Criticizing the person versus criticizing the idea

One aspect of Virtual Leader that I have liked is that it forces players to differentiate between criticizing ideas and criticizing the people who sponsor them.

And yet, the exact mixture of the two provides a lot of additional information as to how raw, even how religious, the conversation is getting.

A post I made on schools and business hating each other definitely hit a bit of a nerve with some people outside our community, posting in.

But no topic raises such primal emotions as talking about post-literacy. The very idea that books are "just" a technology, three steps forward and one step back (my own working definition of any technology), strikes some people as blasphemous. It comes off as anti-book, as if being pro-automobile is the same as being anti-walking. One friend asked me not to use the phrase around her.

We are going to have to begin talking about post-literacy. The irony is that as we explore the topic, our love for reading and writing will become more heightened, not less.