brain Archives - Breakpoint Book

Business, Biology, and Technology: “The truth about Competitive Advantage”

May 12, 2014 By Jacob Howell

In case you haven’t already heard, Breakpoint, by Jeff Stibel is being cited as a must read for business people. The book has made it into the Top 20: “What Corporate America is Reading” list compiled by Brian Solis and is rapidly gaining interest amongst America’s brightest leaders. Stibel is the Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. and Chairman of BrainGate, as well as on the boards for University of Southern California, Brown, and Tufts University.

In addition to Breakpoint, Mr. Stibel has published a number of books and academic articles related to business, economics and other topics, such as neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Business books play an integral role in the evolution of business development, strategic thinking, corporate culture and the overall way that leaders mature, grow and adapt to our ever-progressing society.

The book is distinct from other influential books because it looks at business through a different lens than the rest. Rather than focusing primarily on corporate strategies and other traditional business topics Breakpoint examines correlation between biological systems and technology.

Within the complex world of biology, bigger is rarely better in the long run, and the deadliest creatures are usually not the large or aggressive ones like the lion but the small, out-of-sight ones like viruses and bacteria. Mr. Stibel compares this biological phenomenon to the internet and he takes the position that it is the quality of a network that is important for survival, not the size, and all networks—the human brain, Facebook, Google, even the internet itself—eventually reach a breakpoint and collapse.

The corporate and technological success equation is Quality ≠ Size

Exceptional companies are using their understanding of the internet’s brain-like abilities to create a competitive advantage by building more effective websites, using cloud computing, engaging social media, monetizing effectively, and leveraging a collective consciousness.

The mantra that Jeff has established around the Malibu office is “Work Hard, Play Hard” and because of this focus on quality the company has been able to achieve amazing things. From the company culture to innovative product development, Mr. Stibel truly does lead by example as he encourages both internal and external company initiatives that encourage small business and community growth.

Amidst all the peripheral noise of traditional business books Mr. Stibel has written a truly impactful piece that shows the reader where biology, technology, and business intersect. In a consumer-driven market where corporate responsibility matters and corporate cultures are thriving, it is important to remember that quality will always trump size in the long run.

Photo Credit: Mo Riza, Flickr

How to Cope with What the Internet Does to Your Brain – by Jeff Stibel

March 12, 2014 By Lennon Cole

Would it surprise you to learn that our brains have been shrinking for the last 20,000 years? It’s true. In a major reversal from the two million years before that, our brains have actually been growing smaller. We’ve lost about a baseball sized amount of matter in a brain that’s not any bigger than a football. One reason for that is our bodies are smaller as well (except for maybe Shaq), but that only accounts for a small amount of the loss.

Read the full article on LinkedIn where it originally appeared.

When Teams Prevent Greatness – By Jeff Stibel

January 23, 2014 By Lennon Cole

Our society reveres individual greatness. We root for the Kobe Bryants and Peyton Mannings of the world, we are mesmerized by the likes of Meryl Streep and Steven Spielberg, we follow every move made by Warren Buffet and Elon Musk. Individuals have a special place in our world, and we attribute much of society’s success to unique people—Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr.—instead of the teams and movements behind them. It goes without saying that there is often an army of people that drive an individual to success. But individuals, acting alone, can do extraordinary things.

Read the whole article where it originally appeared.

This Is The Best Way To Process Failure

January 10, 2014 By Lennon Cole

After you fail, sometimes it helps to read the writing on the wall.
That’s what Jeff Stibel, chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corporation — a California company not affiliated with the more famous Dun & Bradstreet on the East Coast — came to realize.

About two years ago, Stibel and his assistant snuck into the office at night and created what they called a Failure Wall. The point was to…Read the full article on Business Insider where it originally appeared.

150-WORD BOOK REVIEW – Breakpoint by Jeff Stibel

October 22, 2013 By Lennon Cole

The blurb that comes on the front cover of this book doesn’t augur well – ‘Why the web will implode, search will be obsolete, and everything else you need to know about technology is in your brain’.

It reminded me of a similar threat on the cover of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance that this ‘book will change your life forever’. For once, or for twice in this case, both proclamations are very probably true.

Stibel’s book is powerful and full of facts for the layman and the passive expert about how the workings of the brain and the internet are alike. He loves ants a little too much when he speaks of colony power, but this book made my brain break.

Everything I need to know about technology may be in my brain, but it took me a couple of days to get over that. An excellent read and recommended

REVIEW: 8.5/10 (A VERY STRONG 8.5)

This review was written by Monty and originally appeared on Mob 76 Outlook

Breakpoint, book review: Is the internet really a brain? – Excerpt from ZDNet

October 10, 2013 By Lennon Cole

Our brains are shrinking, and this is a good thing. Having read, long ago, Stephen Jay Gould’s book The Mismeasure of Man, I’d argue it’s probably an irrelevant thing: the quality of brains is not effectively measured by their size. Otherwise, elephants would be running Congress and the shutdown wouldn’t have occurred.

But this is sort of Jeff Stibel’s point in Breakpoint (subtitled ‘Why the Web will Implode, Search will be Obsolete, and Everything Else you Need to Know about Technology is in Your Brain’): highly interconnected systems grow like crazy until they reach some inherently unsustainable size limit and then they break.

