Off Course-On Target

Free Wins Against Malaria

Below, thanks to Kevin Kelly, is a good example of the effectiveness of the "free economy" and how it can be applied to the physical "real" world of bits, not just the digital world of bytes.  Even better, this highlights a great cause, Malaria No More and their Nothing But Nets campaign. 

If you are looking for a way of gifting a difference in the world, consider buying some nets ($10 each) and help make Malaria No More a reality in 2010.

** If you donate between now and Dec.31, 2009 your gift will be matched dollar for dollar, so consider donating NOW!

Free works in the world of bits and good causes

Free Wins Against Malaria

"Nothing free can be valuable" say some critics. That is, giving away things devalues them. This is obviously untrue in the digital realm, but what about physical things? The fear of the free was especially an issue in charity. If, with good intentions, you give medicines, or pumps, or solar panels, to the needed for free, won't they neglect, or trade off, or ignore these gifts?  In particular, if you give long-lasting insecticide-impregnated mosquito nets to families in malaria territory, would they just use them for fishing, or sell them? Maybe you should sell them the nets originally for a small amount?

Turns out after many years of testing, that the free nets are incredibly effective in reducing malaria. Free wins! The story by Jeffery Sachs is here in Scientific American. Or you can read the PDF for the academic paper on the experiment.

Free or not, nets are a great idea and better than malarial drugs. If you want to fund a net ($10), there's a number of places that help  you do that, including Nothing But Nets.

 

via kk.org

What if the Impossible Isn’t?

As I mentioned in my recent post “Reflective Reduction Sauce”, returning to my work universe after months at sea has led me to reflect upon some themes I encountered as a result of my attending the Learning 2009 conference. One theme I’m delighted to see more attention on is “What if the impossible isn’t?”

This theme is about the need to understand that we are living at a time where almost anything is possible. While I would still wager that the majority of people are not quite believers yet, I continue to have great fun exploring  what is the current “state-of-the-art of the possible” with others in my presentations and conversations.

What makes something possible includes such factors as:

• Does it exist? (invented/discovered yet?)
• Am I aware of it?
• Is it available to me? (out of private beta, out of the research lab, etc.)
• Is it ready for me?  (good enough for my use)
• Can I afford it?

Fundamentally, my sense, my message, and my belief is that the only thing holding us back anymore is our assumptions of what it possible, what we should be demanding and expecting as consumers, and the overall attitude we need to take that if something is not possible today, it will be tomorrow—almost literally. 

Living in the Age of Abundance

But I am not suggesting that just because something is possible or available, you need to use it. Quite the opposite actually. Our choices should be driven by our needs, our passions, and our curiosity. Yet this habit of trying anything new is a holdover from the previous era of scarcity whereby we would often feel a need to use something just because it came to our attention, arrived on the market, or was pushed at us as new and improved. 

As we transition into the age of abundance, I believe we need to assume that everything and anything is available and possible, and work from there. In doing so, I find it necessary to invert these earlier approaches and avoid the tendency of starting with a solution in search of a problem.

As many of us* start living in an era of abundance where anything becomes possible, it puts a wonderful pressure on us to think and focus more on:

• What do we really need?
• What are the essential characteristics we are looking for?
• What are our top priorities?

In grossly oversimplified terms, the way we have historically planned and designed is:

• To start with some ideal end state in mind and then develop back from that based on what is impossible.
• To build a solution based on what we think is possible and accept what is often a very significant degree of compromise in the process. 

In doing so, most of our sense of what is possible is quite dated and is based on unconscious assumptions.   Both of these problems are causing us to squander opportunities to improve and do things we believe are still only dreams, and the way to change this is to go after both of these problems.

Learning to Adjust Our Sense of What is Possible

With the rate of change increasing exponentially, our sense of what is possible and what is impossible requires almost constant real-time updating, and necessitates a new planning and project management model. This new model allows for dynamic updating when something that was impossible when the current plan was developed becomes possible. When this happens, the project should start using it and taking advantage of it.

This kind of updating can largely be addressed through technical means if all such requirements are well-articulated in the initial planning process, such that the needed capabilities and other requirements are quantified and stated and can thus be tracked for relevant changes.

