Seth's Blog: With a sure hand

Seth's Blog: With a sure hand

ethan zuckerman

Ethan Zuckerman - Teaching New Civics In a Digital World

via http://connectedlearning.tv/ethan-zuckerman-teaching-new-civics-digital-world

doc on session

As the Internet shifts our concept of civic life, how can we equip citizens (especially youth) to handle digital rhetorics and publics?

About This Speaker

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at MIT's Media Lab. He is the Keynote Speaker for the 2013 Digital Media & Learning Conference: "Democratic Futures: Mobilizing Voices, and Remixing Youth Participation." His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Through Global Voices and through the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he served as a researcher and fellow for eight years, Ethan is active in efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces. You can follow his thoughts at EthanZuckerman.com and on Twitter at @EthanZ.

Resources

Ethan's DMLcentral post, "Is Civics in Crisis? Or Just Changing Its Shape?"

Video interview with Ethan on teaching new civics

"It's not enough to be an informed citizen; it's not enough to vote. You need to figure out how to make these arguments in a digital, public sphere. You need to figure out how to advocate...Really deep engagement is the real challenge to us as citizens: not just to engage in persuasive words, but to engage in the real debate in the participatory, public sphere." - Ethan

__________

thin vs thick and effective vs symbolic

thin - easy to do, doesn't take much time, doesn't impose (like on fb, voting)

thick - getting involved over a period of time, plays on your ability of a creative actor, how do you want to build a movement (dream activisim) - coming out of undocumented, but does it created efficacy

so are there thin and ineffectual

are there thin and effectual (perhaps voting) 

what we're getting at is thick and effectful/impactful

thin but not impactful - share kony get it up to 180 mill views; 

thick but not impactful - people in kony community - thick for them, low impact;

but it depends on the purpose - 

thick and not impactful - occupy movement

civics and guilt often come together

Seth's Blog: Will you choose to do it live?

Seth's Blog: Will you choose to do it live?

perpetual beta, swimming in the vulnerability of context.

Seth's Blog: Understanding internet genius

Seth's Blog: Understanding internet genius

stavros starvides - city based on commons

via

Venessa Miemis (@VenessaMiemis) 11/25/12 7:55 AM RT @ehooge: Designing a city based on the Commons: pooled resources + community + commoningow.ly/1PJzyP #commons

oh my..

read and reread the whole thing really - i felt the urge to copy most everything.. smartest to just go to the link above..

