Off Course-On Target

Snowflake Effect: Mass Personalization of Manufacturing

Derek Singleton has written a good overview of some good examples of the mass personalization of manufacturing in a recent posting “Anyone can be a Manufacturer” and an earlier one “Three ways to bring Crowdsourcing into Mainstream Manufacturing”.  They are IMHO well worth the read and following some of the links. 

The only significant omission to me. which many seem to miss, is the area of 3D scanning that enables us to capture existing objects in the form of full 3D models which we can then modify and adjust to suit our individual needs and situation before “manufacturing” at a click of a button.  Perhaps Derek will write more on this topic as well.  For now you can see some good examples such as Autodesk’s 123D series of apps for more on this critical component of the Snowflake Effect on manufacturing for the rest of us.

As I’ve been saying in my articles and speaking engagements the last few years, one of the biggest and best examples of how the ubiquitous Snowflake Effect is fundamentally disrupting the present and shaping the future is what I think can rightly be called the Third Industrial Revolution wherein each of us as individuals become empowered to create or manufacture our own “stuff”. 

This revolution is very pervasive and diverse in that sometimes we will literally have a one click manufacturing plant on our desktop along the lines that can already be seen with some of the early 3D printers available.  At the other end of the spectrum it will simply yet powerfully mean that we will play a more and more key role in the design and production of products we create with the assistance of others and higher end services and the myriad of points along this entire DIY (Do It Yourself) spectrum.  I think this will likely proceed along lines similar to how photography and photo printing have evolved where they were initially the domain of experts only to where we used to just take photos and send our film off to be developed and turned into prints to where we now either just click and immediately see the photo results on extremely high resolution screens or hit the print button and soon have a near perfect photo in our hands.

As we begin to similarly capture and print real and complex objects with the simple click of a button we become more intimately involved in the whole process from the initial idea of “Gee, wouldn’t it be great to have one of those.” or “I wish ‘they’ would make something like this.” to the modification and improvement of the object to make it “just right”, just for me, just for now and almost instantaneously have that in our hands.

The instant gratification and production of more “stuff” does NOT excite me and is in fact one of the concerns to be dealt with as we move into this brave new world.  What I am VERY excited about is the degree to which this will in fact involve each of us more directly and intimately in the whole idea-design-test-create-improve cycle.  Think of all the learning this will inspire in us all!  Think about how much more we will understand the materials and energy that go into producing things and the power this new awareness will bring to many as to how to consume less, reuse more and get more out of life. 

How much “stuff” do you have in your life that you don’t use because it never worked well, never fit you properly, never did what it was supposed to do?  Imagine if every “thing” you have is just right, just for you.  Imagine the new skills and knowledge you will need to have and want to have to live life well in this new snowflaked world.  As with all powerful new innovations and discoveries the advent of personalized manufacturing will bring with it equal measures of risks and benefits and it is up to each and everyone ONE of us to choose how we will shape and use these new tools and enablers going forward.

We may curse snowflakes while shoveling billions of them from our driveway or when our car is skidding on compacted ones on roads, yet the almost spiritual beauty of fresh fallen snow and the intricate perfection of each and every unique snowflake evokes emotions deep in our souls and reminds us what a profound gift uniqueness is.  It may be difficult at fist to see such beauty in something as ‘ugly” and conforming as manufacturing has historically been, but these are the traits of the previous forms of manufacturing and why, for me at least, the rapidly evolving Third Industrial Revolution is so powerful, so exciting and yes, so beautiful. 

 

Think about it.  What will you do as these capabilities are put into your hands?  What new skills and knowledge will you need to have to use them wisely and for best benefit?  What new services and support will you need?  How will use these new capabilities for greater good both for the world overall, yourself and the rest of the world’s snowflakes?  As you ponder these kinds of questions, if it doesn’t make you equally excited and scared then I’ve done a very poor job of explaining this.  Hopefully better writers like Derek will help to do a much better job and set off that spontaneous cognitive combustion within you as you have that the Aha! moment of recognition and set of in pursuit of your relentless curiosity to learn and practice more.

Snowflakes Effect Hits Financial Models: Snowflakes funding Snowflakes

The evidence that the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is continuing to build at an exponential rate continues to show up just about everywhere I look. One dimension of the Snowflake Effect that has not received a lot of discussion yet is the financial side if the story; how will the mind boggling numbers of personalized solutions needed every day be funded?  What are the new financial and business models going to be in a Snowflake Effected world?  If as I believe more and more of us are going to become designers and producers and creators by making our own “stuff”, and especially if others are asking us to make and share some for them, how will we pay for this?   Well, why not apply the Snowflake Effect to funding itself?

Microtizing Finance, Credit & Loans

In fact this the Snowflake Effect has already hit funding models already and we are seeing more and more examples and growth of these wild new models.  One of the hallmarks of the Snowflake Effect is breaking things down into very small components whether that be each of us as unique individuals or each unique moment in time or small parts that can be reused and reassembled into infinite numbers of unique new assemblies Lego block style.  This same “microtization” trend is increasingly taking hold of financial models and enabling each of us 7 billion plus snowflakes to not only become designers, creators and producers, we are also becoming financers and funders. 

One example you have likely heard of and many of you are already participating in is that of microloans, microfinance and microcredit.  Essentially this is where once snowflake can loan small amounts of money to another snowflake or individual cause.  As is often the case this is not a new idea or invention but what is new is the scale and reach of these models.  Back in 2006 Kevin Kelly posted this good overview of “Micro-Loans Online” which he introduced by saying:

This year the father of micro-finance and founder of the Grameen Bank won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in inventing and promoting micro-loans in the developing world. A micro-loan is as little as a few hundred dollars invested into a one-person business with minimal qualifications. That tiny borrowed amount can launch a vegetable stand, repair shop, or bicycle taxi -- a living in other words. As each micro-loan is repaid (and most are), the effects of that small goodness are amplified and leveraged by being loaned out and invested again and again. Micro-loans are the world's only perpetual motion machines.