The original article appeared on ZDNet.

Author interview – Jeff Stibel, ‘Breakpoint’ – An Excerpt from Engineering and Technology Magazine

September 18, 2013 By Lennon Cole

Screen Shot 2013-09-18 at 10.07.15 AM There will come a point when the Internet will reach its physical limit and hit what author Jeff Stibel calls ‘breakpoint’. But that is not necessarily as catastrophic as it sounds.

We could be forgiven for thinking that the Internet is infinite. In scale it is certainly the biggest thing humans have ever invented, and there is no doubt, at least not in Jeff Stibel’s mind, that it has grown to “epic proportions”.

We’re used to reading that if an alien arrived on Earth it would probably assume that the Internet was the largest living organism on the planet, and yet the author of ‘Breakpoint’ says that it has a long way to go before it becomes as sophisticated as a human brain. This is because, while computers are very good at storing information and making calculations, they have nothing like the brain’s power to communicate. In fact, when we hook up two computers together the result is only a “rudimentary brain”.

Original article appeared on Engineering and Technology Magazine. Read the full article.

Is the Internet Hurting Our Brains?

August 13, 2013 By Catherine Shalloe

What are some of your biggest fears? If your list is anything like mine, I’m guessing spiders, snakes, the dark, and heights may appear amongst your list of worst nightmares. But the real question is: Are you scared of the internet?

Turns out that one of the questions most often asked to brain scientists is, “Does the internet damage your brain?” This is a genuine concern for a lot of people. But as you’ll soon learn through Jeff Stibel’s video, the internet doesn’t so much change our brains as ours brains adapt to it.

http://youtu.be/OQr7HWfcjdo

One of the main points Stibel makes is that “we are fundamentally changing our beliefs on what intelligence actually is, what is important in society through an intelligence stand point.” This means that what people used to consider as smarts is now accessible through the internet. Thus, the internet is simply expanding our horizons and changing our idea of what smart really is.

Because the internet is storing knowledge for us, the focus of society can change to what makes us uniquely human. That has the power to benefit society in the years to come.

(CC photo by: epSos.de)

Seagulls Get ‘Drunk’ on Flying Ants

July 22, 2013 By Catherine Shalloe

Recycling is good for the environment as well as the brain

With incurable diseases such as Huntington’s, Scientists have now realized that the rates of proteostasis may be the clue in figuring out why certain nerve cells die. Proteostasis is the biological machinery dominating the environmental movements of the cell. By studying this, scientists learn that recycling in cells helps the brain.

A study using rat cells indicates that quickly clearing out defective proteins in the brain may prevent loss of brain cells.

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Seagulls Get ‘Drunk’ on Flying Ants

There have been multiple sightings of inebriated seagulls in southwest England. Known as “anting”, these birds flail around acting, as some say, like drunk birds. And unlike alcohol making humans drunk, can you guess what animal causes seagulls to act drunk?

Seagulls in southwest England are getting ‘drunk’ off the formic acid in the bodies of flying ants, creating a nuisance of themselves.

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Google Now Serves 25 Percent of North American Internet Traffic

With a jump from 6% to 25% persuasion is key in Google’s huge leap forward in taking over the North American internet traffic. To handle this amount of growth google is expanding like crazy and now has data centers on four different continents.

Everyone knows Google is big. But the truth is that it’s huge. On an average day, Google accounts for about 25 percent of all consumer internet traffic running through North American ISPs. That’s a far larger slice of than previously thought, and it means that with so many consumer devices connecting to Google each day, it’s bigger than Facebook, Netflix, and Instagram combined.

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How Microsoft SkyDrive Is Making Cloud Storage Less Painful

With people’s data needs increasing by 50% every year, and the capacity of device capacity only increasing by 25% there is a clear issue confronting the amount of data storage a person can have. That is why Microsoft has fallen in love with the idea of Cloud Storage. Through the Microsoft SkyDrive they make cloud storage a lot easier for anyone to use to the cloud.

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Are “Cheap” Carbs Really Like Drugs To Your Brain?

June 27, 2013 By Catherine Shalloe

As global warming heats waterways, brain-eating amoebas thrive in US lakes

Beware of the “brain-eating amoebas” that roam in lakes throughout the US! Sounds scary, huh? These amoebas, commonly known as PAM, enter through your nasal passage and right into your brain. There it multiples and eventually kills about 3-8 people a year. Now it’s spreading further North in the US and researchers are beginning to worry. There’s no cure for this infestation of the brain, and it’s extremely hard to even diagnose. See where these amoebas are and were about they’re spreading to.

It’s a fatal infection without an effective treatment, and one that strikes in a decidedly gruesome manner: An amoebic organism lurking in water is inadvertently inhaled during a swim on a hot …

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Babies Recognize Each Other’s Moods, Study Says

Looks like the show Rugrats was not just another fun kids show, but a portrayal of the scientific truth. Babies, starting at around 5 months, can communicate with other babies better than some adult could. They sense each others emotions and feelings, infants can understand what is going on. Here’s the study scientists conducted in order to find out the what’s going on. These little rugrats know more than we think. [Read more…]