However, our unconscious assumptions are a much more troubling and challenging problem because they lurk below our level of awareness and because they become indelibly ingrained into our habits, behaviors, and thinking. For example, my focus on the Snowflake Effect—the transition from an era of mass production to one of mass personalization—includes many such assumptions. Mass production is not reserved for the domain of manufacturing, but rather has permeated most societies and our overall way of thinking. 

When I talk about this meta theme of the Snowflake Effect, one of the most common and provocative questions that I ask is, “If we all seem to agree that each of us is unique, and furthermore that each moment and situation is unique, then why do we live in a world that is designed for sameness?” 

When we design something, we typically start by identifying the “target audience”, a group of people who are  defined by a set of common characteristics. The larger this audience, the better. Think about this for a minute. Imagine you are designing and developing any new product, such as a lesson for students, a book, a website, a car, or service. Do you find that designing all of these involves the same basic model based on an assumption of sameness?

And I get it. This model used to make complete sense. Mass production was a brilliant model in its time and we largely got to where we are today because of it. However, the great news is that most of the conditions and constraints which made mass production such a successful model have changed or have been eliminated, yet the model persists. Add to this the equally wonderful dynamic that truly amazing new capabilities, products, and services are becoming possible and available every day. We are increasingly moving to the point where the impossible isn’t.

It’s Time to Get Good at Believing in the Impossible

What to do?  What needs to change? First and foremost I think it is we who need to change—our thinking and our assumptions. We need to get good at believing in the impossible. In true synchronistic fashion, I recently received this quote from my good friend Murry Christensen which resonated strongly and added to my sense that this meta theme I’m discussing here is growing:

"We must learn to deal with possibilities instead of probabilities."

-- Verna Allee

And one of my favorite thinkers and writers is Kevin Kelly and he has been making these same kinds of observations for many years now. One of my favorite Kevin phrases is:

“Impossible in theory, possible in practice”

Kevin makes this observation in light of the many capabilities we are now immersed in  yet which only a few years or months previously we would have regarded as impossible. You can read Kevin’s piece on “Believing the Impossible” or watch his TED talks such as “The next 5000 days of the web” (included here), and “How Technology Evolves”.

Still not convinced?  Watch these other TED talks and see if you change your mind a little or a lot:

• Pranav Mistry demonstrating his “Sixth Sense” device

• Juan Enriquez’s tour of some views of “mindboggling science”

• David Hanson showing his robots that “show emotion”

Believing that “the impossible isn’t” is what has led me to conclude that the dream of being able to seize every “teachable moment”, to have personalized learning experiences available for every person on the planet multiple times every day, and get to a “just the right” end state where we can get just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time in just he right context, has become an achievable goal.

What about you?  When it comes to capabilities, products, services, etc., what is on your “wish it were possible” list? What, were it to be possible, would make the most significant difference in your professional or personal life?  My experience in pursuing these questions is that by articulating and sharing them, we will discover that many are already possible and those that aren’t can be put on our watch list, so that we will be notified in days, weeks, or months that it has just become possible. 

Sound impossible?  Just watch, it isn’t!

Wayne

______________

* Let’s keep in mind that in terms of world population (almost 7 billion), we are still the privileged few who live in in this era of abundance, and although this group is also growing exponentially, we all need to continue to work to distribute abundance.

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

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.

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."

Snowstorm of Chat, Conversation and Content

As many of you would know from past posts, podcasts and talks, my fellow snowflake Erik and I are working on developing and sharing our thoughts and passion around what we call The Snowflake Effect, which is our vision of a world designed for the uniqueness of each person, group and situation.

Erik and I also love experiential learning and discovering new ways of getting things done.  We noticed how often we are struck by the power of conversation both literally in the great conversations we have but also as a conceptual model that includes things like the way most good conversations have a very serendipitous quality to them in that you really don’t plan or know in advance where a conversation is going to go and yet they so often lead to great discussions. 

Conversation is also very powerful for what my dear friend and fellow snowflake Marcia Conner so ably articulated in her article for FastCompany called “Do You Talk to Think or Think to Talk?”  I, in particular, talk to think. I figure things out and come up with new ideas, analogies, and stories in the process of having a great conversation with others.  And I think to talk when I put time into reflective thinking, developing new models and concepts and then sharing them with others when I get the opportunity to talk with them.

There is so much that we can learn from conversation, and so for all of the reasons above and several more, Erik and I decided to put some of these thoughts into action and practice what we preach. We have started some new ways of learning from conversation and using conversation as a way to develop some of the content and discussion around the Snowflake Effect. 