_____________

My interest in the commons is grounded in a desire for the conditions necessary to promote social justice, sustainability, and happy lives for all. As simple as that. One of the most important challenges we face today is, how do we move from movement to society? How do we dissolve the distinctions between inside and outside the movement and promote a social movement that addresses the real challenges that people face in reproducing their own lives? How do we recognize the real divisions of power within the “multitude” and produce new commons that seek to overcome them at different scales of social action?  Take for example the discourse of the environmental “global commons,” or that of the oxymoron called “sustainable development,” which is an oxymoron precisely because “development” understood as capitalist growth is just the opposite of what is required by “sustainability most important element in terms of conceptualizing the commons is the verb “to common”—the social process that creates and reproduces the commons. This verb was recently brought up by the historian Peter Linebaugh, who wrote a fantastic book on the thirteenth-century Magna Carta, in which he points to the process of commoning, explaining how the English commoners took the matter of their lives into their own hands.  There is yet a third way beyond markets or states, and this is community self-management and self-government. This is another reason why it is important to keep in mind that commons, the social dimension of the shared, are constituted by the three elements mentioned before: pooled resources, community, and commoning. Hardin could develop a “tragedy of the commons” argument because in his assumption there existed neither community nor commoning as a social praxis, there were only resources subject to open access. huge Furthermore, it is important to note that the problem of the commons cannot be simply described as a question of self-interest versus common interests. Often, the key problem is how individual interests can be articulated in such a way as to constitute common interests.  perhaps tech placebos us into it.. just a voices like Hardin placeboes us out common interests cannot be postulated, they can only be constructed huge common interests cannot be postulated but can only be constituted through processes of commoning, and this commoning, if of any value, must overcome current material divisions within the “working class,” “proletariat,” or “multitude.” From the perspective of the commons, the wage worker is not the emancipatory subject because capitalist relations also pass through the unwaged labor, is often feminized, invisible, and so on. It is not possible to rely on any “vanguard,” for two reasons. Firstly, because capitalist measures are pervasive within the stratified global field of production, which implies that it hits everybody. Secondly, because the most “advanced” sections of the global “working class”—whether in terms of the level of their wage or in terms of the type of their labor (it does not matter if these are called immaterial workers or symbolic analysts)—can materially reproduce themselves only on the basis of their interdependence with the “less advanced” sections of the global working class.  First, I would like to bring to the discussion a comparison between the concept of the commons based on the idea of a community and the concept of the public. The community refers to an entity, mainly to a homogeneous group of people, whereas the idea of the public puts an emphasis on the relation between different communities. The public realm can be considered as the actual or virtual space where strangers and different people or groups with diverging forms of life can meet The notion of the public urges our thinking about the commons to become more complex. The possibility of encounter in the realm of the public has an effect on how we conceptualize commoning and sharing. We have to acknowledge the difficulties of sharing as well as the contests and negotiations that are necessarily connected with the prospect of sharing. This is why I favor the idea of providing ground to build a public realm and give opportunities for discussing and negotiating what is good for all, rather than the idea of strengthening communities in their struggle to define their own commons. Relating commons to groups of “similar” people bears the danger of eventually creating closed communities. People may thus define themselves as commoners by excluding others from their milieu, from their own privileged commons. Conceptualizing commons on the basis of the public, however, does not focus on similarities or commonalities but on the very differences between people that can possibly meet on a purposefully instituted common ground. this whole section add to public Ed We have to establish a ground of negotiation rather than a ground of affirmation of what is shared. We don’t simply have to raise the moral issues about what it means to share, but to discover procedures through which we can find out what and how to share. Who is thiswe? Who defines this sharing and decides how to share? What about those who don’t want to share with us or with whom we do not want to share? How can these relations with those “others” be regulated? For me, this aspect of negotiation and contest is crucial, and the ambiguous project of emancipation has to do with regulating relationships between differences rather than affirming commonalities based on similarities. am making this point because the key issue is not really how we conceive of commoning within the spheres of commons, but how we reclaim the commons of our production that are distorted through the imposition of capital’s measure of things. Regarding the form in which capitalism reacts and reproduces itself in relation to the emergence of commoning, three main processes can be observed. First, the criminalization of alternatives in every process of enclosure, both historically and today. Second, a temptation of the subjects fragmented by the market to return to the market. And third, a specific mode of governance that ensures the subordination of individuals, groups and their values, needs and aspirations under the market process. oh my ..sounds like Ed One always has to put oneself in relation to other groups in the society why public matters..why city as ecosystem matters But you have to somehow deal with this problem, you cannot simply exclude those youngsters, not only as a matter of principle, but also because it would be completely deleterious to do so. If you just exclude them from the park, you have failed to make the park an inclusive space. If you do not exclude them and they continue with their practices, it would further alienate the local community and provide an opening for the police and a legitimization of their actions. So in a situation like this you can see some practical answers to those crucial questions we have discussed—there are no golden rules Those people you refer to were not saying that they have a right as individual consumers to trash the park. They were saying that the park is a place for their community, a place for alternative living or for building alternative political realms. They certainly refer to some kind of commoning, but only to a very specific community of commoners. And this is the crucial point: they did not consider the neighbors, or at least the neighbors’ habitude, as part of their community. Certain people conceive of this area as a kind of liberated stronghold in which they don’t have to think about those others outside. Because, in the end, who are those others outside? They are those who “go to work everyday and do not resist the system.”

we often had/have no idea why people do things, but every actor has a reason.. how to lean into that

The rotation system effectively prevents any form of accumulation of individual power. This system might not be the most effective in terms of administration but it is effective in terms of building and sustaining this idea of a community of negotiation and mutual respec

perpetual beta - fully alive

, establishing rules and imposing them is more effective, but it is more important to collectively participate in the process of creating and checking the rules, if you intend to create a different society. We have to go beyond the idea of a democracy of “here is my view, there is yours—who wins?” 

huge

But, generally speaking, until we see these new forms of society emerging we don’t know what they could be like. And I believe we have to accept that!

