I've been reading books on rhetoric, to add another tool to my belt, especially with regards to communication and presentation design. The authors state that "... Rhetoric is about getting things done in our social world." 

It made me think about what design strategy pioneer Rolfe Faste said about innovation: "I have suggested that innovation is a different form of creativity. Rather than involving the skills of invention that most design managers are comfortable with, innovation requires social skills not often included in a design education."

In Diffusion of Innovations, Everett M. Rogers writes: "Thus we see that the diffusion of innovations is a social process, even more than a technical matter."

So I believe rhetorical skills are essential, if you want to get things done with other people. This slim volume is a nice introduction to the field of rhetoric.

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I first heard about Juan Enriquez onTED. He is someone who thinks both deeply and broadly. Individuals like him are becoming more of a rarity in this world of increasing overspecialization. I am having a greater appreciation for the generalist. The book's format lends itself to a quick read (reminiscent of Tom Peters' The Circle of Innovation), but you can spend quite a bit of time pondering its implications on your future and on your children's future. Enriquez brings to focus what it means to be a knowledge worker in the age of digital technologies and genetic engineering. He predicts how the rapid advancements in these areas will impact the global economy, and how they will alter the relationship between government and citizen. Throughout the book, he shows how education (and its policymakers) will play a critical role in who will win and who will lose in this knowledge economy. This book is probably a good complement to The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman.

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This book is based upon a series of art projects and open exhibitions that began in 1994. Instead of transporting physical artworks to various exhibition spaces, over 100 international artists submitted procedural instructions to museums, where the museums' personnel and/or the community at large (re)create the artworks on location. The result is an exercise in DIY performance art and human interpretations. It creates an interesting dialogue between the artist and the community. I like the concept and how it reifies language. It also inspires me to think more creatively about instructional design (Ikea, anyone?). You can find more information about do it at e-flux.

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This book had a print run of 1000 by its original publisher, Brown Bear LLC. I was fortunate enough to grab a copy before they sold out, a couple of years ago. It's a great little book with three primary goals: 1) to provide a better definition of interaction design; 2) to assure interaction designers that their discipline applies across all parts or phases of a business or product (i.e. they're not just 'clean-up artists'); and 3) to give interaction designers the vocabulary they need to justify their existence to other members in their organization (e.g. marketing, engineering, etc.). So you can regard it as a how-to book but at a more conceptual level, if that makes sense. If you're a practicing designer, this is a great book to read and to reflect upon your place in the world. The good news is that Morgan Kaufmann has adopted the book this year and has made it available once more. So grab a copy before it runs out - again.

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Happy Halloween!

John Hench was (and still is) a legend in the world of Disney Imagineering. He was the Renaissance Imagineer. His book provides deep insights into the world of Disney design. Of all of the Imagineering books that I have, Hench's is the most eloquently written, treating the subject as seriously (and deservedly) as one would discuss modernist architecture. One can draw many lessons from this book and apply them to event design and experience design. Regardless of the current state of the Magic Kingdom, the design principles behind Imagineering are still magical.

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I think this is the only periodical exclusively devoted to the professional field of special effects. Why is that? I think it's a fascinating field. I wish I could learn more about it. When I was kid, I couldn't find many good magic books either. Maybe there's a connection between the two. Both are founded upon the notion of illusion. Both are used to entertain. Both have their secrets. Anyway, unlike many of the film fan magazines out there, Cinefex carries the same weight and professionalism as something like American Cinematographer. If you're interested in special effects, this magazine provides you with a serious treatment on the subject.

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Lately I've been thinking about decision theory. How do we make decisions? What influences them? How can we make better decisions? I picked up Mauboussin's book to help shed some light on the subject. He does so by helping the reader identify the salient mistakes people make while making decisions. Some of these mistakes include our tendency to rely upon experts uncritically, how we subconsciously allow context to affect our decisions, and how we try to understand complex systems by studying their parts. Throughout the book, he illustrates these mistakes with entertaining stories. One key message I took from this book was the value of experience. We all have a tendency to think of our problems as unique when they're not. When making decisions, Instead of relying on just reason or intuition, consider the experiences of others, or your own past experiences. If you want to improve your decision making, Mauboussin recommends keeping a decision journal. So take the time to think twice, before deciding.

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I pulled out my almost-twenty-year-old copy of The Fifth Discipline, to reread. It's still very relevant after all these years. Companies have only gotten larger, more global, and more complex, since its writing. In his book, Senge writes about the five core disciplines of a learning organization; they include personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and - the fifth discipline - systems thinking, which he considers the cornerstone discipline, and the one that integrates together the other four. Personal mastery isn't just about mastering skills; it's about mastering oneself in sustaining creative tension by maintaining one's vision, while understanding clearly the present realities. Mental models build greater self-awareness and make tacit assumptions explicit. Shared vision - real shared vision - results in an organization that's aligned and committed towards a common goal. Team learning is about creating an atmosphere of inquiry and dialogue, instead of just advocacy and abstraction wars. And systems thinking is all about having an integrated view of the world, removing the walls between "internal" and "external", between "us" and "them." It's about understanding at a higher level.

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In this book, Bruns tries to justify three theses. "The first is that poetry is made of language but is not a use of it - that is, poetry is made of words but not what we use words to produce: meanings, concepts, propositions, descriptions, narratives, expressions of feelings, and so on." Second, "poetry is not necessarily made of words but is rooted in, and in fact already fully formed by, sounds produced by the human voice." And, third, "poetry does not occupy a realm of its own. It is not a purely differentiated species confined to a merely aesthetic, neutral, or disengaged dimension of human culture. Rather, precisely in virtue of its materiality, poetry enjoys a special ontological relation with ordinary things of the world."

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In his book Analog In, Digital Out, interaction designer Brendan Dawes has a chapter titled "Evidence of Use". I like that phrase. In this world full of spotless, high-gloss, lick-able product designs, I miss objects that age gracefully and beautifully, like my Dualit Toaster. Wabi-Sabi is another book by Leonard Koren that I find myself often rereading. It reminds of an aesthetic that I love but fear is disappearing with each rising generation raised on spectacle and the new new. Koren eloquently conveys the value of (and the need for) humility, simplicity, and a perspective that considers the impermanence of the world around us.

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