Snowflake Effect Hits in Financial Models in Developed Regions

Most of these micro loans and micro financing have been focused on dealing with poverty and developing regions and they continue to escalate in both numbers and positive effects.  Somewhat newer and greatly increasing the scope of this Snowflaking of financing is their application to the financing of individuals and small businesses in developed regions and markets.  One of the more noteworthy examples is Kickstarter  which has the tag line of “A new way to Fund & Follow Creativity” and bills itself as being “The world’s largest funding platform for creative projects”.  The model is essentially the same where anyone can pledge any amount, typically one to one hundred dollars, towards a specific project that someone has proposed on the site.  As they point out this is not about lending or investing as each project creator maintains complete control and ownership of their work.  Those who pledge money are also protected because no money changes hands unless the project reaches its funding goal within a set time.

You can check out the Kickstarter web site and Kickstarter blog for more information and examples of the enormous range of ideas, products and services being developed which include everything from software applications to games to art to books to home hardware.

How well is this working?  Well Kickstarter recently had a record setting day with two projects exceeding $1M each in pledges and $1.6M being pledged in 24 hours.  All this from individual snowflakes like you and me.  In fact they had quite the day as they also saw New York’s city council endorse the site as a way to highlight community projects that need funding

It was also noteworthy to me how different the two projects were that exceeded the $1M in pledges.  The TechCrunch review of this eventful day highlighted this nicely:

Often Kickstarter is thought of as a venue for people with very limited means but a good idea to execute that idea. The Elevate Dock is a good example of this.

But Double Fine is an established game studio with office space, employees, and many products under its belt? Why should it go to Kickstarter? Well, Tim Schafer explains that in the video, at least for this project: no publisher would go near a point and click adventure game, but they knew at least some people wanted it. Reasonable enough.

The question, really, is why we even question it. If people want to make something, and people want to fund it, why shouldn’t it be on Kickstarter? The easy stuff — cool accessories or small devices that need a little capital to get started — are just the first wave. Why not pothole repair on a neighbourhood street? Why not a new coffee shop? Why not a feature film? Some of these have been tried, no doubt, and perhaps failed — but the principle is sound:

If you want to make it, and others want you to make it, this is a way for you to connect.

Why not indeed!!  What if the impossible isn’t?

Snowflake Effects on Learning

As you can see then, the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization continues its exponential growth and influence on almost all aspects of our world.  For those of us who look at the world from the perspective of learning, my ongoing question and fascination is with how the needs for each of us as individuals and as societies are changing and being changed by the Snowflake Effect.  The personalization of learning itself such that each learning moment is more successfully and deeply personalized is happening at an equally exponential rate with more examples of this showing up every day.  However an even larger and multiplying effect is the need for a whole new set of skills, knowledge and competencies each of us snowflakes are going to require to survive and thrive in the rapidly evolving new snowflaked world we are creating and will live and learn in.

I fully realize that this all continues to sound unimaginably large and impossible.  And yet as the examples of financial models I’ve highlighted above show, we are surrounded daily by more and more examples of how the impossible isn’t.  The oxymoron of typical Snowflake Effect models that are infinitely scalable AND sustainable turns out to be true!  Or as Kevin Kelly put it; “Micro-loans are the world's only perpetual motion machines.” 

Add enough snowflakes together with these kinds of models and you have a perpetuating avalanche of invention, discovery, creativity, production and happiness.

The Snowflake Effect & the Third Industrial Revolution

NOTE: The following is an excerpt from the small contribution I was proud to have made to the “Learning Perspectives 2010” collection put out by The Masie Center in memory and commemoration of Jonathan Kays.  (see previous posting for details).  This topic and my perspectives on us entering a third Industrial Revolution is one I have been having a great deal of fun presenting and discussing for quite some time now and it seems to be generating some of the most excitement and resonating more profoundly with more people as I’ve done so recently.  My intent with this posting is to provide you with a quick synopsis (consider the source!) of my perspectives on the Snowflake Effect and the resulting Third Industrial Revolution, and then follow with more details and directions I believe this is taking us.  The potential of these changes continue to be a source of great excitement and inspiration for me and I hope it has a similar effect and value for you.

Enjoy and please add your comments or create your own postings with your reactions!

- Wayne

The Snowflake Effect & the Third Industrial Revolution

The overarching theme that will shape the future of not only learning but most all of our societies, organizations and communities is the escalating transformation of our society from one that is shaped by mass production to one that is shaped by mass personalization. For several years now I have synthesized a large number of major trends and patterns into this massive global and societal shift - which I refer to as the Snowflake Effect - that is driving a complete reset of the world as we know it.

Within this context of transformation to mass personalization, a new revolution is coming into focus: a third Industrial Revolution. As with the previous two Industrial Revolutions, this third version is both sculpting and itself being shaped by an emerging society resulting from the mass exodus from a world governed for over a century by mass production to one made up of societies, communities and organizations characterized by pro-active individual members. These people take on increasingly direct roles in the design, creation and use of the new forms of learning. They feed a constant stream of real time data about their reactions, thoughts and ideas, which provide feedback loops for evolutionary self-improvement cycles.

The Snowflake Effect

The Snowflake Effect started with the simple observation that we are all unique individuals: no two are alike, just like snowflakes. What’s more, so too is each moment in time, each situation we are in and each group of people we are with unique. They are distinctive combinations, just like the crystals of a snowflake. This is certainly not a new observation or condition and has arguably been true for as long as we have existed; yet, this poses the intriguing question:

If our uniqueness as individuals is so obvious and has been so true for so long, then why do we live in a world designed on the assumption that we are all the same?

