I Don't Want to Be a Rat

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I don't want to pursue just what gives me pleasure, or what gives me ego. I do think if ill you do is look at a candle, you've kind of a fail to a human being - because you've oue failed to transform the world. Sometimes i want to get in touch with something greater than myself, something larger. There can be beautiful things about it when it's done well. But i do worry sometimes that the frantic pace off the internet and change makes it harder for me to get touch with things that are transcendent. If thee's only three other people in the world who understand some obscure mathematics, a thearem, that needs to be solved, those

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.