Earlier this week I submitted a brief chapter called “Beyond the CRAAP test and other introductory guides for assessing knowledge resources: The CUP’A framework” for publication in the 2nd edition of the Future of Text book edited by Frode Hegland. Here’s Table 1 of the chapter:
Continue reading CUP’A and The Future of Text: On Assessing and Selecting Information
On Monday, June 18, the complete version of Cognitive Productivity with macOS®: 7 Principles for Getting Smarter with Knowledge will be launched.
Cognitive Productivity books can be read as pro-active responses to the “post-truth” era. More generally, however, they are meant to deal with the fact that we are still in pre-meta-effectiveness times. “Meta-effectiveness” refers to the abilities and dispositions to use knowledge to become more effective, meaning better at understanding, solving problems, building products (including new knowledge) and living according to our values. Respect for truth is a subset of meta-effectiveness. One can have respect for truth and yet not use knowledge optimally.
Continue reading A Book for Our “Post-truth”, “Pre-meta-effectiveness”, Times Launches on June 18
Dear Twitter,
As you may have noticed, I don’t visit you very often. If you want to attract me, try serving me content that is not only superficially Appealing to me (by this, I am referring to the “A” in “CUP’A“), but that is actually of high Caliber, Usefulness and Potency (yes, that is the part you are meant to drink from, the “CUP”). In other words, please become a content discovery tool towards which I would turn with cognitive enthusiasm. Continue reading Dear Twitter: Please Learn about CUP’A and Check Out My Publications
One of the few beneficial side-effects of the 2016 American federal elections, in which Donald Trump was elected President, is that thinking people are more aware than ever of threats to knowledge. Post-truth has entered dictionaries. We complain about fake news. We point fingers.
Assessing sources of information has always been one of the most difficult cognitive challenges thinking-people face. I discussed this topic at length in my first book. Yesterday, I published an additional chapter of my new book that deals extensively with this issue. It is the third of seven principles of Cognitive Productivity with macOS®: 7 Principles for Getting Smarter with Knowledge:
Assess Analytically
Continue reading How Do You Judge the Helpfulness of Information? And Why Does This Matter?
In his article, “Reading Books Will Help You Build These 7 Habits” Chad Grills reminds us of the importance of reading great books.
I have to agree with Chad’s claim that “Books are the most undervalued and under-appreciated technology in the world.” Coincidentally, Continue reading Response to Chad Grill’s Article “Reading Books Will Help You Build These 7 Habits”
In Cognitive Productivity I described several illusions and biases that interfere with our ability to leverage knowledge resources. The first set of illusions is to over-estimate or underestimate the “helpfulness” of a knowledge resources.
Selecting the right resource to process is critical to the development of effectiveness. Continue reading Is This Information Sufficiently Helpful?