This question has haunted me for many years now, like the small irritant of a grain of sand that causes a pearl to form in an oyster. In this case, my articulation of the Snowflake Effect is the resultant pearl.

One of the results of technology improvements over the past 50 years is that our world is getting smaller as distance and physical separation become lesser issues. We are more connected with more people in more ways than ever before. While we need to continue to work on distributing access to these advances to all of the world’s populations, it is increasingly true that we can communicate, socialize and work with anyone anywhere. We can access food and other products no matter where they come from or what season it is. We live in a world of increasing abundance and the rate of change is exponential. It has hit a tipping point, triggering immense and often seemingly impossible transformation all around us.

From Mass Production to Mass Personalization

In many ways, we can trace this focus on sameness back to the first two Industrial Revolutions and our transformation from an agrarian to an industrial society. Initially, mass production only applied to manufacturing, but over the course of a century or more, mass production has expanded and extended to the point where it now permeates and, in many ways, defines the world in which we live. Our thinking and assumptions are largely based on the principles of mass production. Consider for example how we design almost everything. We typically start with a problem or a need that is shared by a large group of people. Given the usual time, energy and cost that creating something new requires, the larger the group, the better. Once we have the design for a product, it is mass produced. If the design is for a service, we put together a process and supporting resources so that same service can be delivered to as many people as possible. This is how most governments, businesses and schools work. Consider how most education models work: with standard objectives, text books, curriculum and schedules. It’s no coincidence that our education models were largely created at the beginning of the first industrial revolution to meet the demands of a new factory work force.

Prior to the first Industrial Revolution, only a privileged few were able to get just what they wanted, whenever they wanted it. With the advent of mass production, it became possible for many people to buy a car, a home and become educated; however, this highly scaled model was made possible by mass producing and delivering the same solution for everyone.

Mass production worked very well and we have spent over 100 years improving and refining it to become a very efficient model. In many ways, we have mass production to thank for the transformation of our world into one of abundance for more and more people. But, in spite of - or perhaps because of - this abundance, the predominance of a mass production mentality is no longer sufficiently meeting our needs. It is at odds with our uniqueness when we only have mass produced choices which must be, by definition, compromises for the solutions we really want. This gap is now being closed as we shift from mass production to mass personalization.

The Snowflake Effect is largely about context-based design and the notion of personalized fit. It is about getting things just right. Products and services have the greatest value when just the right people have just the right things at just the right time in just the right way in just the right place. Just as the answer to most questions usually begins with “it depends”, so too does all design need to be dependent upon our unique personal contexts: the unique sets of conditions and characteristics of any situations that determine how well a solution of any kind fits each of us as unique snowflakes.

In the past, we have accepted any mismatch as perfectly reasonable and the best we can expect within typical constraints like budgets, time, community, family, etc. After all, to think otherwise, to imagine a future where most things are just right for you would mean that we’d need to have a different solution for every person, every day - in fact, most likely many times every day! At the time I am writing this, almost seven BILLION people inhabit the planet, and there are 24 hours in a day. That equates to at least 168 billion unique solutions per day and at least 61.32 trillion unique solutions per year! We all know that is impossible.

Or is it? Such outrageous and exponential scaling certainly will be impossible if we continue to rely on our existing mass production mentality and models, but we are increasingly surrounded by more and more examples and evidence of new models where extreme mass customization is not only possible, but already happening on a previously impossible scale. There exists proof that, both as unique individuals and as groups, we can have just what we need, when, where and how we need it. We are increasingly surrounded by examples of what Kevin Kelly succinctly called “impossible in theory, but possible in practice”. Look at some examples in our everyday life: we are increasingly able to get just the right fit for the music we listen to, the news and information we consume, the clothes we wear, the products we buy and the way we can often find just the right information when we need it. This doesn’t happen often enough, but it is occurring more frequently. Check out the developments in areas like personalized manufacturing with 3D printers and 3D scanners, real time information, recommender systems and others you have probably recently experienced. While it is still very early in this transition and we are still surrounded by more mass production than mass customization, the new models and our new behaviors are evolving with accelerating velocity.

Two key enablers of the Snowflake Effect are mashups and modularity. Mashups, a relatively new term but not a new idea, are a unique assembly of pre-existing items to form a new integrated whole. Modularity refers to having things in very small and interchangeable modules. This can be compared to simple Lego^TM blocks, which can be used to create almost anything imaginable by snapping together new combinations of these pre-made plastic blocks. Think about, for example, how you find and listen to music today: you find individual songs rather than whole albums and you put together your own unique playlists based on personal recommendation systems (that are built upon your unique preferences and recommendations from others). This stands in stark contrast to the previous “mass production” models of buying albums and listening to top 40 radio stations. Similar transitions toward mass customization are happening with what we read, what we watch, who we converse with and how we organize ourselves. Mashups and modularity enable the infinite scalability required by the Snowflake Effect for every person, every day.

Note that mass customization and getting things just right does not eliminate and, in fact, includes some products and services that will still be mass produced and remain the same. There will still be “hits” and fads. We will still have some songs, movies, books, presentations and keynotes that millions, even billions, of us are universally drawn to and find valuable; however, these will no longer be the most common or the most used resources. Instead, we will have a very full spectrum of the “Long Tail”, a concept from retail that describes a strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities, usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities: http://www.longtail.com/. These range from huge hits on one end to completely unique, extremely personalized items on the other end. The big change will be an inversion of where the greatest volume of solutions, products and services are found along the curve of the Long Tail, with the vast majority of what we each choose to use coming more and more from the unique end of the tail. The total volume of low popularity items already dramatically exceeds the volume of high popularity items in areas like books, music and video. This trend will dramatically increase; we will continuously find individual items and mash them together in the marvelously messy mix of choices we make.