So far, we have two ways we are experimenting with this:

1. Long Slow Chat is a web site/blog we have recently started up with an agreement that both Erik and I will post one small “snowflake thought of the day” each and every day of the week. "Long and slow" because we expect this to continue for some time and "Chat" because we will try to keep each posting down to a small single thought.  The previous link will take you to the blog where you can read what we have chatted about so far and send in your comments and reactions to help drive the conversation further.
2. TWiST which stands for This Week in Snowflake Talk, where we record a weekly conversation we have on some of the points we’ve made the past week on the Long Slow Chat. We make these available to anyone interested either directly from the Long Slow Chat site or from this link  where you can subscribe via iTunes.

Both of these are experiments we are conducting and are very much works in progress, and we hope that some of this will be of interest and value to many of you, so please check it out whenever you can and let us know what you think. We are VERY anxious to get your comments, reactions, and ideas about this way of working.

Erik and I will be spending more time and energy on the Snowflake Effect and posting as prolifically as we can to the Long Slow Chat site so please head on over there and consider adding a feed for these Long Slow Chat posts and TWiST podcasts as we continue to explore the Snowflake Effect.

** update of original post of Oct.17, 2008 to correct typos and add correct links

Loving Lexicographical Learning

Related to my theme of languages, but through pure serendipitous discovery via my addiction to watching TED Talks, check out this TED talk by Erin McKean on Redefining the Dictionary.

I LOVE this lady and her TED Talk for several reasons:

• As much as anyone, she’s in charge of the English language.
• She loves words and so do I.
• She gets to call herself a lexicographer, which as she explains also lets her say things like lexicographical which is a double dactyl like higgledy piggledy.
• Her desire to be a word fisherman rather than policeman, so she “… can go throw her net out and see what she can drag up from the bottom of the sea.”
• Her great sense of humor and ebullient presentation style.
• Her wonderful irreverence towards what makes a word “official” or “proper”, good or bad. Instead she focuses on what is useful for communicating.
• Her focus on inclusion rather than exclusion.
• Her appreciation and support for neologizing, which is the invention of new words and something I’m all too fond of doing!
• An entire presentation without ONE bullet point or text slide!  I’m inspired!

This is DEFINITELY worth 16 minutes and 02 seconds of your precious time!

Erin also maintains several blogs that are also worth checking out.  See her bio info below for links to a few of them and then go from there.

And if you liked this presentation, you probably will enjoy her great Slideshare presentation on “If Language Weren’t a Commons”.

If Language Weren't a Commons ...

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: isummit08)

From her bio on the TED site:

Why you should listen to her:

Much to Erin McKean's delight, her job as editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary involves living in a constant state of research. McKean searches high and low -- from books to blogs, newspapers to cocktail parties, The New Scientist to Entertainment Weekly -- for new words, new meanings for old words, or signs that once-favored terms have fallen out of use. ("Information Superhighway," anyone?) And it's clear that she relishes the hunt.

McKean is also the editor of the language quarterly Verbatim ("language and linguistics for the layperson since 1974") as well as the author of multiple books, including That's Amore and the entire Weird and Wonderful Words series. All that, and she maintains multiple blogs, too: Erin is the keen observationalist behind A Dress a Day and Dictionary Evangelist.

"Ms. McKean is part of the next wave of top lexicographers who have already or may soon take over guardianship of the nation's language, and who disprove Samuel Johnson's definition of a lexicographer as 'a harmless drudge.'"

The New York Times

View Erin McKean's Profile

Designing Your Own Future!

Carrying the rather magnanimous title of “Strategic Futurist”,  I try to always clarify that I have no crystal ball, no special powers for prediction of the future (nor any other special powers for that matter!), but I do believe that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” as Alan Kay said.  However, I have become somewhat skilled at discovering and observing trends and patterns that I believe will help us to shape and design our futures to be bright and positive ones.  Today I’d like to highlight some recent examples that add credibility to this model of designing your own future, and I for one could not be happier with the progress and trend. 

It seems that the topic of the future is particularly popular of late.  In my recent posting “Inventing the Future?” I wrote about the fascinating new joint venture between Jane Congeal and the Institute for the Future called Superstructure, "the world’s first massively multiplier forecasting game" which is about to start September 2008 . With a tag line of “Superstructure! Play the game, invent the future”, you can see why I was immediately attracted.

