Off Course-On Target

Reflective Reduction Sauce

As many of you know, I am privileged to live in two parallel universes: one where I am the strategic futurist at Velocity Made Good Inc. (VMG), as well as speaker, provocateur, etc., traveling the world by planes, trains, and automobiles, and living at the speed of thought; and the other where I live and work on my sailboat, the good ship Learnativity, wandering and pondering the world one nautical mile at a time. Each time I move from one universe to the other, the shapeshifting process produces a tremendous amount of new learning for me.

Upon my most recent return to my fast universe, where I was immediately immersed in the Learning 2009 conference in Orlando last week, the learning was wonderfully severe. 

With a few days to reflect and do some cognitive “simmering and sauce reduction”, a few recurring themes and observations emerged for me: 

• Authenticity
• Curiosity
• Confidence
• Faith and Trust
• Unconscious Assumptions
• Redefining Experience
• Uncertainty
• Readiness for the Unexpected
• What If the Impossible Isn’t?
• Personal Capitalization

I’m sharing something about each of these with you in the hopes that they will be of some value and spark additional feedback and conversations. Each of these deserves and demands some explanation and discussion, so I’ll write about each one in a series of posts to follow. Today, I’m starting with Authenticity.

Authenticity

Authenticity has been a recurring topic for me for several years now, and it is one I am finding in both of my parallel universes. For me, authenticity is about the quality of being genuine, and it is one of the best examples of how the most profound and important things in life are the simplest. 

Authenticity can be and is applied to products and things such as content. In a previous post “The Land that Never Was”, I outlined some of my views on how the whole definition of what is real and genuine is either getting more difficult to determine or perhaps is just being redefined as the difference between real and synthetic becomes less and less and, in some cases, the distinction disappears completely. 

At the Learning 2009 conference, I heard both the topic and the word “authentic” in many of the sessions and in the hallways. There was a lot of conversation about authentic content for example. Authentic content is not to be confused with simply the poor quality of content, but rather it is about how accurate and relevant the content is, how true the “voice” of the content is, how relevant is it, and so on. 

A few months ago, while in my other nautical universe, I had a very personal experience with authentic content when I found myself on my sailboat in Pago Pago harbor in American Samoa on September 29th, a day which I have since referred to as “Tsunami Tuesday”. You can read more about this fascinating experience in on my Learnativity blog (Part I, Part II, Part III) and in my previous posting here on OCOT “Tsunami and Technology: Powers That Be at Sea” where I discuss how I found myself being the on-the-scene reporter (by virtue of being there in person), which I shared via the wonders of current technology, such as my satellite phone. This technology enabled me to send out test messages to Twitter and hence be picked up by many other bloggers and then by the world press.

In the weeks that followed, I was deluged by emails, texts, calls, and tweets from some of those who had been staying informed about the tsunami and about their friends and family who were also there at the time. What most struck me though were the common comments I heard about how extremely effective the reporting was, especially via those who were sending out tweets and writing blogs using firsthand accounts from those who were actually there. 

What I picked up from all this was that it was much more than the obvious fact that we were there. It was the authenticity that came from living this experience. We were being directly affected by this amazing natural phenomenon and were dealing with the reality of saving our ships, our possessions, and our friends and family, and were sharing it as it happened.

In the case of content for learning, training, and education, I am hearing about increasing awareness and demand for content that is similarly real, firsthand, relevant, and coming from those who have direct experience. Perhaps this simply goes back to emphasizing the age old advice for any writers or content creators to “write what you know”.

However, this conversation about authenticity and genuineness goes way beyond the narrow definition of content. Most notably, it is about us as people being genuine. Previously this quality of genuineness has been applied mostly to organizations such as businesses, governments, and non-profits, and has been about exposing when these are organizations are not representing and presenting themselves accurately and genuinely.  More recently, however, with the increased depth and breadth of the conversation that now takes place between consumers and producers, teachers and learners, and politicians and constituents, authentic and genuine conversation has become possibly the predictor and predicator of success.

One of the most direct and best versions of this idea came from the conversation between Elliott and Betsy Myers at Learning 2009. Betsy impressed me both for what she said as well as how she said it. She is extremely engaging and effective. One of Betsy’s primary topics is “authentic leadership” and in her conversation with Elliott, she stressed key issues such as curiosity and courage. She spoke to me particularly when she recommended that each of us should “have the courage to be your authentic self”. 

For me, cultivating this quality is not something reserved for those who knowingly obfuscate their real selves, but also is something each of us needs to keep in mind when we fail to be who we really are—when we create too great a gap between who we are on the inside and who we present on the outside.

While it has always been a laudable goal to be true to yourself, I think that with the advent of modern communications technology, and most recently, the rise in the use of social media such as blogs, podcasts, Twitter and Facebook, authenticity and genuineness are being rigorously tested for and demanded far more than ever before. 

There is no question in my mind and experience that being your “authentic self” takes real and constant courage. However, there is also no question that the benefits of doing so are greater still. Does this match with what you are seeing and experiencing? What other ways are you seeing authenticity becoming an increasing priority?  I look forward to hearing from you.

Wayne

Snowstorm of News (Continued)

In my last posting, I noted a recent example of mass personalization or the Snowflake Effect taking hold of news. I just ran into another and perhaps even more significant example, which some are referring to as “printernet”, described as custom printing for newspapers, magazines, and even wikis.

PBS’s MediaShift web site, “Your guide to the digital media revolution” hosted by Mark Glasser, had a good overview of “printernet” in its recent posting “'Printernet' Vision Brings Custom Print Publications to Masses”:

“Publishing means newspapers, newsletters, books and posters in mass market quantities, but versioned and personalized for specific communities and individual users.”

Glasser’s article also notes the ties with another example of personalization, Time Inc.’s Mine magazine, which my fellow Snowflake Erik Duval recently noted in his blog post “Snowflakes at Time Magazine”.

Glasser’s article is very much worth reading because he goes on to show how “printernet” affects magazines,  newspapers, and wikis.

This is not only of interest to me because it is yet another example of the Snowflake Effect taking off, but also because of my fascination with how interesting and useful it is to mashup old models, such as print in this case, with new models such as the web, networks, etc.

It’s worth checking out to see what you think.

The Snowflake Effect on News

I’m seeing a virtual snowstorm of recent products and services that are trying to find ways to “snowflake” their offerings.  My fellow Snowflake Effect partner (and one of my favorite snowflakes) Erik Duval recently posted an example  “Snowflakes at Time Magazine” showing how publishers are sticking their toes into this space.

These newer examples are also incorporating and addressing the context of “attention”; that is, what do we as unique individuals pay attention to, want brought to our attention, etc.  Read on to see what I mean.

Ohpan, a free personalized and interactive feed of breaking news, photos, weather, etc. is another recent example of a new service for highly personalized news from the web design company AType Studios. TechCrunch, which I find to be an excellent source for such news, had a good review of this on March 6th called “Ticker Feed Ohpan Offers Uber-Personalized News”

We’ve seen some earlier attempts to help us get “just the right” news items—ones where where you indicate topical interests and can build your own newspaper with GoogleNews and many other offerings. However, I see examples such as Ohpan’s technology as being a significant step up in the evolution of this kind of Snowflake Effect decision support, because it is adding more context from us individually, something it learns from our online behaviors: which sites we visit, what we save or forward to others, etc. 

There are also links to social sites that more of us are using, such as Facebook, as well as links to Gmail and Twitter. Of particular note is their provision of a feedback loop, so I can interact and provide more context by indicating individual news items I particularly like and either want more or less of, plus the option to share these choices with others. In my experience, this linking capability adds significantly to the overall “network effect” of improvement. I’m also increasingly delighted by the way this is providing the critical serendipitous discovery of news, sites, people, etc.

One of the more noteworthy items, which AType is apparently going to offer next, is the same feedback loops for advertisements, enabling us to indicate ads that we like, want more or less of, use, recommend to others, etc.

All of this is VERY much worth watching. This whole area of decision support is something I highly recommend that we all  keep an eye on as these sites develop, improve, and evolve faster and faster and get better and better.

More on Mashups

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how long it takes to get articles published, and even less so, how I make it worse by taking much too long in letting you know when they are.  However in spite of the delays, I’m delighted to finally let you know about a recent article I wrote for BECTA, the British “government agency promoting the use of information and communications technology; news, projects and resources on lifelong and special education.” They have been doing outstanding work for many years, and have a section called Emerging Technology for Learning (ETL), which is one of my regular “feeds” for learning and technology.

I was therefore most honored to be asked to write an article on mashups, which I titled “The Snowflake Effect: The Future of Mashups and Learning”

The key point I try to make in the article is that in order to realize the true power and potential of mashups, we need to understand and treat this as a conceptual model with fundamentals that can be applied to almost anything. To make this point I used as many existing examples, technologies, and applications as possible to help illustrate how mashups are already being used with great diversity, albeit on a small scale so far.  This subject exemplifies Gibson’s great quote that “The future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed”, and I hope that the article will help to “distribute the future” a bit more evenly by encouraging you to consider using the concept of mashups for many more applications than you may currently be doing.

Please take a few minutes to look over this article, and more importantly, all the other great topics within the BECTA and ETL sites.  Please also be encouraged to add your comments to the articles that you do read, as this adds immeasurable value for all of us.

Time to "Tearn"?

For a number of years, I’ve been pondering how the Snowflake Effect¹ could influence learning. For those who are new to this concept of the Snowflake Effect, in essence it’s about the transformation of society from a model of mass production to one of mass personalization. Think of it as providing just the right things for just the right people at just the right time in just the right context.

Many times everyday, we all have the need to learn about things that are just right for us, and ideally the perfect learning resources are available at just the right time. We hope for the Buddhist saying “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

Since a very young age, I’ve been fascinated by the “teachable moment”, when someone is perfectly ready, willing, and able to learn something new. How can we develop more ways to foster teachable moments every day, and how can we provide just the right resources (people, content, and environment) exactly when we need them?

A Growing Demand for Teachers

When you start to think about this on a worldwide scale, the demand for teachers and teaching forums is increasing exponentially. More than 6.6 billion people have the need to learn everyday, yet the learning assimilation gap (the gap between what we know and what we need to know) is widening.

What’s driving this need? There has always been much more to know than we ever could learn, and we always discover that the more we learn the more we understand how much we don’t know. This situation, however, is being exacerbated by the exponential growth of new “stuff”: technologies, techniques, content (text, audio, visual, etc.) and new concepts, as well as additional means of communication (anything from email to podcasts to Twitter). Add to this the need to solve problems (and challenges!) that are also growing at matching rates and you can see why the demand for learning is increasing exponentially.

Traditionally, the model for formal teaching and learning has been one where a single teacher instructs multiple students. Now this model is inverted. Today, most learners (we still have much to do in many regions where this is not true) are essentially surrounded by multiple resources, instructors, coaches, and trainers.

Initially then, we reach the point where, oddly, we need more teachers than there are learners. If we multiply this by the number of learning experiences everyday, then we find ourselves needing “n” times more the number of teachers than there are learners! And those numbers start in the billions and rapidly increase from there.

Rethinking the Relationship Between Teachers and Learners

Are we really to the point where we need many times more teachers than learners? If so, then we have to start rethinking the relationship between teachers and learners. And where would all these teachers come from? The answer is quite seriously “in the mirror". In this new world, we would start thinking and acting as both teachers and learners simultaneously. We would all become “tearners”.

Let me give you a reference point for this term “tearners”. I’ve borrowed the idea of blending existing terms to create a new one that represents a new concept from Alvin Toffler, who you might remember as the author of several books from the 1960’s and early 1970’s, including Future Shock and The Third Wave. His term “prosumer” blended producer and consumer into a single word that represented the concept of a society where the functions of producer and consumer would be combined.²

Now, I’m not suggesting that we’re all going to quit our jobs and become teachers in a formal sense. Rather, we’re going to augment our ability to learn by making all of us adopt this role of being a teacher whenever it is needed. In this context I am using the word “teacher” to describe the situation where one person is helping others learn something new. This could be anything from answering questions, suggesting a new technique, recommending a new tool, referencing some useful resource, etc. In this context, teaching is not necessarily an in-person real-time event. Today we can capture and publish our individual and collective “intelligence” through the use of blogs, podcasts, wikis, email, Twitter streams, and all of the more traditional means such as books, movies, songs, etc. We can continuously create teaching/learning resources for others to benefit from when their “teachable moments” arise.

The vast majority of our learning today is already done informally, that is, outside the bounds of a formal classroom setting. According to most estimates about 75% of the time, our sources of learning come to us this way. So this would suggest that we need to have about the same percentage of “informal teachers” as well. And as all of us become “tearners”, how can we dramatically increase the effectiveness and rate of learning?

In the past 20 years, we’ve certainly seen an increase in our focus on learning. Yet if we really look at our learning effectiveness (the speed with which we can acquire new skills, knowledge, and abilities), we don’t seem to have achieved an appreciable increase, despite the addition of new tools and new technologies throughout the entire e-learning and technology-enhanced learning era. I’m not suggesting that this era has been a complete failure. Certainly technology has augmented the number of learners who can be reached and it has increased the number of resources available, but I’m not convinced that it has increased the effectiveness of learning in any significant way. Thus, I am interested in not only the quantitative side, the idea that all of us can become teachers, but also the qualitative side, that all of us can become better teachers (and learners).

Part of the reason why I think this tearner model is possible is because we’re already redefining what “expert” and “expertise” means. Historically, experts have been recognized by their credentials. We’ve had degree programs, certification awards, and other formal means for acknowledging someone’s expertise in a tangible way. We still need this kind of verification of expertise, but since new technologies are being introduced at a more rapid rate all the time, we’re also seeing a transformation of what an expert is. In many cases, an expert is simply someone who knows more about a product or a technology than you or I do, and can therefore be an effective teacher.

We no longer have sufficient time to create the formal learning tools and environments, such as masters and doctoral programs, textbooks, and credentialing systems, to address these significant changes in technology or methodology. We need experts to teach us about new programming languages, new equipment, new approaches, and new ways of communicating no matter how quickly they appear on the scene.

I also think there is a relationship between this new definition of “expert” and this new way of teaching and training. Can we get better at attaching the responsibility for teaching to the idea of “expertise.” Many countries I have visited or lived in—Germany comes to mind—have an ingrained understanding that as you become an expert or master in a craft or profession, you inherit the responsibility, formally and informally, of becoming a teacher as well. What if everyone who mastered a competency, skill, or knowledge area also accepted the responsibility of helping others learn in these areas?

The historical model of formal education as the sole means of producing experts and providing teachers is not scalable. But maybe we can take the essence of it; that is, someone with expertise in a craft or profession not only has the potential to become an effective teacher of others who want to acquire those same skills, but also expects that teaching is simply part of what their “expertise” is all about.

So, What If We Were All “Teachers”?

What would it mean for each of us to think of ourselves as teachers? How could we become more effective in this role? First, we’d need a change of mindset. Every one of us would assume the responsibility of helping others to learn. We would also need to develop new skill sets. Some of the skills that would make us better are:

· Capturing and sharing what we know.³

· Being able to articulate our thoughts and ideas to others well through storytelling, metaphors, visual illustration, and problem-solving.

· Being more empathetic—improving our ability to see what the other person really needs to learn effectively.

These would be good skills for us to have anytime! It is intriguing to me to note that all of these skills are predominantly “right-brained” and that this scenario adds to the arguments I’ve made previously in my OCOT entry “Getting It Right” about the increasing need for right-brained skills in business.

This idea of all of us becoming teachers to help others learn is not just a one-way street. All of us as teachers gain the added benefit derived from the old adage, “The best way to learn something really well is to try teaching it to someone else.” When you have to explain it to someone else or help someone else become competent at doing something, you almost always learn more and become more competent yourself. Therefore, we can also look at being tearners from the standpoint of enlightened self-interest. If taking on the role of teacher causes us to learn something even better, then our collective learning will go up. We all stand to benefit in this role as “tearners”, since in the process of teaching others, we are addressing some of our own learning needs.

New Tools, Technologies, and Techniques for “Tearners”

As we move toward this model of tearners, let’s also look at ways to enhance teaching. What new tools, technologies, and techniques for teaching would we need? For example, search engines and recommender systems have mostly been focused on content thus far. Just as the exponential increase of content on the Web drove the need to develop these tools, so too might the exponential increase in teachers drive the need for better “expert-finding” tools. For example, we could develop tools that would help us find the experts we need in any given situation. I think a lot of the same technology that we apply to content could be applied to people. Metadata, such as characteristics, words found within, the audience it was written for, who else looked for this content, etc., could be applied to people and skills. Could we have more metadata about us individually? Could we get better at itemizing what each of us knows: our skills, knowledge, abilities, experience, expertise, to enable us to find people who are just right for us at just the right time and in just the right context?

Unlike the current mass production model of learning, which often assumes we are all somehow the same and need the same things at the same time in the same way, this new model of tearners, which supports mass personalization, draws upon our uniqueness as “snowflakes”. This model is sustainable because each of us can take on these roles of learner and teacher mutually. This model is also one that can grow exponentially because as each of us learns more, we can teach and share more, so the supply of “teachers” will naturally grow to meet the demand for learning.

And as teachers of others, we learn more ourselves so we have a built-in form of self-motivation and another multiplier to the overall effect. It all starts with you. Could it be time for you to tearn?

___________________

NOTES:

¹If you’re interested in learning more about the Snowflake Effect, check out the The Long Slow Chat, my joint effort with friend and colleague Erik Duval, and this collection of articles from Off Course – On Target.

² I’ve written about this prosumer concept often on Off Course - On Target including:

• Redesigning Rather Than Crying Over Spilled Milk?
• New Perspectives: The Third Wave?
• Jumbled Joomla: there is no "B" in Joomla!

³ I see the increased amount of capturing and publishing that we are witnessing via email, blogs, wikis, social media such as Facebook and MySpace, video on YouTube, and comments and opinions on Amazon, as signs that more people are sharing what they know, though in relative terms it is still only a small percentage of people who do so and only a small percentage of the expertise and knowledge that people have is actually captured and shared.

PhotoSynth: Mashups of Our Collective Intelligence via Photos

I don’t know about the rest of you who have your own blogs, but I seem to add many more items to my list of things to write about than I get around to finishing, so my list just grows. Here is one item that I am finally catching up on and which I feel even stronger about than when I was first writing it up several months ago.

I've found a particularly compelling example of the power of mashups. Here is one of those capabilities that you think you understand quickly and then, as you think about it more, you come up with whole new possibilities on how to make use of it. Truly an enabling technology for me!

Intrigued?  I’m referring to the recent release of a combined set of tools (in itself a mashup) called “Photosynth,” which was developed at the University of Washington and by Microsoft Research. Photosynth can take a large collection of photos gathered through a browser search for example, analyze them for similarities, and display them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space with each of the individual photos properly registered to their respective location in the 3D model.

For example, type in the word “Notre Dame, grab all the photos that come up, and run them through Photosynth, which will then display them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

As is often the case, seeing is believing, so I strongly encourage you to first take a few minutes (7:42 to be precise) to watch this video of a TED Talk given last year (2007) by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, one of the main developers of the technology,

Photosynth provides an enormous enhancement of automated registration and metadata tagging, finding the commonality of images, the creation of these 3D models, and the network effect that comes from combining photos from any source. As you begin to understand it better, start to imagine how powerful this new means of creating 3D models from existing information (photos) is, and how it enables design to start with what is already in existence and then work from there, by subtracting and adding to it.

Among other things, this type of technology enables you to zoom in from “outer space” down to earth using tools such as Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth, and then when you get to ground or street level, you can start looking around any area with not just satellite imagery but the added information from thousands or millions of photos from “you and I” that are posted up on any of the many online photo storage services.

Think about this for a minute, and you'll start to understand that this means we can now go INSIDE of buildings by “seeing” things through all the photos which are stitched together to create these 3D models and have each photo registered in the right place.

Watch the video clip below to see a fascinating depiction of a scenario where Photosynth is used to help solve a crime.

 

How could this form of a mashup-creating tool be applied to teaching and learning? You and your students could build some amazing history, geography, art, or other learning resources on the fly on an as-needed basis. You could reconstruct a field trip after the fact or set out on a field trip with the express purpose of capturing a location of interest, and then you could construct these highly detailed models from all the photos. Just imagine the new collections (or “synths” as they might be called) that would start showing up by the thousands and then millions as this kind of technology catches on.

Best of all, you can do this right now.  Download Photosynth and take it out for a spin!

The most powerful takeaway for me is that the merging of individual bits of knowledge—in this case photos—creates both better and unexpected new results, such as 3D models and a new form of collective intelligence. The information one can glean or discover within is a huge step forward in human knowledge. Take some time to both wander around in some of these examples and ponder these potential of new developments.

Where Is Value in the Economy of “Free”

Seems like one of my recent postings “Good Luck Trying to Copy a Snowflake”  on the Long Slow Chat, resonated with many of you. The Long Slow Chat is a blog that Erik Duval and I are using to focus more on the Snowflake Effect. I got a lot of comments in particular about my note that:

“I think we are now in an era where there is an inverse correlation of ease of copying with value.“

I remember being struck by this idea when Kevin Kelly first published his article “New Rules for the New Economy” in Wired magazine back in September 1997.  He talked about the “The Law of Plentitude: More gives More".  When you couple this with the fact that value is directly related to scarcity, the uniqueness generated by the Snowflake Effect takes on a a very large and new value. 

For example, I have often observed that content has little-to-no value in and of itself. In large part, this is because content has become so plentiful and abundant. In this context, I’m using the term content to describe anything recorded or captured, such as illustrations, drawings, text, video, audio, and music. Largely due to the Internet, content has become increasingly easy to copy and distribute, and therefore its value, based on scarcity, has been on the asymptote towards zero and getting closer by the minute. 

But if there is an inverse relationship between value and the ease of copying, such that most content has no value, then where do we find value and in what?  Well, I believe there is still a direct correlation between value and scarcity. So in the case of content, the value comes from the mantra of the Snowflake Effect; that is, getting it “just right”—just the right content to the right person at the right time and in the right way.  Reflect upon this a moment and see what you think. Would you not find that your valuation of any piece of content is directly related to how useful it is to you at a specific time and in a specific context? 

To my way of thinking then, the value proposition for content is transforming it from a “product” to a “service”, since the value comes not from the content itself but from when it is the right content for the right person at the right time. All this is very much in keeping with my noun/verb perspectives but I’ll leave that for a future posting.

I was therefore delighted to find that Kevin too has also been working more on this theme of copying and value, and he has recently published his thoughts in an intriguing article called “Better Than Free” on his blog The Technium, which is also the new book he is working on. But this same article has also just been published on the Change This site in PDF format.

I highly recommend that you check out this article from either source to get some new perspectives on where value comes from in this economy where “free” is increasingly predominant. Kevin addresses the challenge that most others seem to ignore or deny, which is "where will value come from and how will there be a fully functioning 'free economy'?"  As Kevin succinctly said:

“How do you make money with the free?”

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

As you will read in his article, Kevin goes on to describe eight things which are “better than free” and are values that can't be copied, which he calls “generatives”:

“A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing cannot be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time.”

The eight generatives are:

1. Immediacy
2. Personalization
3. Interpretation
4. Authenticity
5. Embodiment
6. Patronage
7. Findability

As you can imagine, I was particularly interested to see "personalization" on this list. From my (no doubt biased) perspective, the whole list is part of the Snowflake Effect, where getting to a state of “just right” is key. And more so than characteristics, this list of generatives creates a list of qualities and competencies that will be increasingly important and valuable for all of us. More on that in some future postings.

I particularly liked a note Kevin makes at the end of the article:

“In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.”

Attention is about as personal a quality as I can imagine, and is one which I value especially since I suffer so acutely from a deficit of it.

I’ll have more on this whole theme of copying, originality, sources of value, new competencies, and attention in future postings. For now, I’d recommend that you give some of your very valuable attention to this topic and this article, and I look forward to hearing more about what you think about the sources of value in an economy of "free."

The Fourth Screen and Counting

I don’t get to see much TV in this new grand adventure I’m on, not that I ever seemed to have time to watch much before either, so many of you may have seen this before but it was new to me. 

Here is great example of why I’ve often suggested that new perspectives are so powerful and valuable and I try to find and create as many as I can.  Oh, and yes this is an advertisement; get over it!  Great content often comes from the most unlikely sources.  This one comes from Nokia.

As you’ll see when you watch the video, they present a fascinating and I think very useful way of seeing the evolution of “screens” and media as moving from:

1. Movie theatre screens
2. Television screens
3. Computer screens
4. mobile/smart phone screens

It’s been rather amazing for me to watch how the screen has quietly embedded itself into our understanding of what a “phone” is. Not so many years ago the word phone would have been would have been thought to mean a device for talking only.  The notion of “watching a phone” would have sounded ridiculous and still sounds rather funny when you say it like that.

By Any Name; Handy is the Game

They now go by many other names such as mobile, cell, smartphone, PDA, and yes even the iPhone of late.  There is even this long list of “Mobile phone terms across the world”.  But I think I like the one common in many European countries the best where they are often called a “handy”

Handy (plural form Handys), pronounced /hɛndi/, a pseudo-anglicism that is used in Austria and Germany for a mobile phone (rare alternative spelling: Händi). In German, the word "Handy" has the meaning of "Hand-Telefon" or "handgehaltenes Mobiltelefon" (translated to English: "handheld mobile telephone"). The term possibly derived from the 1940s product name Handie-Talkie for a handheld military radio. (The backpack version was introduced as Walkie-Talkie.)               - entry from Wikipedia

Whatever the origin or spelling “handy” is certainly an accurate description of these amazing devices we used to call phones and only use to talk on.  And it is this dramatic increase in utility that I think is the really important part of the transformation of these “screens” have brought to our world.

Mashing, Melting and Morphing

More than just the addition of a screen these devices are the mashup or melting pot of a lot of different devices and capabilities from many different directions and original purposes including digital cameras, MP3 or music players, TV and video players, and PCs.  This is what I thought was most clever and useful about the way the Nokia Fourth Screen video presented the evolutionary stages, as you can see how each successive screen swallows the one before it.

* Please also note that none of these stages has eliminated the one before it and  ALL remain valuable and in great use!  As I’ve often pointed out our history is one where technology never really dies and while disruptive, the next new stage does not eliminate the one before it.

While the addition of a screen that is capable of displaying most any kind of content is important, so much more so than the screen it has been the freedom that comes from mobility that has been the game changer.  In fact the screen, while necessary is most often quite inferior to the ones that came before.  A reverse trend if you notice going through the four screens is that each one has been smaller and arguably inferior in visual quality to the one that came before!   However in each case of the steps along the way we gained more freedom, choice and opportunity of both what we could have on the screen, where we could have the screen and our control over the interactions with with other people and their screens.

These new phones have also brought us the closest thing to wireless, untethered and unfettered we’ve ever been.  WiFi can be useful when used with things like desktop PCs and laptops for other reasons, but it only really delivers on its true value IMHO when it enables you to be completely free to have what you want whenever and wherever you are.  Even with the shrinking size of laptops and the new “netbooks” they are still large enough and cumbersome enough that you often don’t have them in your hands at your fingertips when you need them.  The “4th screen”, with it’s ability to slip into your pocket or clip onto your belt or just stay in your hand, is the most likely to be there whenever you need it and brings us closest yet of truly having the world at our fingertips anytime, anywhere.

Evolving the Screen to Death

And will there be fifth screen?  I think so and more after that.  What I’d see coming next is the further shrinking and transparency of the overall physical devices and the elimination of the fixed nature of the screens and input devices.  In the case of the screens what I mean is when there is no limit to the size of the screen and you can view, and you can have whatever size makes sense for the situation you are in.  Sometimes all I need is a screen big enough to tell me the time, temperature, a phone number or a factual answer to a question.  Some times black and white is fine too.  But other times I want screens the size of whole walls or the size of buildings, with very high definition sound and visual fidelity.  And I want them to be there when I need them.  So for example in a previous post on Coming to our Senses: Touch we saw some advances heading toward having screens that can be stretched to any size you’d like, so you could have one rolled up in your pocket or purse and whenever you needed a screen you could simply stretch it out to whatever size you’d like from postage stamp to a wall.  Or perhaps we’ll see mainstream versions of “virtual screens” that might fit on the rim of your glasses or slip over your ear and let you see any size screen in front of you that you’d like. 

After that, the Sixth Screen perhaps?  By this stage I think there will be no screen at all!  Again in my posting Coming to our Senses: Touch in the section on “Digital Clay” I laid out the coming of fully 3D images that might be along the lines of holograms for example and which would also include haptic bi-directional feedback so I can both feel what I see and shape or change it with my hands. 

WYSIWYG superceded by WYNIWYG

The trick however to having all this amazing advances in “screens” is not so much in the screens themselves but in the freedom to see who and what I need whenever and wherever I want to.  This is all part of the trend I’ve been calling the Snowflake Effect or getting it “just right” and what I believe Gartner first started calling WYNIWYG: What You Need Is What You Get.

“Context driven networks will connect us in new and more meaningful ways than the bandwidth-focused networks of today. The idea is no longer WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get), but now we look for WYNIWYG (What You NEED Is What You Get)! Networks will be able to anticipate your needs and make information available to you when you need it.”   
 - Gartner Emerging Trends 2008

For me, the destination of this evolution of the screen is when it disappears completely leaving me free to see (hear, touch and even smell) just what, who, when and where I want.  I don’t know or care if this will be the 5th, 6th or 21st “screen” but it will be just right 4me and it will be here much sooner than most people suspect.

Cool Tools: LiveScribe Pulse Digital Pen and Paper

I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an everyday basis and stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them. I'd like to hear about yours.

This week’s Cool Tool, the new Pulse digital pen from LiveScribe, is still undergoing my evaluation since I’ve only had it about a month now, but it has already lived up to its predecessor, the now discontinued io2 digital pen from Logitech, which I nominated as a previous Cool Tool.  I can see that this new Pulse pen has much more to offer, so I thought it worthy of bringing to your attention. 

Some of the more significant new features that the Pulse has over its predecessors are:

• The addition of audio recording & playback
• The ability to draw your own interfaces
• The option for additional programs and features via a developers API

These features intrigue me and seem to have so much potential that I’m going to address them in a separate posting.

I got this new digital pen (thanks Kelly!) in part to replace, as I already mentioned, my beloved and previous Cool Tool, the io2 digital pen from Logitech. For reasons that still elude me and which Logitech seems to deny and not want to discuss, the io2 has been discontinued. Logitech is not providing new drivers for the io2 so that it can work on Vista, so I’ve been having to use an old XP machine to keep my notes. Plus, the digital paper is no longer available and my supply is almost out. 

I continue to champion and use digital pens and paper because I still find that writing and sketching on paper is the best option in many situations and ensures that I always have a digital version for better sharing of my notes and sketches and for the assurance of a backup copy and long term storage.  The new Pulse pen from Livescribe has proven to provide all these features so it makes for a good replacement, but what makes it worthy of an additional Cool Tools posting is that it adds some additional new capabilities which have truly surprised and excited me with their potential as I’ll explain shortly.

About the LiveScribe Pulse Pen

OK, let’s get the info about the pen itself out of the way so we can get into what and why I think this is so “Cool” and worthy your consideration. I’ll let you do your own reading of the many reviews about the Pulse pen, but I can recommend that you check out these reviews in Engadget by Ross Rubin:

• Switched On: Livescribe's hot recording artist seeks mass appeal (Part 1)
• Switched On: Livescribe's hot recording artist seeks mass appeal (Part 2)
• Switched On: More options for getting from scribble to screen which also covers two other new digital pens and approaches

You can also check out the interactive demo and overview on the Livescribe site, which has links to other articles and reviews by PC Magazine, USA Today, etc.

Not surprisingly (read on), the Pulse pen is based on Anoto digital paper technology, which utilizes an almost invisible micro grid of small unique digital dots covering each piece of digital paper that is then recognized by the infrared camera in the end of the pen.

The list of items that come with or are inside the pen itself include: a rechargeable battery, internal microphone and speaker, USB port, an LED screen (currently quite underused I think), and a set of ear buds and microphone. 

The included PC desktop software (Windows only at this time, Mac version said to be in development) copies all your written and audio content whenever you plug the pen into the USB cradle to recharge and synchronize with all your previous notes and recordings.  Since this content is now stored as files, you can view, share, and edit them further. From within the Livescribe desktop, you have the option to upload your files (text only, audio only or both) to your own online space for either your own access or for sharing this with whomever you choose to grant access.

 

The digital paper comes in a variety of formats, including a very nice leather bound “Moleskin”-like version which I like the most so far.  Each notebook also contains a set of additional capabilities, which are printed inside the covers or at the bottom of each page. These include an impressive calculator with full trig, financial, and scientific functions, as well as audio controls, book marking and a full keyboard. 

The pen itself comes in 2 versions with either 1MB or 2MB of internal storage. Each MB is capable of holding about 100 hours of audio (at the lowest setting), as well as all your written notes and any additional programs you choose to install. I have the 2MB version and  after taking both audio and "written" notes regularly and frequently for more than a month, it still has over 1MB available.  You can delete what is in the pen’s internal memory every time you put the pen in its USB cradle and synchronize it with your PC.

The Man Behind the Curtain/Pen

Almost as interesting as the pen is the man behind it all, Jim Marggraff.  Until last year, Jim was the CEO of Anoto, the Swedish company that developed the technology used by the vast majority of digital pens (I think), including of course this latest Pulse pen from LiveScribe. At 48, Marggraff has already achieved tech world fame and fortune as the inventor of the LeapPad and the FLY Pentop. 

I can highly recommend the Wired article from back in November 2005 called  “LeapFrog’s Wild Ride” that will tell you the interesting story about Marggraff’s journey from being the CEO of Anoto to building the fastest growing toy company in history, Leapfrog and the Fly Pen.

The Fly Pen grows up?

I was an early customer of the Fly Pen back in 2005 and in many ways, I see the new Pulse pen as a “grown up” version of the Fly Pen that was aimed more at children and students, though I should note that there is now a newer version of the Fly Pen that is called the “Fusion”, which has a lot of improvements over the original. 

I was very disappointed when the Fly Pen was not a breakout success, since I thought it had so much potential. I bought several of these for friends to play with and gave them to several who had young children. But for a variety of reasons, it just didn’t catch on with either adults or kids. After experimenting with it and also after talking with others, my take was that the Fly Pen and its interface was just a bit too complex and non-intuitive. Most people who tried it never got past that critical first few minutes and figured out how to use it and unleash its power. But for me the potential is still HUGE and these are just part of the steps along the way to eventual success, as is usually the case with truly revolutionary technologies and inventions. Hence my delight when I found that the Fly Pen had in many ways evolved into this new Pulse pen.

New Mashups: Highly Annotated Notes & Sketches

Of all the many things that are capturing my curiosity with this new Pulse pen, I must say that the connection between writing and audio is at the top of the list. With the Pulse pen, you have the option to easily record audio (just turn on record with a tap of the pen) with the built-in microphone and then listen either through the surprisingly good built-in speaker or plugging in the supplied ear buds and microphone. This latter accessory is full stereo BTW and provides what Livescribe hyperbolically describes as “3D sound”.  

But for me the real power lies in the combination of controls for finding and playing the audio, and the ability to create mashups of written notes and accompanying audio. This has already had a significant effect on the way I take notes. Because I now know that the full audio of the conversation I’m having with someone in a meeting is being recorded, I can and do take much more condensed notes, simply jotting down the key words, phrases, or just marking a key point in the conversation. What I can do afterwards is touch the pen to any word or mark in my paper notes and start hearing the audio that was present at that time. It's very cool and useful. Taking notes in meetings, lectures, and presentations is a great application of this Cool Tool.

I’m also finding myself writing my own notes differently.  I now often turn on the record feature as I’m jotting down some of my thoughts and ideas and then talk while I’m writing to provide more details in my notes, reducing the amount of writing I need to do. 

These added audio capabilities have also enabled me to be much more productive when my hands are otherwise busy, such as when I’m driving. In these cases I use the “pen” as more of a digital audio recorder. In this situation, I just use the pen and paper to help with later access by making a few marks or one word notes for reference. The recording function also lets me capture external sounds that are going on around me that are related to what I’m writing about and want to share, such as music, birds singing, street noises, etc.

Perhaps even more valuable is its ability to create voice-annotated interactive sketches and drawings. You can talk while you are drawing to explain details, symbols, and background.  It gives you the ability to synchronize locations on the drawing with the audio so you can create a drawing whereby you can tap on a spot and hear the audio explanation that goes with it. Simple yet powerful. 

For example I recently had the opportunity to tour the Mayan ruins of Copán in Honduras. I was able to record the guide talking while I took some written notes and made some sketches of the layout of the ancient Mayan city. I could also go back and add my own audio explanation to my sketches from additional details I had learned from reading plaques and from spending a few hours in the museum.  The result is a series of annotated sketches I can share with others or refer back to and help out with those “senior moments” when I can’t remember details from this fascinating tour of the Mayan ruins.

On my wish list for future releases is the ability to manipulate and edit the tech and audio portions independently. For instance, it would be much better if I could take a piece of audio, such as a recording of the guide in the Copán ruins, and trigger it to play when I tap a spot on a sketch I create later. This would be much like the way we can currently move and manipulate text and photos in blog entries and documents.

I’ve got the 2MB version, which gives me the ability to capture up to 200 hours of audio. This capability encourages me to turn on the audio recording feature and add audio to almost all my notes, a response that is similar to the “if in doubt shoot” approach many have adopted since the advent of digital cameras where there is little or no cost to taking more pictures, and you might just get that perfect shot!

On the down side, I guess this also leads to a society full of people who appear to be “talking to themselves” with the advent of hands-free mobile phones with wireless Bluetooth head sets, Skype calls, audio interfaces, and now digital audio note taking.  So PLEASE practice and encourage considerate audio etiquette whenever you are “talking to your technology”!  Microphones are typically very sensitive and do NOT require yelling to be understood!

Share More

LiveScribe enables you to share your work as an attachment to an e-mail, a posting on Facebook, or for downloading as a PDF. The company is also hosting what they call “Pencasts” that let you put your written plus audio notes up on the web.  This could be quite a useful feature for capturing, sharing and reusing lecture notes (and the lecture itself!) or presentations and meetings.  I expect this will lead to some interesting additions to blogs, web sites, and social sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

Here for example is a Calculus 191 lecture on the Livescribe site. While the recording is not the best quality (note: you can change the setting of audio recording quality), I rather like that it takes only the push of one button on the pen to turn it on and one tap of the pen to instantly start recording everything you write and any audio happening at the same time. What matters is that it works and is simple and easy for anyone to do. 

Create Your Own Digital Paper

One other key advancement I’m anxiously awaiting is the ability to print your own “digital paper”. This capability has been mentioned several times by Marggraff and on the LiveScribe site, so I’ll keep watching.  As you come to understand what you can do with digital pen and paper, you’ll start to see almost infinite and exciting possibilities. For example, you could create personal or professional “business cards” that would include either digital places to write on or the ability to understand commands, such as “email this” or a small calculator or...

Key to the Future: Extending the Pen with Software

In my estimation, the highest potential for the future of the Pulse pen is the ability to create additional programs and applications which utilize the pen’s capabilities. One tantalizing example is a demo of a translator function where you can write in one language and have it be translated and “spoken'” via the speakers in another language! A demo included with the pen has the ability to translate from English to Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic or Swedish for a limited set of 20 words, such as hello, goodbye, coffee, chocolate, beer, and numbers from 1 to 10.  It has been great fun to try out even this very limited set of words with some of the people who only speak Spanish here in El Salvador. Just start to imagine the potential this has when there is a much larger vocabulary and selection of languages!  For example, you could be in a taxi giving directions and write down what you want to say and then have the pen “speak to” the driver. Or you could hand the pen and paper to someone and have their writing translated for you, so you can communicate with them despite language differences. We’re still a ways from the “Bablefish” translator of Douglas Adam’s imagination but the feature of the Pulse pen definitely elevates it to the Cool Tool status in my view.