The 3^rd Wave: Industrial Revolution 3.0 = Learning Revolution 3.0?

The third Industrial Revolution is driving this change. I make this observation in part based on a book published in 1980 by Alvin Toffler called The Third Wave. I have long believed that Toffler was an extremely prescient author, seeing the changes looming ahead. I also believe that even he underestimated the time it would take for these changes to visibly emerge along with the effects they would produce. I’ve most often referred to Toffler’s earlier book Future Shock, published in 1970, where he created the portmanteau word “prosummer” by combining producer with the word consumer. Toffler coined this term to describe the future society he saw where we would not be neatly dived into categories of active producers and passive consumers; instead, these would blur and merge as we all became inextricably and intimately intertwined with the processes of creating. While this has taken much longer than Toffler anticipated, everyone reading this article is a living example of a prosumer. We are all becoming much more active and passionate participants in designing and building our respective futures. I can’t imagine a more positive pattern that bodes well for all of our futures to be bold and bright.

It is Toffler’s book Third Wave, however, which contains the most significant and relevant observation affecting the future of learning and our world. Toffler did not directly refer to a third Industrial Revolution and simply referred to a Third Wave, however he did outline just such a revolution. The Wikipedia entry defines the three waves as:

· Toffler’s First Wave as the settled agricultural society which prevailed in much of the world after the Neolithic Revolution which replaced hunter-gatherer cultures.

· The Second Wave was the Industrial Age society, which began in Western Europe with the Industrial Revolution and subsequently spread across the world. Key aspects of Second Wave society are the nuclear family, a factory-type education system and the corporation.

Toffler wrote:

“The Second Wave society is industrial and based on mass production, mass distribution, mass consumption, mass education, mass media, mass recreation, mass entertainment, and weapons of mass destruction. You combine these things with standardization, centralization, concentration and synchronization and you wind up with a style of organization we call bureaucracy.”

· The Third Wave is the post-industrial society. Toffler says that since the late 1950s most countries have been in transition from a Second Wave society into a Third Wave society.

Thirty years later, this Third Wave is in fact a Third Industrial Revolution. It started back in the 1950s and has been slowly but exponentially increasing. We are now at its tipping point and seeing the more startling and dramatic changes being produced. Contemporary examples include such things as 3D scanning and 3D “printing”, which enable us to copy, modify and print any physical object, including those that are complete working assemblies, like motors, pumps, watches and anything else that strikes our fancy.

More recently (April 2010) urban theorist Richard Florida has put forward many similar views of a third revolution in his book “The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Posterity”. Florida provides some good historical background on the previous two Industrial Revolutions and an analysis of how current world economic situations are contributing to the third one. Florida does a good job of debunking many common myths and The Great Reset details his observations on the changing social characteristics and geographical concentration of creative knowledge workers in mega-regions around the world and the need for a very different and highly mobile work force. Overall Florida adds to those pointing to the need for an equally great reset of our education and training systems and the way we learn in general.

The third Industrial Revolution will require an equal or greater revolution in education, training and learning to fulfill and drive the new forms of creation and our new societies. What does this really mean in terms of learning and performance? One good outline of some skills and competencies required by this Third Industrial Revolution can be found in Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind[1]. Dan describes the shift from skills and competencies required by the former Industrial Revolution - which are mostly associated with the left side of the brain (i.e. analysis, sequential reasoning and text) - to a focus on right brain skills and competencies (i.e. synthesis, holistic reasoning, context, images, design and pattern recognition).

The question for learning professionals and organizations - the question the rest of Learning Perspectives 2010 explores - is what will YOUR role be in this process? Will you lead or follow? Will you shape or be shaped? Will you be part of the solution or part of the problem?

---

§ [1] See also Elliott Masie’s Interview of Daniel Pink at http://www.learning2007.com/university/2005/8/10/dan-pink-interview-a-whole-mind-audio-podcast-text-transcript-new.html

REFLECTIONS on TIME and EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING DENSITY (ELD)

* NOTE:  I’ve just discovered that due to technical difficulties and user error this article I wrote back in August did not get posted here on OCOT as I had thought.  It did make it to my Learnativity blog and provoked the most comments and Emails of any posting this year I think and remains a topic of great interest to me and one I will be writing much more about in the coming months.  Hope you enjoy it and look forward to your reactions and comments.

 

I am very excited to be finally writing this article for you because I think I’ve stumbled upon a very simple two part model which I believe can dramatically increase the effectiveness of our learning and help us all get the very most out of each of life’s experiences. Ambitious? Yes! True? You tell me.

For lack of a better title I’ll refer to this “Experiential Learning Density” or ELD and I’d like to share my thinking with you here, both in order to provoke your reactions and see if you too think there might be something very powerful about what we can learn from this. As simple as this model is, I must warn you in advance that is will take me a while to explain how I have come to discover this ELD model and my initial understanding of how it all works. I do believe it will be well worth your time, and in fact the concept of time is where I will start.

 

The Fascinating Concept of Time

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the whole concept of time and it continues to intrigue me more every day. Can time stop? Why does time past seem shorter than time forward? Is time travel possible? You get the idea. From my limited understanding of time from a scientific and mathematic perspective, it seems that time is one of the only absolute constants we know of. Even though we all know that an hour is an hour a year is year, have you also noticed how our perception of time is asymmetric as we consider an amount of time in the future compared to the same amount of time in the past? For example doesn’t it seem that when you find out a song or a movie or a book you really like was originally released ten years ago that your reaction is “No, really? I thought it was just three years ago.” And yet when you think of what it will be like ten years in the future, the year 2020 as I write this, doesn’t that seem like such a longer amount of time compared to those same ten years of the past?
All this to say that the second part of the background for you is a very recent understanding I’ve come to about time and this notion of “experiential learning density” or ELD for short.