Rather than fatalistically accepting that the future as something that happens to us, I believe that we can both individually and collectively invent and design our own!  I also see this as part of using serendipity as a serious strategy for success.  More on that later.

Web of Fate; NOT!

Mark Alert recently (July 16, 2008) did a good job of highlighting several of these new examples of what I would see as “designing your own future” in his e-Clippings: Learning As Art blog post called Forecasting the Future:  Prediction Markets & MMOG's.  In particular, check out the Web of Fate(Wof).  Despite the title, I see WoF as serendipitous and by design rather than fatalistic. It is, in their own words:

“.. a social experiment that harnesses the collective intelligence of the web to visualize and uncover hidden relationships among future and historical events."

They do this by providing everyone (yes you too!) the opportunity to add their own thoughts in a variety of ways. You can make your own predictions, quote a prediction from someone else you agree with, set a future goal, or create a time capsule.  Web of Fate also offers another way of looking at this with their “Semantic Future: explore the meaning of everything”,  accomplished by their semantic analysis engine that extracts meaning from historical, present and future events and draw connections among them.

Since I'm a very visual thinker, I particularly liked the way that WoF is synthesizing all of “our” input to create the Web of Fate visualizations.  Given enough input, I think these will go a long way towards helping us spot trends and patterns that I find so enlightening to the process of designing your own future. 

World Mural Project:  Youth is Not Always Wasted on the Young!

But I’ve saved the best for last.  Chris Dawkins, another blogger I recommend, wrote a terrific summary of the “Intel World Mural project - just what will the next 40 years bring?”.  Chris is behind the Ziff Davis blog on Education and I’ve written more about him and his blog in my previous post “Scan, scan, scan as fast as you can”. I recommend that you subscribe to his feed, if you don’t already.

But the treat today is to direct your attention to the World Mural Project, which is part of Intel’s celebration of their 40th anniversary as a company (July 18, 2008) when they will unveil what they describe as:

“...one of the world’s largest web based digital murals designed by youth.  More than 530 young people from 21 countries around the globe share their vision on what computers will allow us to accomplish in the next 40 years.”

To see for yourself, just click the “View Mural” link on the World Mural site. I hope you will have as much fun as I did exploring the various visions from the young contributors.  The interface is fun and whimsical, and it allows you to move around to different countries and regions and then click on the individual contributions.

Chris pulled out this quote from Intel spokesperson Agnes Kwan, which gives a great glimpse into the future that some of these “kids” see:

"Some of the themes that the kids have expressed are: having multi-function, wearable computers, achieving a greener environment on Earth, greatly improved healthcare, vastly improving our brain power, experiencing virtual education, communicating through holograms, teletransport, living more relaxed, peaceful lives, and living on Mars.”

Also worth checking out is the Intel Computer Clubhouse through which the mural project was developed.  This network is an after-school community-based technology learning program that enables youth in underserved communities to acquire tools necessary for personal and professional success.  The Clubhouses were an ideal way for youth to collaborate on the mural and create a dynamic and unified piece of art that represented a global world view.

I think this is also a great example of another trend that I highlighted in my post “Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery and Design” where I see more and more innovation and ideas coming from the underdeveloped and underserved groups and regions of the world (many of them located inside otherwise very “developed” regions and countries, I might add!).  In any case, a very good use of your time would be to check out both the World Mural project itself and the Computer Clubhouse project.  Consider getting involved yourself as a volunteer, mentor or trainer in these projects.

Who better to involve directly in designing our future than those who are going to spend the most time in it and who likely have entirely new and fresh ideas and perspectives than those of us who may be more often shaped by the past?

I particularly liked the line and the link found in the Web of Fate site:  “The Solution:  You have the solution”    OK, OK, so it’s a form and you know I subscribe to the “all forms must die” attitude, but in this case the potential for the benefits of your input outweigh the format and I’d strongly encourage you to add yours to the collection and check back regularly to see how our future is shaping up!

Make This Personal!

