I Don't Think We're Going to Be Careful.

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There are useful things that come out of twitter. I do think we want to be careful. What i find most valuable about it is the discovering of people and ideas and articles i didn't know about. There's issues about portability of our actions that we have on these platforms that are interesting wer to talk about down the road, i hope with other guests.

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.