But the real question is: what new forms of interdependence can emerge given the fact that we will never be left alone?

develop a society of equality does not mean leveling but sustaining the ability of everybody to participate in a community, and that is not something that happens without effort. Equality is a process not a state. Some may have to “yield” in order to allow others—those more severely underprivileged—to be able to express their own needs and dreams.

or perhaps... those privileged will be the ones needing to learn ideas like community.. and commons .. from those assumed severely underprivileged 

 This points to the question of where our own responsibility and opportunity lie. If the limit posed from the outside on an arena of commoning is the “no” that capital posits to the commons “yes,” to what extent can our constituent movement be a positive force that says no to capital’s no?

Not in terms of producing enclaves of otherness surrounded by a capitalist market, but as cases of collective experimentation through which you can also convince people that another world is posible

The power of this experiment, however, lies on its possibility to spread—if it keeps on enclosing itself in the well-defined perimeter of an “alternative enclave,” it is bound to fail.

huge

I believe that if we see and experience such experiments, we can still hope for another world and have glimpses of this world today 

Again, there is something similar we could learn from the Zapatista movement that attempted to create a kind of hybrid society in the sense that it is both pre-industrial and post-industrial, both pre-capitalist and post-capitalist at the same time. To me, this, if you want, unclear situation, which of course is only unclear due to our frozen and limited perception of society, is very important.

huge

This was a peculiar, somehow unprecedented, kind of uprising. No center, just a collective networking without a specific point from which activities radiated. Ideas simply criss-crossed all over Greece and you had initiatives you couldn’t imagine a few months ago, a lot of activities with no name or with improvised collective signatures

This polycentric eruption of collective action, offering glimpses of a social movement, which uses means that correspond to emancipating “ends,” is, at least to my mind, what is new and what inspired so many people all over the world. I tend to be a bit optimistic about that 

Rejecting being governed and taking our lives into our own hands, no matter how ambiguous that may be, is a defining characteristic of a large array of “after December” urban movement actions. We have to conceive space not as a sum of defined places, which we should control or liberate but rather as a potential network of passages linking one open place to another. Space, thus, becomes important as a constitutive dimension of social action. Space indeed “happens” as different social actions literally produce different spatial qualities. With the prospect of claiming space as a form of commons, we have to oppose the idea that each community exists as a spatially defined entity, in favor of the idea of a network of communicating and negotiating social spaces that are not defined in terms of a fixed identity. Those spaces thus retain a “passage” character.

city as Wikipedia

network of passages.  
love.

potentially liberating city can be conceived not as an agglomerate of liberated spaces but as a network of passages, as a network of spaces belonging to nobody and everybody at the same time, which are not defined by a fixed-power geometry but are open to a constant process of (re)definition.

exactly..

tweets feb 22 - learn creative learn

you have to know them..

_______________

John Hagel (@jhagel)
2/22/13 7:45 AM
At last, a humble economist - Russ Roberts: when asked to measure things we can't measure, we should admit ignorance bit.ly/13l99lD

When Nobel prize winners argue that the stimulus should have been $2 trillion while other equally illustrious economists argue it should have been zero and both have studies to back up their claims, one has to wonder how much science there really is in economic

Perhaps our profession should admit that some of the questions people want us to answer simply cannot be answered. One of those questions is whether $820 billion of additional federal spending using borrowed money is a good idea or not. I think it’s a bad idea. But my reasons for thinking so are based on logic and philosophy not fancy statistical analysis.

John Hagel (@jhagel)
2/22/13 7:55 AM
Sorry, Clay, we're thinking much too narrowly abt MOOCs as disruptive force - is it really just-in-time mini-courses? bit.ly/W3kNE3

http://redefineschool.com/632/small-is-ginormous-beautiful/


Christian Long (@ChristianLong)
2/22/13 7:48 AM
Lovely. RT @presentationzen: On the power of speech & telling your own story. 5-min must-see Ignite talk.bit.ly/12WGtUu

 

John Spencer (@johntspencer) 2/22/13 7:54 AM This Grant Wiggins piece describes what I wish my district could understand in their misinterpretation of GRR: grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/aut…

use. The acid test comes when we provide a text or a problem and simply say, with no advice about which strategy to use, figure this out. (Here and here are some helpful resources on genuine Gradual Release).

