As with all fitness centers, when you use these resources wisely and apply them consistently, you'll look better, have more fun, and feel terrific!

New Talks!
Introduction and Overview of a talk given at MIT and the University of Maryland in November 2005.
Dismounting Our Tiger of Perpetual Growth (pdf file)
Modern economies require perpetual growth to produce full employment and to avoid collapse. This is not merely a convenient article of faith for politicians and neoclassic economists; it is a dangerous and unsustainable system artifact that undermines serious efforts at conservation of energy and natural resources, personal savings, balanced budgets or a sustainable human population. This talk describes factors which produce the artifact and public policies which would eliminate it.
 

A talk given to the Lamorinda Rotary on August 26, 2005
Beggaring our Children: how we've saddled our children with overwhelming financial liabilities and self-destructive cultural myths, and what we as individuals can do about it. (or in pdf format)

Failure is not an Option, It's a necessity: how the biology of the human brain normally makes personal failure a precondition to personal growth and national disaster a precondition for rapid cultural and political change.  (or in pdf formal)

Book in Process!
Introduction and Overview
Plantations in the Jungle: engineering lessons from nature on how to rescue and rehabilitate modern civilization.        
(or in .pdf format)
How can we modify the economic and political systems of modern civilization to produce a healthy, desirable, and sustainable civilization in a world of limited natural resources? This book tackles the question first by examining how natural systems solve similar challenges and then by adapting and applying natural methods to the systems of modern civilization.

For example, one part of the challenge is our economic system, a system which requires unending growth in global population and consumption to provide full employment and balanced national budgets. Since Earth has limited resources and space, economic growth must end soon; either through human choice or natural disasters. Economic Globalization only hastens the day of reckoning because it dramatically increases the rate of consumption and destruction of vital but limited natural resources merely to transport people, goods and pollution around the world.

This book suggests a handful of simple, but gutsy, economic and political modifications based on natural principles that would indirectly, but inexorably set us on a path to a sustainable modern civilization in harmony with nature. However, the resulting civilization will not be an ideal one in the classic sense as its structure would require us all to embrace imperfections, risks, uncertainty and diversity rather than to seek perfection, certainty and a global symbiotic oneness.

_________________________

Gems of Wisdom?
Personal observations about fundamental Issues including uncertainty, playfulness, boredom, term limits, democracy, saving others, God and nature. Example:
*Fundamentalists are so frostbitten by the cold reality of an uncertain present that they retreat into idealized pasts, snuggle up to lifeless concepts of perfection and wrap themselves in moldy blankets of absolutes.

Effective and Meaningful Jobs 
(or in .pdf format)
Sustain Profits, Growth, and Enthusiasm

The Computer as God? 
(or in .pdf format)
A High-Tech replay of the Protestant Reformation

Get Important Things Done On-time! 
(or in .pdf format)
Plan to do unimportant things

Standards, Innovation, and Survival
(or in .pdf format)
The role of standards in business successes and failures. 1983 in the computer business was 1923 in the automobile business.

Oct. 2004
Why I won't vote for George Bush
(or in .pdf format )  
I'm a lifelong Republican who voted for George Bush in the 2000 Presidential election. I won't vote for him again.

This October 2004 essay criticizes his conduct of the war on terror, his fiscal recklessness, his campaign methods and his environmental record. This is not a personal attack but a considered analysis, supported by data, of his key decisions and course of actions. Questions, rational comments and challenges are welcome.

Brains, Evolution, Computers and Companies (.ppt) 
(a 2.4 mbyte file)
Correlative mappings of decision making and learning systems. Talk given on May 30, 2002 at MIT, Picower Center for Learning and Memory, Plastic Lunch.

Failure is not an option; it's a necessity
How any path to success is paved with failure. Reasons not to hire people who haven't failed miserably. How failure breeds success and how success breeds failure. How nature uses failure to produce sustainable systems.

Management by Personal Strange Attractors:
A way to manage that is more human and far more effective than Management by Objectives. Introduces chaos theory into practical management situations. Audience participation, examples from project management, business, government, and the military. This talk has been given at the MIT club, Rotary, and SCORE meetings. SCORE comments included "most interesting speaker we've ever had."

The Scientific Significance of the Height of a Pile of Manure.
This talk was first given at Harvey Mudd in the early 1970's. It humorously explores key concepts of physics and of Western Philosophy. It suggests that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle may describe the most fundamental principle underlying all that is.

Contact Ed Lee to discuss presentations using these topics (or other topics designed to fit your event and audience) and to schedule dates.

A key reference book on business-to-business selling. Written for CEOs, entrepreneurs, managers, and sales professionals. For those who want to enlarge their insight and foresight, and reduce their unsightly hindsight. (213 pages) 

Outline

Introduction

Free: Handbook of Channel Marketing (in .pdf format.)
(a 1.9 mb file)
 

Ed Lee

E-mail: edwinlee@alum.mit.edu
Telephone: (541) 383-2106
1617 N.W. Albany Ave., Bend Oregon, 97701

This web page is at: www.elew.com
05/24/2007