Carnegie reborn

Seventy-five years ago, Dale Carnegie published his famous book ‘How to win friends and influence people’. It has gone through numerous reprints, and has just been republished by ‘Dale Carnegie and associates’ as ‘How to win friends and influence people in the digital age’. Just this morning BBC correspondent Lucy Townsend has been trying it out.

Apparently within its pages you can find Carnegie’s original advice about smiling, finding the best in others, being positive and affirming, all translated into their digital equivalent. Those of us who have been talking for some time about digital ethics and authenticity  should find nothing to surprise us here. Honesty, integrity, generosity and openness have been the street lamps to guide us through  the streets of cyberspace ever since we begun travelling them. As Ms Townsend points out in her report ‘I smiled before I ever read his book’. Surely the things which win us friends online are the same as those which do so offline?

Image: Amazon .com

One interesting observation on all this integrity stuff, though – some time in his early 30s Dale Carnagey became Dale Carnegie. He believed that taking on the surname of Alan-Sugar-like entrepreneur Andrew  Carnegie would help his cause – and it clearly did.  Maybe the best way to increase your Klout influence would be to change your name to that of some influential person of your choice? Then again that would hardly be in the spirit of Carnegie (or was that Carnagey) now would it?