Friday, July 30, 2004
I can honestly say I never cheated on a test in eighteen years of formal schooling. It didn't occur to me.
Not that I didn't take short-cuts. My bookshelves were filled with summaries of the world's 100 greatest novels, 40 greatest plays, and the predecessors of Cliffs' Notes. I had a 150 page condensation of the Bible, a similar précis of Crime and Punishment, and a digest of world history.
Whether or not I read the source material, I learned many concepts this way. Without these monographs I would never have fathomed what either Faulkner or Wittgenstein were writing about.
Today the Net is my primary source of understanding. Nonetheless, I'm not ready to give up my favorite reference works:
I've just added another text-tool to the shelf, InfoTool, the All-in-One Business Reference by Vijay Luthra. InfoTool is a multi-disciplinary reference that stuffs more than 20,000 definitions into 776 pages.
I envision a future of convergence wherein specialists will no longer prosper by "knowing more and more about less and less." The boundaries that once isolated one discipline from another are disolving. To be effective, one must borrow concepts from many different fields.
That's where InfoTool comes in. Rather than list categories, I'm going to flip open InfoTool to a page at random and simply list the entries I see:
Got it? I'll do another column:
You can look at sample pages on the web.
My one complaint is that this work needs to be in electronic form. Dead-tree books have become a secondary form of reference in my life. The author, having poured ten years into creating InfoTool, is naturally reluctant to chance having his IP pilfered.
Buy directly from the publisher's site. InfoTool costs $89 in paper/$99 hardcover.
Not that I didn't take short-cuts. My bookshelves were filled with summaries of the world's 100 greatest novels, 40 greatest plays, and the predecessors of Cliffs' Notes. I had a 150 page condensation of the Bible, a similar précis of Crime and Punishment, and a digest of world history.
Whether or not I read the source material, I learned many concepts this way. Without these monographs I would never have fathomed what either Faulkner or Wittgenstein were writing about.
Today the Net is my primary source of understanding. Nonetheless, I'm not ready to give up my favorite reference works:
- The American Heritage Dictionary
Roget's Thesaurus
The People's Chonology
Chronoicle of the World
Barlett's Quotations
The Synonym Finder
The Visual Dictionary
Business, the Ultimate Resource
Petit Larousse
Larousse Gastronomique
I've just added another text-tool to the shelf, InfoTool, the All-in-One Business Reference by Vijay Luthra. InfoTool is a multi-disciplinary reference that stuffs more than 20,000 definitions into 776 pages.
I envision a future of convergence wherein specialists will no longer prosper by "knowing more and more about less and less." The boundaries that once isolated one discipline from another are disolving. To be effective, one must borrow concepts from many different fields.
That's where InfoTool comes in. Rather than list categories, I'm going to flip open InfoTool to a page at random and simply list the entries I see:
- MIME
Mind Mapping
Mindshare
Mineral
Mineral Oil Mineral Rights
Minibar
Mini Computer
Mini Landbridge
Mini Mill
Minimum Bill of Lading
Minimum Cash Balance
Got it? I'll do another column:
- Expected Monetrary Value
Expects Value
Expected Value Maximization Principle
Expediting Expenses
Expendable Item
Expenditure
Expenditure Based Budget
Expense
Expense Account
Expense Behavior
You can look at sample pages on the web.
My one complaint is that this work needs to be in electronic form. Dead-tree books have become a secondary form of reference in my life. The author, having poured ten years into creating InfoTool, is naturally reluctant to chance having his IP pilfered.
Buy directly from the publisher's site. InfoTool costs $89 in paper/$99 hardcover.
BETA | jay 7/30/2004 03:03:00 PM| WRITE JAY |
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