Mission Impossible: This Much ELD in Two Years

March of this year (2010) marked the beginning of my third year out, as I put it, “wandering, wondering and pondering the planet one nautical smile at a time” as I explore this incredible planet from the perspective of the world’s oceans aboard my sailboat, the good ship Learnativity. At that time I was onboard Learnativity in Whangarei New Zealand waiting for the end of the hurricane season up in the South Pacific and busy getting her all ship shape for the new season. Today, August 7, 2010 I’m writing typing this up for you from the cockpit of Learnativity in the middle of my three day passage from Futuna Island to Savusavu in Fiji.

One of the great things about living on a sailboat is that you have lots of time for reflection as you look after the seemingly endless list of things to do and also while out sailing on the long passages. And as I reflected on this milestone I could not believe that it had only been two years since I sailed out from under the Golden Gate Bridge to embark upon this grand adventure. I mean I literally could NOT believe it. I must have checked my calendars and other records at least a hundred times in the course of that month because I was sure I had to have the dates wrong. As I started to recall even a short list of some of how many incredible experiences I had and how much I learned in that time; the places I had been, the incredible people and cultures I had been privileged to be a small part of, new languages and skills I’d learned and the friends and family who had joined me for parts of it, I became more and more convinced that it was simply not possible that all this had happened in the span of only two years. Even more so when I added up all the times when I had either been in just one spot for several months such as El Salvador, Costa Rica, Polynesia and now over six months in New Zealand, or the number of occasions when I’d left the boat for weeks or more to fly out and look after some business engagements or family affairs such as my daughter’s wedding last August. Surely it had been five or ten years?!

I couldn’t stop picking this apart and it quite consumed my thinking as I tried to comprehend how it could possibly be that my “experiential learning density” or ELD could possibly be SO high in such a short time. But in the past few months as I’ve continued to work on this conundrum I think I am coming to understand how this works and I wanted to share this with you in case it is as I believe it is, something you can use and how I believe there are some common practices we can use to increase our ELD for greater good and gain both individually and collectively.

Part One: Living in the Moment

The first of the two parts of this ELD model involves what I’ve been learning during my grand sailing life adventures is how to truly “live in the moment” and by so doing, get the very most amount possible from any given experience in life. This is something I practice as much and as often as I can and try to get better and better at doing so every day. For me, living in the moment is about being profoundly “present” in each moment of an experience. One lesson I’ve learned from this which might help you understand my context is that if you are busy capturing the moment you are not IN the moment. By capturing I mean by taking photos or video, or by writing notes or texting about it or telling somebody about it on the phone.

I recall learning about this a long time ago back in my university student days, when a good friend of mine who was a very skilled amateur photographer and was constantly being asked to take photos of our other friends who were getting married in those years. One day he suddenly announced that he was no longer available to be the wedding photographer. When I asked him why, he said something that has stuck with me ever since when he explained that he was tired of missing out on all his friends’ weddings , because if he was busy photographing the wedding, then he wasn’t attending and sharing in the wedding!. Brilliant observation and decision I thought.

Most recently, in fact while I was on my boat in New Zealand, I had a very related experience while I was sitting up in the cockpit enjoying the early morning sunrise and some breakfast. It was spring time “down under” and a mother duck and her new brood of ducklings came swimming by and stopped a few feet away from me at one of the mooring poles I was tied to. These poles have rubber tires slipped over them where you tie your lines to so that they and your boat float up and down with the tide and maintain the right amount of slack. My first thought was to jump up and get my camera to capture this great early morning spring scene, but I realized that by the time I got my camera they might be gone and here is what I would have missed. There were six ducklings and four of them managed to flap and scramble their way up on top of the floating tire, one just swam around it and the other stayed by Mom’s side. Of the three on top of the tire, one jumped into the water in the space between the tire and the pole, one stayed on the edge contemplating joining him and the other jumped back off the tire and joined his other sibling. Wow! What a microcosm of life in under two minutes!

As I watched this all unfold in a matter of two minutes or less I realized what a simple yet powerful example this was of “living in the moment” and how I had been able to do so by resisting the temptation to try to capture it and not be “present” for the experience itself. When I wrote this story up in my blog entry that day I simply found a public stock photograph of a mother duck and six ducklings and used it to illustrate the story.

Part Two: Reflect, Capture, Learn, Share

However, lest you misunderstand, let me be very clear that reflecting upon and capturing our experiences is a critical component and the second part of the two part ELD model.

Here is how I think this all works; ELD or just learning perhaps is a constant cycling between time spent living in the moment, followed by time spent on reflection, capturing, learning and sharing.(I see these as all parts of one thing) Rinse and repeat.

Repeat the Cycle, Improve, but DO NOT BLEND TOGETHER!

While important that we get better and better at the skills required for each of these two parts the most critical thing I’ve come to understand and the main point I hope to convey with this article, is that we NOT mix the two together and try to do them at the same time. What I think accounts for my high degree of ELD in the past two years is that I’ve been putting a lot of focus on improving my skills at both parts; living in the moment and reflecting upon, capturing, learning from and sharing them afterwards.  But the most important change I’ve made, somewhat unknowingly to be sure, is that I have been careful to NOT try to do both parts at the same time (experiencing and reflecting/capturing/sharing)

How ELD Works for Me (and can for you too)

For the first part, living in the moment, I am afforded the great luxury of having a seemingly infinite plethora of profound personal experiences as I sail through this life and what I’ve been working on is getting better at being truly present and living IN each of these moments. It isn’t as easy as it sounds.  It takes a lot of energy and can be exhausting, though in a very good way. Living in the moment isn’t something I think most of us are good at on a regular basis. Too many distractions, too many things to fit in, too much temptation to “multi task”, which IMHO is one of the greatest myths and misguided goals of all time.  It is my observation that by trying to pack more into the finite amount of time we have, we are actually accomplishing less, experiencing, less, contributing less and living less.

