Business

The late, great Bill Campbell passed away this week, and there is no shortage of encomia from the technorati about him. He was the greatest coach in Silicon Valley, and the list of leaders that have paid tributes is appropriately star-studded. Some of the most successful people in the…

At Second Life, we occasionally debated the merits of virtual reality vs augmented reality. In caricature:

Virtual reality was the core dream of SL, same as the core proposition of Snow Crash, the Holodeck, the Matrix — the idea that a computer simulated world could have all of the…

“Zappos says goodbye to bosses” is a recent entry in a long string of articles about decentralized management practices. In the popular press, the implicit message is that decentralization is a nonstandard practice compared to strict hierarchy (if it were standard, why report on it at all?) — and if there…

Recent events remind me of one of my favorite hiring tales. I used to ask prospective hires an annoying interview question, one of those open-ended travelogues that journeyed through odd pathways and byways but always ended up in the same cramped room, where two colleagues were locked in…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSq1cez_flQ?rel=0&w=500&h=369]

Last month, I wrote about why Second Life failed so I didn’t have to write about why Second Life failed. I mean, that post wasn’t about reasons for failure, it was about the fact of failure. My…

Slate published an article titled “Why Second Life Failed” that also, like this…