or perhaps it's for them to find the problem...?

unless you back off completely, on a daily basis, in scrimmages as well as games, to see whether or not students draw appropriately from the repertoire in a timely and effective fashion in challenges that demand it, you really have no idea what they can do on their own.

or perhaps. unless we focus on individual curiosity... let education truly be a bringing out... we really have no idea what any of us can do.. we're missing breathtaking.. and killing ourselves in the process

counter-intuitive to say: please teach less and help less, in order that performance might become more successful over time. Our instincts as teachers cause us to over-help rather than under-help. But our kids deserve to become autonomous learners

perhaps this doesn't work with a mandated content..?

__________________

Greetings Creative Learners! 

What do we have for you today? Week 2 follow-up. Week 3 planning. And a bit of fun logistics.  

Week 2 - Microphone check … 1 … 2 … Can you hear us? 
Unfortunately, during the start of session 2 most of you couldn't hear us, and we are sorry about that. But fortunately you can hear us now. The video of session 2 is online in our youtube channel. Keep an eye on the channel for future videos as well. And here is a HUGE THANK YOU for being such a great community - and for understanding that sometimes things go wrong (even, or especially, at MIT).  

• Link: Session 2 / Interest-based learning / Video 
• Link: Learning Creative Learning Youtube Channel

Fun Logistics - Meet yourselves! (And be reminded, how awesome you are) 
We invited you to introduce yourselves by video. And many of you responded. It's hard to pick highlights, but here are two videos to get you started: Mike breaks it down into stop-motion breakbeat fireworks. And Adriano (who also made the awesome Google Map of participants) talks about wanting to become a spiral. The full gallery is online now, and it's not too late to still submit a link to your own video.  

• Link: Gallery 
• Link: Submit your video 

Fun Logistics - Regroup 
Some of you are having awesome conversations in your email groups. Others have formed vibrant G+ communities. But there are also some groups that never really took off. Don't worry about it. Just have a look at the spreadsheet below and find a new team to join. There are hundreds of groups all over the world, and they are waiting to hear from you. And there is always the mothership G+ community (with almost 10,000 people and still growing).  

• Link: List of all the G+ groups

Week 3 - Live Session Constructionism and Making / 25 Feb 
Set your alarm clocks to Monday, Feb 25, 10AM (US Eastern). Or just sign-up for the G+ event and let Google do the rest for you. Please note that we are back to Monday, our regular session time. And we have two wonderful guests again: Leah Buechley is an Associate Professor at the Media Lab and Dale Dougherty is one of the leaders of the Maker movement. 

• Link: Event session 3

Week 3 - Prepare for the Panel / Readings & Questions > 
In preparation, please read the suggested readings and share your reflections in your groups or on the larger G+ community. Last week we tried Google Moderator to collection questions for the panel. It worked really well, but only few of the questions could be answered during the panel. This week, we'd like to try the G+ community. We will still pick some questions for the panel, but hopefully this way, there will also be interesting conversations in the community beforehand.  

• Readings: See readings and questions below 
• Link: Submit your question for the panel

Week 3 - Make a Scratch Project / Activity > 
Here is a short video in which Ricarose explains this week's activity. Watch it to the very end. It will make you smile! Then go ahead and create an Scratch project about things you like to do, and share it using the links below. If you are new to Scratch, first follow the steps listed under New to Scratch? 

• Activity Details: See below

Well done! 

Keep up the good work everyone. We're well underway, but the fun is only just starting. And we are here for you if you need us! 

        The Machine (aka Oliver) and the Learning Creative Learning team  


Activity 

Things I Like To Do Activity 
1) Create a Scratch project about things you like to do. 
2) Share your project on the Scratch website. 
3) Add the project to the LCL: What We Like To Do gallery 

New to Scratch? 
1) For an overview, watch the Scratch Intro Video on the Scratch home page. 
2) Follow the steps for Getting Started with Scratch. You can access helpful resources on the Support page, including Scratch in multiple languages. 
3) Download and install the Scratch software. 
4) Sign up for a Scratch account so you can share and download projects. 

Readings 

Discuss: 
* What ideas in the readings interested or resonated with you? 
* How could you apply these ideas to help others learn in your own work, family, or community? 