Like most of you I suspect I am putting more time and energy into reflecting, capturing learning and sharing from my experiences. Consider for example the exponential explosion of the number of photos and video so many of us are taking and uploading, the amount of writing we are doing in the form of Emails, blogging, texting, Tweeting and podcasting. And the degree to which we are sharing all this so broadly and freely via so many means and social networks. While you can argue that much of what is being shared is trivial or otherwise less than valuable, it is all in the eye of the beholder right? We do it partly for ourselves, but we also seem to enjoy and learn from what others are sharing which prompts and provokes more reactions and new actions ourselves and to build upon the work of others which creates an exponentially compounding cycle.

As simple as these acts of capturing our thoughts and our experiences may be, it tends to require us to be more reflective, to consider what is worth sharing, and to ask what did I learn today? And to then capture this in some form that can be communicated with others who are doing likewise themselves. What is key, and what I think we have NOT been doing, is separating these two critical skills and acts. As per my comment in the beginning of this article, if you are busy capturing, reflecting and sharing a moment you are not living IN the moment.

Maybe this is all as old as time itself for all of you and I’m just my usual slow learning self.  But for me, this is how I’ve come to understand why I have been having such an extraordinarily high degree of experiential learning density in my life of late, and how I plan to continue to ride that exponential curve upwards.

I’ll let this conclude my time for reflecting and capturing this for today and I look forward to receiving your thoughts, reactions, comments and critique on all this. Meanwhile as this text is busy uploading itself via my sat phone connection so I can share it with you; I’ll now flip back to the first part of the cycle by and put my energies into living in the moment that is a gorgeous sunset out here in Nanuku Passage in eastern Fiji!

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog
Aboard s/v Learnativity
16 45.089 S, 179 27.781W (paste into Google Earth or maps)
Nanuku Pass, south end of Taveuni Island, Fiji

Email: [email protected]
Email @ sea: [email protected]
FaceBook page for updates @ www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog @ www.learnativity.typepad.com
OCOT blog @ http://waynehodgins.typepad.com
Skype: whodgins
Twitter: WWWayne
Send (short 140 character Text msgs via Email to: [email protected]

Is Fit “It” When it comes to Great Learning!?

In what has become almost a mantra for me, one of the ways I often synthesize my focus on the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is getting to “just right”; just the right things for just the right person at just the right time in just the right way on just the right medium, in just the right context…………… well, you get the idea. For the past few years what I’ve been finding is that this can all be taken down to a single word and concept; fit.

When you think about it, a good fit is essentially defined as getting it just right, just for you, just at that moment. This could be for something simple like a favorite shirt, or sweater or pair of shoes. You know the ones we tend to choose over all others whenever we can because when we wear them, and often wear them out, they fit us just right and make us feel just right. Often they are not in the best condition, the “fashionable” choice at the time or other factors more commonly used to make such choices. Yet, because our favorites fit so well and make us feel so good we choose them whenever possible. Great fit is also a lot like that comment about great art; I don’t know how to describe it but I know it when I see it. Great fit is extremely elusive and deeply personal It has been no surprise to me then to also observe that this context and concept of fit works very well for many other and perhaps more profound examples such as one’s life style, personal relationships and learning.

Fit for Me

As some of you may know for the past few years I’ve been conducting a personal experiment by setting off on a grand adventure to see the world from the perspective of the world’s oceans by living aboard my sailboat Learnativity.  So I’m typing this up sitting in the shade of my cockpit right now as I’m anchored off the small island of Malo near Neiafu in the Vava’u Group of islands in the Kingdom of Tonga and you can paste the lat/long of 18 39 56.2 S, 173 58 56.2 W into Google Earth or maps to see where that is and if you’re interested you can learn all about that on my Learnativity blog. 

However the reason I mention this is one of my examples of the use of fit.  What has been the biggest surprise to me of my adventures so far is how well this strange new life style and experiences fits me. I don’t come from any ancestral background of mariners, didn’t grow up around boats or the sea, and didn’t have any lifelong dream of sailing nor previous sailing experience. It is all very new and foreign to me. Yet it fits me to a T for some reason; the independence and freedom on one hand, the complete self reliance and dependence on myself I have for everything from navigation to power to water to food and everything in between.  I was guided to it by using serendipity as my guide, listening to my heart and my gut more than my head, and by paying attention to how well things fit as the way to know which way to go, what was working and what wasn’t, what to say yes to and when to say no.

Fit as a way to Better and Greater Learning?

In the case of learning, it seems clear to me that a great fit is necessary for great learning to take place. We learn the best and the most when it is just right for us, just at that time, just in that context. Great learning then seems to also condense down to getting the best fit. What fits you best at any one time won’t likely fit me best. What fits you best today won’t likely fit you best tomorrow because some of the conditions and context have changed. Perhaps this will help you understand why I am so focused, some would say obsessed, for the past many years with the critical need to transform most learning methods from those based on mass production and sameness to ones of mass personalization and uniqueness; the Snowflake Effect.

Think back to some of your most recent moments when you experienced truly great learning of some kind, often very serendipitously in that it wasn’t planned or expected. What made that learning so great for you? What was different about that moment and the many others when it didn’t work? In the literally thousands of times I’ve posed this question to individuals I’m speaking with they initially struggle to explain it yet almost always end up describing how it was just the right choice of words or pictures or experience at just the right time, when they were in just the right frame of mind, etc. In other words, when the learning was just the right fit.

