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Donald C, Lavoie, intellectual father of the econoblogosphere
Don Lavoie taught at GMU many years before he passed away in 2001. Most of Don's work was in comparative systems and central planning, but in the early to mid 90s he spent a few years investigating hypertext. Don claimed that someday economics would be written in linkable, annotatable form, rather than on paper. Economics, in his Gadamer-drenched view, would become one big giant conversation rather than a series of isolated papers. Here is one snippet of his views. For a few years he talking about the idea non-stop.
At the time I thought he was crazy.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 23, 2008 at 10:21 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
I am becoming more and more of a proponent this idea: If no one thinks your ideas are crazy/stupid/offensive, you're not being very innovative. Unfortunately, it's hard to keep this in mind on a daily basis. I remember thinking what a lame idea Yahoo was when I first saw it in 1995 or so, and I still have a hard time believing that $20 B per year of the most sophisticated technology development in the world is being supported by stupid little text ads next to my email (Google). So here's to people like Don for looking past that.
Posted by: Greg at May 23, 2008 11:09:19 AM
That's awesome
Posted by: John at May 23, 2008 1:00:48 PM
How about Culture and Enterprise for the next book club?
Posted by: bh at May 23, 2008 2:43:54 PM
I have held back from asking this, but now I will.
Tyler: Was it because your former attitude was widespread in
the usually open-minded GMU econ department that the innovative
Don Lavoie ended up leaving the department? Was he wronged?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 25, 2008 9:54:26 PM
