G vagatechera: I think there's a tribalism and an identity issue here. When we're on the net in the social media clouds, i don't have that kind of tribe feeling. But ultimately, i'm submerged in the median - what you try to see is what you really are. He says he doesn't know how someone got his name or idea for this talk out of thin air.
Writer and management consultant Venkatesh Rao talks about Waldenponding with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Rao coined the term Waldenponding to describe various levels of retreating from technology akin to how Thoreau extolled the virtues of retreating from social contact and leading a quieter life at Walden Pond. Rao argues that the value of Waldenponding is overrated and that extreme Waldenponding is even somewhat immoral. Rao sees online intellectual life as a form of supercomputer, an intellectual ecosystem that produces new knowledge and intellectual discourse. He encourages all of us to contribute to that intellectual ecosystem even when it can mean losing credit for some of our ideas and potentially some of our uniqueness.