Readings in Preparation for Session 3: 
* Seymour Papert (1980): Mindstorms (Chapter 1: Computers and Computer Cultures) 
* Seymour Papert (1994): The Children’s Machine (Chapter 7: Instructionism versus Constructionism) 
* Dale Dougherty: The Maker Mindset and Learning by Making 
* Dale Dougherty (2011): The Heart of Maker Faire (video) 
* Leah Buechley (2012): NSF Cyberlearning Summit Talk on Art, Craft, and Electronics (video) 
* Mitchel Resnick et al. (2009): Scratch: Programming for All. Communications of the ACM. 

Additional Resources 
* Leah Buechley, High-Low Tech, research group website 
* The Maker Education Initiative website 
* Mitchel Resnick (2012). Let’s Teach Kids to Code (TED Talk video).* Seymour Papert (1980). Mindstorms (Introduction: Computers for Children, Chapter 2: Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning, Chapter 3: Turtle Geometry: A Mathematics Made for Learning). 


______________

http://itssaulconnected.com/archives/2013/02/tech-is-destroying-the-line-between-manufacturing-and-services/


lisagansky (@instigating)
2/21/13 6:34 AM
It only seems fair. From Spain, a bike made from old cars@springwise
#reuse #redesign #remanufacture
springwise.com/eco_sustainabi…

anamariacult (@anamariacult) 2/21/13 6:33 AM 6 Ways To Motivate Students Using Achievements: It's not easy to motivate students. But by leveraging the powe... bit.ly/XApoup

The next chart shows progress on the school’s two behavioral goals for uniforms and homework completion. What stands out here is that the chart doesn’t use student names. Rather, to protect students’ privacy, it uses numbers to identify each student

ha.

this is one of the ways we are actually encouraging student ownership.

figuring out our stealth code of privacy

Seth's Blog: Actually, it goes the other way

Seth's Blog: Actually, it goes the other way

maurice gibbons - self directed learning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkabout_%28film%29

what kids were missing - was to find out who they are.. then develop that

Join me tonight, Thursday, February 21st, for a live and interactiveFutureofEducation.com conversation with Maurice Gibbons on self-directed learning. Gibbons is the author of The Self-Directed Learning Handbook, was a founding member of Challenge Education Associates that produced The Self-Directed Professional program for teachers, he was the founder and director of Personal Power Press which produced a dozen books on SDL, and he was a founding member of World Citizens for a Universal Curriculum, a global education project designed to empower students to create a sustainable world.

The Self-Directed Learning Handbook offers teachers and principals an innovative program for customizing schooling to the learning needs of individual students-- and for motivating them to take increasing responsibility for deciding what and how they should learn. Whether the students are struggling or proficient, the program is designed to nurture their natural passion for learning and mastery, challenging them to go beyond the easy and familiar so they can truly excel. The program can be introduced in stages in any middle or high school classroom and enables students of diverse abilities to design and pursue independent course work, special projects, or even artistic presentations, community field work or apprenticeships. Using this approach, the students take on an increasingly autonomous, self-directed role as they progress. The heart of the program is the action contract (or learning agreement) whereby the student sets challenging yet attainable goals, commits to a path for achieving them, and evaluates the results. Special emphasis is placed on developing skills and competencies that can serve the student well in his or her academic and career endeavors.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2013/01/17/heres-the-table-of-contents-link-to-pre-order-my-upcoming-book/

lives of cash and schools of hope - book

idec - jonah, jill, yaacov, et al

http://redefineschool.com/632/idec-2013/

Seth's Blog: Dripping and syncing the buzz

Seth's Blog: Dripping and syncing the buzz

shane koyczan - stick and stones

more to do with beauty...

tweets feb 20 - trust & abundance

johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)
2/16/13 10:11 AM
Trust springs forth from the very moment one feels, and knows, and can say to oneself, "S/He [or It] *understands* me."

Institute of Play (@instituteofplay) 2/20/13 7:29 AM "The purpose is to make & create bc this is learning" - students write what they learned playing@MinecraftEdu in class bit.ly/VvHWMR

By the way, this writing shouldn’t be viewed as the conclusion of our Minecraft project – the children’s work in Minecraft is ongoing and certainly hasn’t been conceptualised purely as a stimulus for a piece of writing, but as promoting learning in its own right.

love this.