Therefore I’d like to encourage all of us to consider using “fit” in this context and as a way to determine what characterizes great learning. What are the parameters we can use to determine fit when it comes to learning? Perhaps we are best to use things like outcomes and results to measure the learning itself, but these are all after the learning takes place. For me at least, the bigger question is how do we increase not only the frequency of truly great learning experiences for every person on the planet? And for that, the use of fit is extremely helpful.

Exponentially Increasing the Frequency of Great Learning Experiences

One of the more troubling trends I’ve long noticed is that when the conversation of great learning moments comes up, it is a very revealing and rewarding conversation until you ask when you last had a great learning moment or how many have you had in your life. The answers are troubling to me because they are usually many years ago and a number that leaves many fingers unused. Therefore, one of the questions (I have several) that figuratively keep me awake at night and gets me out of bed every morning is how do we change this? How do we increase the frequency of great learning experiences? And incremental increases, while welcome just won’t do it for me because I think it is possible, and I might argue necessary, to exponentially increase the frequency of great learning; from a few experiences in a lifetime to many of them every day, for every person!

How is this even imaginable you ask? The topic of many more conversations to come to be sure, but in short my awareness and attention to finding and determining the best fit has helped me increase the frequency of my great learning experiences. I wanted to share this with you so you can try this concept of “fit” on for size yourself, and see if paying attention to fit and what makes for a good fit, helps you experience more great learning moments? What does fit mean to you in this context? What are its key characteristics? And the list goes on.

Can’t wait to hear back from you in your comments, your writings and our future conversations.

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog
Aboard s/v Learnativity
18 39 56.2 S, 173 58 56.2 W
Neiafu, Vava'u, Kingdom of Tonga

Email:    [email protected]
Email @ sea:  [email protected]
FaceBook page for updates @ www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog @    www.learnativity.typepad.com
OCOT blog @ http://waynehodgins.typepad.com
Skype:    whodgins
Twitter:  WWWayne
Text/SMS:  Send (short 140 character) Text msgs via Email to:  [email protected]

Most Likely to Succeed? Is it possible to predict & hire great teachers?

Most Likely to Succeed

How do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job?

by Malcolm Gladwell December 15, 2008

I really enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's writing and more so his curiosity and how he "thinks different".  I try to read as many of his columns as I can as they find a sweet spot for me of being long enough to explore a topic in some depth and let him tell a good story, yet be short enough that I can read them in one sitting along with the many other articles and posts I'm reading each day.

This New Yorker article focuses on the very tricky art of hiring practices, especially for teachers and exposes a lot of common myths about hiring and spotting of true talent for a given job or task.

You'll need to make it through his initial telling of the challenge in American football he refers to as "the quarterback problem" before you will get to his comparison and coverage of the importance and challenge of how to choose good to great teachers.  However it is well worth your time and I highly recommend reading the full article and see what you think and take away.

 Effective teachers have a gift for noticing—
 what one researcher calls “withitness.”

via www.newyorker.com             Read more

At the risk of spoiling the story for you, Malcolm makes that point that effective hiring practice for complex and critical roles such as teachers takes years and requires observation of the results achieved over this time.  This would suggest an apprenticeship type model and a radical shift from the way we currently recruit, reward and retain great teachers.  To be effective we need to treat each teacher as a unique individual and hire at this same level of uniqueness; one at a time.

Many would therefore probably place this into the "impossible" category but as you can likely guess I'll add it to my "What if the impossible isn't?" list.  And indeed Malcolm goes on to describe at least one example, financial planners, where this is both possible and being practiced.  For me this is yet another example of why we need to treat each situation, each job and each person as a unique individual.  Hence I see this, no doubt through my frosted glasses, as another excellent example of why The Snowflake Effect is so important and how it is affecting almost everything in our world.

Here are some of Malcolm's points which really got my attention:

"with enough data, it is possible to identify who the very good teachers are and who the very poor teachers are. What’s more—and this is the finding that has galvanized the educational world—the difference between good teachers and poor teachers turns out to be vast."

"Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects.""After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like.""Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans."

"The equivalent of that approach, in the N.F.L., would be for a team to give up trying to figure out who the “best” college quarterback is, and, instead, try out three or four “good” candidates.
 In teaching, the implications are even more profound. They suggest that we shouldn’t be raising standards. We should be lowering them, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before. That means that the profession needs to start the equivalent of Ed Deutschlander’s training camp. It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated."

"What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?"

I hope you will take the time to not only ready this article but to reflect upon it and contribute your reactions and ideas.  Is it possible to hire and retain great teachers?  Is it possible to raise the quality of teaching staff overall?  Would this "apprenticeship" type of model work for the teaching profession?

I think my favorite quote from Malcolm's article is:

"A prediction, in a field where prediction is not possible, is no more than a prejudice."

10 Levels of Intimacy in Today's Communication - Ji Lee

I'm a visual person so the great graphic below from Ji Lee really appeals to me, but however you choose to process it I thought this was worthy of some time to reflect upon.  

While there is certainly a difference in the levels of intimacy between many of these forms of communication, in my experience the intimacy can vary greatly within any one of them.  So I'm not sure I see these as levels of intimacy so much as a reasonably comprehensive list of the choices we currently have for communicating with each other, mostly one to one in these examples.  

When you consider how recent many of these ways are you can see why I expect the growth of our communication choices will continue to be exponential.  So one of the critical competencies we need to develop and improve is our ability to match the communication "medium" with the context of any given need and situation.  When is a Tweet the best choice, or an Email or a hand written letter or a phone call or when do you need to go talk to someone in person?

via pleaseenjoy.com

Infinitely Scalable Teaching = Limitless Learning

In order for the Snowflake Effect of mass customization and personalization to succeed when applied to learning, teaching and teachers will need need to scale exponentially.  Imagined within our historical and current definitions and assumptions this would be deemed impossible.  However I’ve had some recent experiences that have convinced me that both teaching and teachers can indeed scale exponentially and I am finding more and more examples of this all around.  Here are some examples of both as I continue on my quest of the question of “What if the impossible isn’t?”

