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The digital commonplace book of Marcus Verrall
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The Commonplace Book of Marcus Verrall

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How Did We Get Here?

Globalization and the tech revolution have undone traditional career assumptions. Technology automates jobs that used to require hard-earned knowledge and skills, including well-paid white-collar jobs such as paralegals and radiologists, to name just two examples. This erasure of certain positions will only continue with the Al revolution that is already sweeping across industries. Of course, technology also creates new jobs, but job creation tends to lag behind job displacement, and the new jobs usually require different, higher-level skills than the ones they replaced. If technology doesn't eliminate or change the skills you need in many industries, it at least enables more people from around the world (often cheaper freelancers) to compete for your job by allowing companies to offshore work more easily, knocking down your salary in the process. Trade and technology did not appear overnight and are not going away anytime soon. The labor market in which we all work has been permanently altered.

The Startup of You (Revised and Updated)
p.6

G’day, and welcome!

I am Marcus Verrall, a curious technologist at heart and a pragmatic leader by trade. Building things is what excites me the most. I read. I write. I’ve occasionally been accused of being a rational optimist.

MV.com is a primarily a 'commonplace' book, somewhere for me to store quotes and clips from the books I read or audio files I listen to. I have been doing this for years on little coloured note-cards, with interesting or compelling quotes written by hand after finishing reading a book, following the advice and process of Ryan Holiday, an author I admire. Not only does this take many hours, it has other drawbacks, like not being portable, searchable, associated with a taxonomy or easily referenced in my own writing. It was developed after I searched high and low for something that had already been built, but found nothing suitable. 

Some of my favorite pieces of wisdom will still make it to physical cards, which will continue to adorn my working spaces, but all of them will make it to MV.com.

As well as making content generally available, I'll be making some stuff accessible only to registered members, with commenting and other features enabled. If you would like to be part of this group, please apply for membership via the registration form.

Enjoy!

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