"Oh yes, blogging. That is just people sharing their opinion."

Opinions matter, ideas matter, sharing them matters.

Why should only experts or journalists get to shape our thinking? We have outsourced our thinking to professionals for too long. We need to choose our own words, use them more carefully, share them more effectively and shape our worlds more actively.

Another post prompted by a quote, this one from Jon Kabat Zinn.

I am going to be in Amsterdam for a couple of days this week and possibly Bangkok next. I love being places and know that I am privileged to get to travel so much with my work. But I remember sitting on a tropical beach in Australia a couple of years ago and being struck that there I was, in what most would consider an idyllic setting, not really seeing the beauty around me because I was wallowing in the troubled thoughts in my head.

We are sold the idea that if we buy the tropical holiday we will be happy. If we move to the bigger house we will be happy. If we change jobs we will be happy. But happiness isn't something we get, it is something we do. We can be happy, or unhappy, anywhere and any time we choose.

Being aware of our thoughts and taking responsibility for them is hard work. How we see the world around us is a reflection of the way we are as much as the way it is. If we don't like it then it is ourselves we have control over. It is our thoughts we have to change.

Increasing numbers of senior people face the challenge of social tools in their businesses. As these platforms become more widespread, and the numbers using them increase, the pressure to take part is growing. Even if they were the ones responsible for the deployment of the tools, using them on a daily basis is a different matter.

Some managers are willing participants and take to online engagement readily, but they are very much in the minority. Most are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Frankly they are not used to such close contact with staff. Hearing people's opinions and reactions to your decisions can be terrifying at worst, awkward at the very least. Working out how to react is challenging. Even finding the right words and tone is a significant hurdle.

But with a little help the majority will learn to cope, some even flourish. Supporting them is one of the most rewarding aspects of my job. It was them that my book was written for - let's face it I was one of them once! Watching them learn to fly and discover a whole new way of working is immensely rewarding.

I am sitting opposite a city gent who has obviously just had a cigarette before joining the train. The smell is overpowering and I was tempted to write one of those witty observational tweets you see so often during commuting time.

I found myself thinking "Is this it? The power of the internet reduced to sarcastic comments about fellow tube travelers?" Instead I chose to write this blog post. On my phone.

I am on my way into town to take part in a workplace event and to talk about the power of writing on the internet. This issue of trivia versus import is what I am talking about. The right balance of signal to noise. The opportunity to think harder about things and share those thought, even on the move on a mobile phone.

I will leave you to judge whether this post was signal or noise but whichever it is I still find the potential it represents to work stuff out together, even in the midst of busy lives, amazing.

In the twenties the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin coined the phrase noosphere to convey the idea of a layer of thought surrounding the earth. I first read about this idea more than a decade ago and it stuck.

While walking with Matt Mower last week I worried him when I said that I thought of him as part of my extended neural network. This is what it feels like. The ubiquitous short messages connecting those of us using social platforms allow me to push ideas in and out of my brain in an almost biological way never before possible.

This feels powerful and exciting. Literally worth wrapping our heads around!

Reading about sexism in the tech industry, and helping my daughter deal with bulling at school, I find myself yet again despairing of human nature. Is human life inevitably "nasty, brutish and short"? What makes us so blinkered to the consequences of our actions, so disconnected in our thinking?

The internet and social media are often blamed for our failings but they are just a mirror. They don't make us anything - they show us what we are. I remain hopeful that they are one of our few hopes of improving.

We are having our uglier behaviours held up to us for inspection. This feels uncomfortable and the first instinct is to hide them again. But we have to work through the discomfort and work things out.