I forgot that I said this but a long time ago I wrote that The Long Tail was a theory you HAD to be familiar with. Someone else asked what other theories should be required knowledge for young people. I can only answer what works for me, but I’ll give it a shot.

You should know Alinsky’s strategies for community organizing, John Robb’s theory of networked, guerrilla warfare, what Matt Mason calls “the Pirate’s dilemma”, the concept of a “blue oceans” Wikinomics (specifically, ideagoras or information bazaars) and I like Rob Walker’s “murketing.” You could also make the case that a healthy understanding of how hustlers create advantage, as compared to normal entrepreneurs, is increasingly important.

A couple others I might add, would be Snark (not the book, read this article) and narcissism/narrative fallacy, for the reason that they both derail and delude a lot of people online.

You could read all the books and I’ve linked to them before but thought it might be interesting if I tried to define all of them over the next few weeks. We could put it together into some kind of introduction for beginners. Your thoughts and input are welcome below.