalist economics take over and make it obvious that success depends on the details of how you deploy this capital. (Location 3795)