Will Richardson (@willrich45) 2/20/13 7:12 AM "We need to aspire to be first in the world in caring for our most vulnerable" bit.ly/YBbRkl Must. Read.#edchat #education #amen

I remember the teacher talking about phonics, having no clue what she was talking about, thinking that everyone else did, and not having any means to ask. I remember having the sense that the teacher did not like me

Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job.

oh my. .. even young kids see this as .. same song second verse.

perhaps no badge of any kind sets a person free to their art.

perhaps we make sure every person is valued..

by making sure they are known by at least one person... enough to lean in daily and listen to/for their very own curiosity/hunger 

In this context, the current intense focus on measurable academic knowledge and skills, competition for merit pay among teachers and competition with charter schools for students is appealing to many

unless we are bold enough to come clean.. and say.. you know... we may be wrong about that...

The U.S. Department of Education has used the economic downturn to drive a marketplace-based educational agenda in which test scores, merit pay and charter schools figure prominently.  States and districts, desperate for funds, quickly agreed to these requirements in the Race-to-the-Top and Title I School Improvement Grants.  Based on the same principles, private foundations have used their economic power to sway elections, sponsor and influence the content of administrative leadership training programs and fund the opening of charter schools that draw students and funds away from regular public schools.

With the recent release of new international assessment data from TIMSS and PIRLS there was a flurry of discussion about the relative standing of the United States.  Our national self-efficacy appears to rest upon whether we are first in the world. That is a shallow and insufficient goal for a great nation.

We need to aspire to be first in the world in caring for our most vulnerable, whether it is young children, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, or the physically or mentally ill.  We also need to give far more attention to the ways in which our lack of attention the social and emotional health undermines academic success. 

or perhaps we put aside the ..let's be first issue.. breathe more.. start listening to each other.

first doesnt matter quite so much once you grok how many people that mentality is killing.

or perhaps we could start caring less .. how all those worthy attributes to humanity.. vulnerability, empathy, paying attention.... etc, undermine.. or affect in any way...academic success 

Joe Bower (@joe_bower)
2/20/13 7:33 AM

@willrich45 Will, you might be interested in this new book that will be available soonradicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/in-… 

let's be bold

http://redefineschool.com/632/spinach-or-rock/
if we trust people to think for themselves, all this prep and training and managing is no longer needed.
imagine.. all the abundance...
blessed unrest.
happening.
a story about people grokking what matters.


johnmaeda (@johnmaeda)
2/16/13 10:11 AM
Trust springs forth from the very moment one feels, and knows, and can say to oneself, "S/He [or It] *understands* me."

doug belshaw

http://dmlcentral.net/blog/doug-belshaw/why-we-need-learning-standard-web-literacy

I certainly enjoyed the journey, but it's been an extremely long and meandering path. I think we can do better for learners.

i can't help but feel this is exactly how we got in the predicament we are in.

sure - write standards, how to's, et al..

but making anything compulsory is not.. - doing better for anyone.
we can do better than that.


https://wiki.mozilla.org/Learning/WebLiteracies
super resource, let's just please not make it (anything) a mandatory standard.

whitney johnson - disrupt to indie (or interindie)

http://blogs.hbr.org/johnson/2013/02/independent-work-may-be-inevit.html

Where it gets interesting, though, is that independence isn't necessarily being foisted on people. Of those who went independent in 2012, 57% chose to.

This trend cuts across all demographics. Millennials (Gen Y), ages 21-32, for example, 40% say they're likely to choose independence of their own accord. 58% of Boomers (ages 50-66), are choosing independence. And Gen X (33-49) is the most likely to choose independence — 68% of those who have gone indie are there by choice rather than the result of job scarcity or loss. You can see this growing appetite for autonomy reflected in the burgeoning number of books and blogs looking at the meaning of work and life, from Umair Haque to Cali Yost to Gretchen Rubin to James Altucher. 

Note too, that with personal disruption, success is self-reported satisfaction, however you may define it. According to MBO, 65% of respondents reporting being highly satisfied versus 47% for those in traditional employment. I'm finding that to be the case for me. Notwithstanding the fear I occasionally feel, most days I have to pinch myself I am so happy: