Off Course-On Target

VMG

As most of you know, for the past two years I’ve been out conducting a grand experiment of learning, living, and working from my sailboat most of the time, as I explore and experience this phenomenal planet of ours from the vantage point of the sea. I am currently anchored at the small village of Rikitea on the Island of Mangareva, which is in the Iles Gambiers (cut and paste the lat/long pair 23 06.939S 134 58.098W into Google Earth if you’d like to see where this is).

One of my primary drivers for heading off on this new direction in life, was to turn myself into a truly fulltime learner and dive into the deep end of the ignorance pool.  I wanted to see if I could figure out how to swim and have fun doing it. It has been working extremely well too. Every single day is almost a nonstop set of learning experiences on just about every level you can imagine: personally, professionally, of other people and cultures, of geography, geology and archaeology, of all things mechanical, of the stars and solar system, of maps, of me and of the worlds above, below, and on top of the water.

I’m finding that there is an incredible amount of very deep lessons to be learned, as well as some extraordinarily helpful concepts and models that apply themselves to so much more than “just” sailing and a life aquatic.  One of these in particular, is a term unique to sailing called VMG which is the acronym for “velocity made good”.  This one has really struck me as an enormously helpful conceptual model and it has stayed with me throughout my adventure. Now I’d like to share it with you here, get your comments on it and offer it as a model that I believe you too would find very valuable, both professionally and personally.  Bear with me for just a bit while I quickly walk you through what VMG is all about in the context of sailing, and then I think you’ll quickly see how well this can be applied to most other things in life.

VMG or “velocity made good” is the measurement of the speed at which you are progressing toward your intended destination. VMG is vector-based in that it requires TWO values—speed and direction—in order to determine what the VMG value is.

Now, to get from point A to point B in a power boat, you’d simply follow the common principal that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points, and you’d steer the motorboat directly towards point B.  There would be no need for this special term of VMG because you’d simply measure your speed over the ground or through the water and that would be how quickly you were progressing toward your destination.

In a sailboat, however, you are dependent upon the wind for your motive power, and it is not always possible to follow the straight line to your destination. For example, if the wind is coming FROM the point B you are trying to get to, then you have a problem.  In fact, until relatively recently in the history of sailing, it was only possible to sail in about whatever direction the wind was blowing; that is, downwind. This is why, for example, all the historical sailing routes of the world went in similar directions and to similar destinations. You were essentially at the mercy of Mother Nature and you literally went whichever way the wind was blowing.

To this day, many people assume that a sailboat is “pushed” by the wind and therefore, can only go downwind.  But in fact, modern sailboats are not dependent upon being pushed, they can also and most often, be “pulled” by the same principle that enables airplanes to fly—lift. The sails are carefully shaped and angled such that they act as a wing and create lift, which combined with the similar lift being generated by the keel under the water, enables the sailboat to move forward. While it is not possible to sail directly into the wind, it is possible to sail within as little as 30 degrees off the wind, and therefore you can now move towards, although not directly at, your destination, even if the wind is coming straight from this point. The technique is known as “tacking” and if you were to observe it from above, the path of the boat would be a zigzag pattern, since the boat is steered first to one angle (say, off to the starboard or right side) and then back to the other angle (to the port or left side).  By maintaining this angle to the wind, the sails and keel generate lift and move the boat forward, and you are able to tack or zigzag your way to point B.

Because you are never advancing directly towards your destination, you’re always moving away from it to some extent; your actual speed on the water is of little importance. What you want to know is how much progress you are making towards point B and THAT is what VMG tells you. Unless you are moving in a straight line directly towards your destination, your VMG is always going to be less than your actual speed over the ground. But how much less?  In approximate terms, if you are traveling at an angle of 90 degrees to your destination, then your VMG would be zero; that is, you’d never get there. Greater than 90 degrees and your VMG would be negative. So angles less than 90 degrees have some amount of positive VMG; therefore, you’d be making positive or forward progress towards your destination.  How much would be a vector or combination of your actual speed and the angle. This is how VMG is calculated. 

Fortunately, on modern sailboats such as mine, there is a digital readout that tells me exactly what my VMG is at any moment and this reading is what you learn to pay the most attention to because it is the “bottom line” of how well you are sailing towards your next waypoint or destination.  Figuring out when I’m going to arrive at this next point then is not based on how fast the boat is moving through the water, but what the VMG speed is.  You therefore adjust your sails and angle of your heading not to get the maximum speed but to get the maximum VMG.

What I’ve been finding even more fascinating though, is that if you remove the context of sailing and treat VMG as a general conceptual model, it becomes extremely useful in many other situations. Destination can now be any form we like, such as a personal goal or an organizational objective. As in the case of  sailing, you are often faced with opposing forces that work against you and keep you from being able to move directly towards your point B. Some would simply “go with the flow” and let themselves be controlled and pushed by these forces, and therefore go in similar directions and to similar destinations that were all “downwind”.  But if you really want to get to the point B that you have set your sites on, then it is possible to develop strategies that allow you to head “upwind”, without taking the opposing forces on directly, but very cleverly using those same forces to provide the metaphorical equivalent of “lift” to you and your team, thus enabling you to make forward progress, and ultimately arrive at your destination. 

Does this sound familiar?  Do you recall times when you have purposefully decided to take an indirect path, meandering in different directions that move you closer but not directly towards your goal?  If done with purpose,  it can be extremely smart and enable you to go against the flow, to succeed in spite of opposing forces, and to get where YOU want to go. 

You can see how well this all fits into my long time focus and the namesake of this site—the strategy of being “off course” and yet very much “on target”.  Yet for me the real lesson of VMG is in the value of having an accurate measurement of what my VMG is.  This is where I think we can also gain the most advantage in using the concept of VMG in other applications. What we need is a VMG meter for all of our other pursuits in life!

In many ways, I think it can be relatively straight forward to create a VMG meter for any application. First, of course, we need to have a clear and accurate sense of where point B is. What is the end state we are trying to achieve?  What are the coordinates of point B?  Then we need to know our current location, where we are now.  And finally, we need to know what is our actual speed AND at what angle away from our determined destination are we moving?  Put all these together and you get a very simple, but profound, guiding metric of your true progress. 

Think how well this would let you make adjustments to your strategies and implementations, and how quickly you could find out what effect this has on your VMG. For example, moving faster often seems to be a good thing: “We must be doing well, look how fast we are going!”  But how often has it turned out that you were making LESS progress towards your goal, even though you were “going faster”?  When would it be smart to choose to go slower at a different angle to reach maximum VMG? 

As with many of my “off course, on target” stories, including the original Apollo mission example that got me started with this whole line of thinking, it is all about getting good at constant course correction, which requires that you know where you are headed and how far off course you are at any given point in time.

So give this VMG idea a try in YOUR context. How well have you quantified the specifics of your “point B” destination?  How would you measure the “angle” away from the direct line towards your point B? How do you measure the speed that you or your project are moving at? If you can measure these, then you can put them together and create your very own VMG gauge, which will let you make constant course corrections and successfully reach that elusive point B destination before everyone else.

Would you rather join the rest of the crowd, go wherever the prevailing winds blow you, and let the external forces determine your future?  Or would you like to chart your own course?  Do the impossible and sail upwind. Fashion your own version of a VMG gauge, and you can purposefully put yourself very much off course, but equally much on target!

Happy sailing!

w
a
yne
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Time to "Tearn"?

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

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

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

A Growing Demand for Teachers

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

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

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

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

Rethinking the Relationship Between Teachers and Learners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, What If We Were All “Teachers”?

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

· Capturing and sharing what we know.³

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

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

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

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

New Tools, Technologies, and Techniques for “Tearners”

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

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

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

___________________

NOTES:

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

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

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

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

Cool Translation Tools

As you may recall, I’ve been focusing on my fascination with language learning for the past few months, and I'm finding that many of you share similar interests. So I wanted to share some of the Cool Translation Tools I’ve been using to help with my language learning and usage.

The first two are relatively recent offerings from Microsoft, and they work with their Instant Messenger and Internet Explorer programs respectively. The last two are similar online translation tools offered by Microsoft and Google. Even if you choose not to use these tools, this summary will give you a better sense of what is now possible and readily available for mass use.

I remain convinced that the use of ever better tools and technologies to augment and support our personal efforts to learn and use multiple languages is one of the best ways I know to truly make a difference. This combination will serve to make us better as individuals and collectively make this world a better place.

Tbot

First up is a form (or robot) who goes by the name of Tbot, which is short for “Translation Robot”.  He (I figure he has to be a guy as he’s not really all that bright and still makes some mistakes) is the child/product of Microsoft Research. you can learn more about him and the technology he works on, known as machine translation, on the  Microsoft research machine translation blog.

There is no “install” per se, you just add “Tbot”  [email protected] to your contacts in Microsoft Instant Messenger and from then on Tbot is available on your “buddy list” so you can invite it to join in with any of your IM conversations. To explore and experiment with Tbot, you can type in “Tbot?” to get this list of commands he understands.  These will enable you to configure him as you like.

1  TBot lang - Show the current language pair
2  TBot change - Select translation languages
3  TBot stop - Stop translations
4  TBot start - Start translations again
5  TBot set - Set your preferred language
6  TBot ? - Show this list of commands

Tbot has a reasonably impressive range of languages available including:

1 Arabic
2 Chinese Simplified
3 Chinese Traditional
4 Dutch
5 English
6 French
7 German
8 Italian
9 Japanese
10 Korean
11 Portuguese
12 Spanish

Obviously many more languages are needed, but they've made a good start.

In addition to being able to add Tbot into your IM conversations with other “real people”, I have also found it handy to have conversations just with Tbot, in essence using him as a language “instructor”. I will sometimes do this just for practice or to help correct my wording and spelling when I’m typing  emails or other documents in another language. Here are two ways I do this:

1. I type out what I want to say in English, and then I type out my best way of saying the same thing in the other language (for me lately, it's been in Spanish or French). Then with Tbot set to a language pair of say, English > Spanish, I cut and paste my English sentences into my IM chat session with him, and then see what vocabulary and structure he uses. Sometimes I find his better, sometimes I choose to stick with mine, but either way, I learn a lot from the process and from checking into some of the new words, phrases, and grammatical structure he comes up with.
2. I try the same process in reverse by setting his language pair to Spanish > English and then cut and paste what I have typed in Spanish and see what he comes out with in English.

There are certainly some instances where the translations are quite comical, since Tbot suffers from the current limitations of machine translation; that is, doing mostly literal translation word by word, rather than determining much in the way of contextual understanding to choose the right phrasing and meaning.  However I’ve been playing with machine translation for many years and I'm seeing a marked improvement of late. 

I always let those who are receiving my emails and documents know that I’ve used these tools to help me compose and translate and ask for their reactions and corrections whenever they have the time. I've noticed that I get similar comments from them: that these tools are indeed getting better and are producing very readable text which communicates the meaning quite well. Of course, I’m also hopeful that some of the improvement is due to my improving language skills, but there is no question that I am able to do much better and much faster translations with this tool, rather than without, by extending and augmenting my vocabulary and grammar.

Windows Live Translator toolbar button for IE

When you have a situation where you need to translate web pages that are in another language, there is an extremely handy add-in for MS Internet Explorer available at Windows Live Translator toolbar button.  Once it is installed, clicking on this button vertically splits your IE screen in two, displaying the original page on one side and the translated version on the other. This split screen mode has proven to be particularly effective according to many of the people who have been using it.

Or you can choose from a number of options when you have this translator running, such as the option to NOT split the window and instead have a “hover” feature that translates whatever you hover over with the cursor. For those who are curious, Firefox offers some similar services and features, but I’ve not yet tried these myself, so if you have, please send me your comments and experiences.

Online Translation services

Online translation services, such as those offered by Google and Microsoft are very helpful when you are composing and translating text. 

· Microsoft Live Translator

· Google Translate

Both work the same way and have the same interface: two initially blank boxes set side by side. You type or paste your text into the box on the left, choose the language, hit the translate button, and the translated text shows up in the box on the right side. You can then copy and paste this text into your email, documents, etc.

In addition to being useful when you are the author, these online translation services are also very useful when you receive emails or documents from others. You can just cut and paste their text into the window and have it translated into whatever language you’d like. Again, to improve my learning, I make it a habit to first try to understand the text myself and then use these tools to see how well I understood the original, check for key words I might have missed, and other ways I can learn from the whole process.

Es su turno ahora!

Of the above options, I find that although I use all three,  I choose the one that seems to suit my needs at the time, depending on how much text I have to translate, how much time I have, if it is a conversation or a document, etc. I expect that your style of work and other personal preferences will certainly determine which of these to use. 

While I hope this encourages you to try out some or all of these translation tools, my greatest hope is that they will encourage you to try using and learning other languages more and interacting with others around you in their native languages. In my experience, this leads to a wonderful increase in the richness of my experiences with others, as well as improving my skills for articulating my thoughts and ideas in any language, including my native English. I pick up new phrases, new metaphors, and other extremely helpful ways of more clearly communicating my thoughts and ideas.

Bonne chance avec vos traductions!

Babelfish Requires Babbling Too

For those of you who were around then, remember the arguments for Esperanto back in the 1970's?  According to Wikipedia, "Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. "

Developed in 1887 by Polish physician Ludovic Zamenhof, Esperanto as stated in "The Decline and Fall of Esperanto: Lessons for Standards Committees"  was supposed to be  "a simple, easy-to-learn language. His goal was to erase communication barriers between ethnic groups by providing them with a politically neutral, culturally free standard language." The authors go on to say:

"... by the 1970s, Esperanto was receiving serious attention from linguistic scholars, with numerous publications appearing in academic journals.

[But] "Despite the logical concept and intellectual appeal of a standard language, Esperanto has not evolved into a dominant worldwide language."

While I agree that anything we can do to increase communication is a plus, this notion of inventing an artificial language, and then all of us acquiring a new one that we would have in common, makes no sense at all.  It has no history, no future, and no culture and these aspects of language are not only important for communication, but I believe for acquiring a language.

For many years I've proposed that technology would play a major role in our ability to communicate with one another.  And in fact, language translation capabilities are growing and getting better.  But while I would have formerly thought that we won’t need to know more than one language since given enough time, we'll have the Babelfish, an idea put forth by Douglas Adams in his book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my recent experience with learning a new language, specifically Spanish, has changed how I view this.

I realize now that my ability to communicate effectively is not limited to just saying the right words, it’s about semantics; communicating meaning.  A Babelfish would not address the cultural contexts that are so important to communication. Acquisition as humans of multiple language capabilities involves more than technology. Technology will indeed play a role, but it will not be sufficient in and of itself.

Given that a Babelfish won't solve all of our communication problems, what can we do to make it easier and more efficient and effective for all of us to acquire more languages? My most recent experience of one-to-one instruction in Spanish is a model we all should be looking at because my sense is that it is quite scalable, effective and has many indirect benefits.

The Power of Conversation

For one thing, this method of learning a language was quite effective and amazing. Three times I started with a new instructor in three different locations.  Not once was there any discussion over the methodology or how we were going to teach me Spanish. Most striking was my experience with the first instructor Axel, because I had no Spanish capability whatsoever (not counting commonly known phrases, such as gracias or buenos días).

From the beginning, Axel and I started talking in Spanish and never stopped during our five hour daily sessions together for two weeks.  We didn't have a conversation about this, but the unwritten rule was that we were not going to use any English beyond that which was absolutely necessary. I'm not quite sure how we managed to do this, but I know we used a lot of Pictionary and Charades techniques.  Our interaction worked really well when the other person understood it was a game of "guess what I'm drawing/acting out"

Early on, one of the most important phrases I learned was "como se dice" (How do you say), but what really made it effective was how I used it as a signal for starting the guessing game. Instead of tacking on the English word at the end, such as "como se dice binoculars", what worked well was for me to have to describe binoculars in whatever limited Spanish I had supplemented with drawings and diagrams.  There's something about having to work at it more and taking the time and effort to acquire the words. Plus I had to use what little vocabulary I already had to acquire more vocabulary. That's a really effective model.  More importantly and as things advanced,what I was asking for was not a word but a phrase, a saying or a sentence that would convey my meaning rather than a translation of my words.

One reason why I think this model can scale so well is that the only real requirement of the instructors is that they are fluent in the language being learned, Spanish in this case. I don’t think instructors need to know much of the other language...in this case, English.  Nor did I find any need for the instructor to have any significant instructional skills beyond patience because for our sessions, my instructors and I were literally “just” having a conversation. Since the whole model is immersion-based, we're not going to use English, then knowledge of my language was not required.  So I've concluded that any two people can use these techniques for language acquisition.

There are some limitations or concerns within this model. For example, what if the conversation occurs between two people who do not speak "proper" English or Spanish?  To share well, all of us will need to have more consistency in the way we speak a language. Jargon and slang are always a problem in an isolated group.  But the solution is simple.  You need to get out more.  The more you expand your circle of people, the better chance you have of learning a form of the language that is understandable by many.  This is not a new phenomena: as the audience grows, so too does the need for a common way to speak a language. Take broadcasting or something like national news for example. In Canada, national radio and TV broadcasters speak “proper English” or as my mother would say "the Queen's English" that is devoid of the local color, accents, and jargon of what you would hear on the streets of any one province or geographical region.