I’m fascinated by this overall capability for combining writing, drawing and programming. The Pulse pen lets you create your own interfaces anywhere you want (on digital paper) by just drawing them. For example, you can draw a cross symbol, which the Pulse pen understands for navigation. You can then use this simple graphic interface to scroll through the programs on the pen, playback of the audio, etc. For example, a demo has you create a piano by drawing an eight note keyboard which you can then “play” by touching the pen on the virtual key on the paper and hearing whatever note you touch through the speaker in the pen or via headphones you can plug into the end of the pen.

While these demos are just limited examples, the potential of being able to have hand drawings and symbols create interfaces and trigger actions offers truly unlimited potential and power in my mind.

I should note that these abilities for hand drawn interfaces and even the piano and translation demos were in the original Fly Pen and they generated most of my initial excitement. I’m therefore hoping that both Livescribe and especially external individual developers will be bringing us a flood of additional software programs that we can add to our digital pens and paper to extend their functionality and use more.  This is where the developer’s kit and API are so critical for the future of this pen.

On the Livescribe web site there is what appears to me to be a reasonably complete set of tools, including a “content development kit” (CDK) and a software developers kit (SDK), which allows for others to create add-on programs and games. Just as was the case with operating systems initially and now the web, this ability to extend the basic functionality and open it up for independent extensibility will be key to determining the future success of the Pulse pen and others to follow. Initially, just as is the case with games, this will be depend upon the degree to which independent developers take up the charge to create add-ons and applications that extend the capabilities and applications of this new technology. But over time, my greatest hope is that this capability to “draw your own" interface and programs will enable any of us, regardless of our programming skills, to create just what we need. 

The Pen Ever Mightier than the Sword?

As I re-read what I’ve written above, it doesn’t sound like much to be able to capture handwritten notes, sketches and audio.  But as with most major value propositions, I often find that the simplest things turn out to be the most valuable and powerful. While I think this new Pulse pen is but one example, this ability to both capture, find, control, and replay the mixture of text, images, and sound in a very simple and intuitive way—pen and paper—is extremely compelling and powerful.

I hope some of these new capabilities of digital pen and paper ignite your imagination as much as it does mine and that you’ll look into these digital pens and paper.  As I said previously, the success of this technology will depend in part on the degree to which we see the development of add-on applications and capabilities.  However, it will ultimately depend upon the degree to which all of us see the potential of digital pen, paper, and audio and begin to adapt, adopt, and apply it to innovative and creative uses.

What do you think about digital pens and paper?  Are you using any yourself?  Would it make it to your Cool Tools list?  It usually takes months or years of regular use for something to make it to my  Cool Tools list, but the Pulse pen is definitely already there.  Free your imagination and I’m sure you can already start coming up with many other exciting ways to apply and extend these new capabilities of pen and paper, along with the mashups you can create by adding audio into the mix. I’ll be back with more wandering and pondering about digital pen and paper and especially the combination of audio, writing, and what I see as the evolution toward truly natural interfaces. Hope you’ll stay tuned!

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Have  "Cool Tools" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information:

• Name of the tool and source for getting one. 
• What does it do? 
• How did you come to discover this? 
• How do you use it? 
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

My LEGO™ Epiphany

In my posting Happy 50th birthday, LEGO blocks!, I mentioned that the genesis of my model of Learning Objects started with one of those wonderful epiphany moments—in this case, from watching my children play with LEGO blocks many years ago. With thanks to those of you who asked, here is the short version of that story.

As with children in most families, my son and daughter have very different needs and styles: one loves clear instructions, directions, and a pre-determined end state (in this case, it was a castle as I recall), and the other wants complete “artistic” freedom and creativity when constructing whatever he can imagine. 

One day, my son was busy creating yet another LEGO masterpiece, and he was having trouble creating just the right nose for his robot. Wandering into his sister's room, he found her busy playing with the LEGO castle she had just put together. She was enjoying rescuing the people in the castle who were under attack from the terrible dragon she’d also built. My son's eyes came to rest on the PERFECT nose for his robot—the LEGO blocks that made up the turret of his sister’s castle. I think you can figure out the rest of the story!  <g>

Once I'd settled the “block war”, it struck me how incredibly well LEGOs, these simple blocks of plastic, met each of their wonderfully different needs. Even better, these LEGOs included blocks that were from my childhood, when LEGOs first came out, and some were purchased literally days earlier. Some came from collections of just an assortment of different size “plain” blocks and others were from specialized kits made to create a specific scene, theme, or object. I began to get that feeling  when you know you’ve stumbled serendipitously upon something really significant, and you just need to figure out what it is.

Was there more to this?  Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could apply this same basic model to other situations and things in our “adult world”?  And so I began a long and winding multi-year journey of refining this dream of a world where everything exists at just the right and in the lowest possible size, much like the individual blocks that make up LEGO systems. 

Some people may find the most value in taking a pre-assembled unit and putting it to direct use; others will want to assemble their own, possibly from scratch, but more likely from sub-assemblies. Some will want instructions and guidance on how to assemble the blocks, while others will want to determine their own results.

The empowerment of literally every individual by such a world full of metaphorical LEGO blocks (no matter how they may be applied) remains as staggering and as exciting to me as that epiphany moment when I watched the wonder of my two little "snowflakes" having their unique needs so wonderfully met by these simple yet powerful blocks.

I will post a more detailed explanation soon of the original model for Learning Objects and how this model can be applied to any type of content and really almost anything else. Stay tuned.