I hope you too find some of these new examples inspiring and insightful and that you will check them out.  However, all of these are acting at a very high level. Most change occurs much closer to the ground and with more specific applications.   Therefore perhaps most important and valuable is the potential for YOU to adopt some of these examples to your own work and areas of interest.  What is to stop you from creating your own game along the lines of Superstruct to drill down on designing the future on a much more focused level of your own industry, profession, hobby or other areas that you are passionate about?  It “only” takes a good initial premise or scenario to cause some of that incendiary “Spontaneous Creative Combustion” in your own organization. How could you involve younger minds in helping to see and shape the future of these worlds you are a part of?  How could you instigate an outbreak of input and feedback within your groups and utilize the semantic analysis from something like the Web of Fate to spot trends and directions that will help you direct and design the future?

At the risk of beating this theme to death, let me restate that I am NOT interested nor optimistic about these examples I’ve highlighted for their predictive capabilities, but rather for their assistance in helping each and every one of us to play a part in designing a future that is both bright for all and is one we can be proud of and part of.

But most importantly I’d like to know how do YOU see the future shaping up?    You know where I stand but how do you see it?  Bright or dark?  Is the future fatalistic of serendipitous?  Done to you or something you have a hand in?

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?

Inventing the Future?

I've been a big fan of Jane McGonigal ever since I had the chance to talk with her at the Learning 2007 conference where we were both speakers. One of the many reasons I so like her work is her focus on what is called “alternate reality gaming” or ARG (gotta have an acronym or it ain’t real right?).  While Jane is a very fun person (who else would carry the title of  "Head PuppetMaster"?), trust me when I say that her work on games and their consequent results has been very “serious” indeed. Harvard Business Review called her theory of "alternate reality business" one of the "Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas of 2008".  Check out Jane's company AvantGame and her blog for more information and I think you too will soon be a big fan.

I’ve been promoting augmented reality over virtual reality for a long time, and Jane’s unique approach of adding gaming to the equation is brilliant. I believe that Jane and her games are the best examples that I know of for showing off some of the true power of applying game theory. I especially appreciate the truly unique approach and out-of-the-box thinking she has brought to gaming. Jane’s games are also great examples of a common theme here on OCOT—the power and beauty of simplicity. Unlike most game examples, which typically involve a lot of hardware and software technology and are highly dependent upon the game developers and platforms, Jane's games are an extremely “low tech” model that puts the game players in charge. It all starts with and is based upon a simple opening statement or premise and is then left up to the players to provide all the excitement and direction online, usually with simple tools such as e-mails, blogs, and IM. You can see this for yourself by checking out some of her past successes such as World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and I Love Bees.

Superstruct is Super!

All this is just an introduction though to a new joint venture that I'm intrigued by and which Jane is leading with the Institute for the Future called “Superstruct”. They describe it as “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future.”  As with all her alternate reality games, this one starts with a scenario. In the case of Superstruct, it begins with the following:

"Humans have 23 years to go:  Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens. PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo sapiens—the human race—from "indefinite" to 23 years."

You can read the rest of the details in the link above and this Superstruct FAQ.  Highly recommend that you take a few minutes to check out the link to Superstruct to learn more. Although the game doesn’t officially start until September 2008, they have already started a precursor in the form of comments to the announcement and an initial premise of:

"It’s the summer of 2019. Imagine you’re already there, and tell us a little bit about your future self. Where are you having dinner tonight?"

For more on Superstruct and other AR games check out the ARGNet for more alternative reality games.  While it is obviously still early in the process, I was struck by the degree to which the initial comments seem to see and predict a very negative future, and it's all the more reason for us to all take a role in changing this by envisioning and designing one that is positive. If you believe as I do that WE are ultimately in control of the future, then why would we design and aim for anything less? PLEASE be sure to check out the comments and add some of your own!

Forget Predicting the Future. Let's Get Busy Designing It!

What I'm most passionate about, and my reason for alerting you to this new glimpse into the future, is the whole idea of not predicting the future, but "inventing it" as Jane has also been known to say. This of course parallels one of my favorite Alan Kay' quotes:

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

This hands on, get involved, take responsibility and action approach has always spoken to me loudly, and so I’m struck by the increasing number and diversity of ways that this is actually happening and how we collectively can and are creating the future. It sure beats the more typically fatalistic attitudes I seem to run into so often that "they" are causing everything or that technology is somehow in control of our future. I'm desperately hoping and sincerely believe that as these recent examples show, we are seeing the turnaround of the "victim mentality" that seems to have become so prevalent and we are going to seize both the opportunity and the responsibility to make the future one that we want to live in and be a part of. 

Game on!