Last year while my sailboat was safely moored in El Salvador, I went ashore for a month to increase my Spanish language skills from a level of zero to a larger positive number and to learn more of the cultures and geography of the surrounding countries. I went to three places—Antigua, tiny San Marcos La Laguna on gorgeous Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, and Suchitoto in El Salvador—and in each location, I enrolled in a “language school” where I spent five to six hours a day Monday to Friday for four weeks, engaged in a on-on-one conversation with a Spanish language teacher. I learned A LOT!  Not only a lot of Spanish, but also a lot about each area, country, culture, the people, and especially about learning. 

Language Learning Dating Services?

I’ve often explained that I think it would be better to call these language schools “language dating services” because what they do is find a good match between two people—not for romantic purposes, but for learning as a teacher and a student. It is VERY effective! Similar to dating services, it is up to each pair to decide how they will structure the teaching/learning relationship so that it is just right for both people in terms of pace, level, goals, focus, etc. In my case, I was most interested in being conversant in Spanish so that in everyday situations I could understand others and express myself aurally. I also wanted to have some ability to read and write Spanish. As a result, I did the same thing with each of my three very different teachers, we had an extended conversation for 5-6 hours each day. 

These were true conversations. They were unplanned and spontaneous with all the serendipity of any great conversation where the conversation wonderfully wanders along unexpected paths as you discover different areas of mutual interest. In my case, this included such things as conversations about the mutual interest in music, particularly what makes for “good music”, understanding the roles of technology in the day and life of average citizens in the different cities, and sharing our mutual love for great food and wine.

Note: I’m using the learning of a new language as the subject here but this same approach works well for just about any application I can think of. 

One of the biggest and best things I came away with was a new sense of how personalized learning AND teaching can scale exponentially and  how my notion of a future society of “Tearners” (Teacher + Learner = Tearner)—where each and every one of us are both teachers and learners—is both possible and already happening. If you’d like to read more about my experiences and thoughts on this form of language learning, please read these postings on my Learnativity blog:

• Learning Spanish, culture, geography and SO much more!
• Adios Antigua; Hola San Marcos le Laguna!

Do It Yourself (DIY) Learning via “Tearners”

One of the essential elements for enabling this kind of limitless learning and teaching is to enable and empower an “expert”—anyone who is significantly better than you are in some domain of interest—to be an effective teacher, often without even knowing they are doing so. Rethinking expertise in this way enables us to tap into the skills and knowledge that others have, which in most cases they are not even aware of. 

In the case of language learning for example, anyone who is a native speaker of a language you want to learn, including and perhaps especially children, can teach you what they don’t even know they know. The trick is in finding interesting, fun, and effective ways to do so. And as you’ll see in the following examples, and as was the case with one of my teachers, they don’t even need to know how to speak your language!

In my search for resources to assist with this type of limitless learning, I have found several good ones, including the book “Language Acquisition Made Practical” by Thomas and Elizabeth Brewster. Kevin Kelly featured this book in one of his “Cool Tools”  postings and you can read this concise review for an overview of the book and its methods. I particularly like Kevin’s typically insightful observation:

“Like realizing that you don't need a degree in anything to build your own house, learning that you can become fluent in another language without a course or classroom is deliciously radical.”

The following is an excerpt from this book and it will give you a better idea of how this works in language learning:

Production of Modifiers

Kino says a sentence with modifiers. You repeat the basic sentence without modifiers.

Kino: "The blue jug with the pretty flowers is on the high wooden shelf."
You: "The jug is on the shelf."

Then reverse roles -- he says a simple sentence and you embellish it.

Kino: "This is a book."
You: "This is a good book about the people of this country."
Kino: "This is a candle."
You: "This is a red candle."

Look around you. You can talk about virtually any object, then restate it with modifiers.

Word/Thing Association Game

By using these sentence patterns you can get extra drill on new vocabulary while talking with people. You can touch an object and ask "What is this?" They may answer, "This is Kefala." You can then touch a similar object and ask "Is this Kefala?" and they will answer positively or negatively.
If you are talking with children, this can become quite a game and give you lots of practice with new words. Children will often catch on, and participate with you in the game. First, you can ask the questions while they answer. Then you can trade roles and let them ask the questions while you try to answer. If you enter into the spirit of the game, everybody can have fun while you practice vocabulary.

 

As is often the case, this type of learning is not a new idea or method and as the authors point out this method was used by missionaries trying to learn other languages without the aid of any formal resources, such as books, curricula, classrooms, or teachers. I’m sure you can see how this method enables a form of limitless learning and why I’m so excited about  it. As you try it out and reflect upon it, I think you will also soon be able to apply most of the same techniques to many other subjects. I’ve used it for example to learn how to do wood carving and how to do whitewater kayaking.

Consider learning by doing and try using this both ways—as the learner the next time you need to learn something or as the teacher when you see a teachable moment to help someone benefit from your expertise.

I’d very much appreciate hearing back from you about your experience.

-- Wayne

School of What if the Impossible Isn't?

Singularity University

Ted Greenwald is Tweeting from SU (http://twitter.com/tedgreenwald) using the hashtag #singularityu. Photos courtesy of Singularity University.

via www.wired.com

See this article for a great set of things to add to my "What if the Impossible Isn't?" list. You may also enjoy, as I did, reading more about the recently started Singularity University and this blogging account by one recent attendee.

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.