The Topic Doesn’t Matter at All; It is All that Matters!

For this model of language learning to be really effective though, I think the two people need to feel that there is a value in both of them doing so. In the case of the instructor, it's about getting paid.  But also, having something in common other than the language is a huge factor in effective language learning. All of my tutors said how much they were enjoying the teaching because the conversation itself was interesting.  I think it's because we had a real conversation...they were interested in WHAT we were talking about.  What might have made it more valuable too was that I took the lead.  While I was interested in learning Spanish, I also had an ulterior motive. I had a zillion things that I wanted to talk about because I was interested in learning more about them, their culture, their city and region such as "What's family life like?" "Do you have a computer at home?" "What kind of music do you listen to?"  So it took some of the pressure off of the instructor to provide topics of conversation and also engaged the instructor in some authentic conversation that was interesting, relevant, and engaging to them irrespective of the language.

Following along with the theme of Off Course - On Target: how effective is it to get to a goal indirectly? Obviously I wanted to learn Spanish.  But by just having a real conversation, we approached this goal in an indirect sense.  A conversation about the importance of authenticity in musical performances for example, in one sense, has nothing to do with Spanish.  It just happens to be that we agree that the only way we're going to talk about music is in Spanish.  No stilted arbitrary "Look, look! See Spot run" or "today we're going to turn to Chapter 3 and talk about what clothes to wear in the morning."  In fact, during our informal sessions, we used no books other than a dictionary, and we talked very little about grammar. Instead we were both actively engaged in a conversation of mutual interest.

One-to-One is a Scalable Model

So, if two people were to share a common interest in a work project, they would already have the context and content of the conversation. Now, can we add language to it?  Can we say, "I need you two to solve this work-related problem, and oh by the way, one of you only speaks French so you’ll have to do all your communicating in French?"

So how is this method of language learning scalable?

1) It isn't limited to people with instructional capabilities. If everyone of us can be a teacher as well as a learner, here's a wonderful example of it happening.

2) It can be applied to any situation so long as both individuals see a shared value in having the conversation.

3)  It leads to higher performance as the choice of people increases dramatically and we are able to get just the right people matched up with just the right jobs, roles and teams.

IF we really are living in a global economy or a global existence where our location doesn't matter so much anymore and our work is more conversationally related, more idea related, then here is an opportunity, if not a need, to be able to communicate more effectively.  Think of the richness of our experiences and our ability to communicate if we were all acquiring the ideas and concepts that come with using words or phrases that do not have equivalents in other languages...words like gestalt, zeitgeist, schadenfreude, or phrases like joie de vivre, crème de la crème, or c'est la vie which English speakers have adopted to convey ideas that were not originally part of the language.

So here's what I’ve learned from my recent language learning experiences and want to leave you with:

• Words are a means to an end, and the end goal is the ability to effectively communicate our ideas, concepts and opinions.  Therefore, it is all about semantics, meaning, and common understanding.
• Phrases, sayings, references are key to conveying meaning.
• If a common language is removed from the requirements of choosing team members, this dramatically increases the ability to find “just the right people to pair up or to have on a high performance team.
• Language helps us learn more about each other, broadens our awareness of other cultures, models, metaphors, stories, and perspectives.
• Common understanding leads to less conflict from misunderstandings.
• Almost anyone can be a language instructor in this model since there are very limited teaching or language skills needed.
• Authentic conversation, relevant to all involved, is key to language acquisition.

Unfortunately for you I’m just warming up on this overall topic of languages, learning, and living, so stay tuned for more of what you’ve come to expect from OCOT: unexpected paths that lead to great discoveries!

World Languages: Going Colorblind?

"Maps courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps used with permission"

In case you find it as interesting as I did, here is the list (according to www.geographic.org) of the top ten most popular languages in the world. See the map above and this full list of the top 50 languages.

1. Mandarin	(1120 Million)
2. English	(480M)
3. Spanish	(332M)
4. Arabic	(235M)
5. Bengali	(189M)
6. Hindi	(182M)
7. Russian	(180M)
8. Portuguese	(170M)
9. Japanese         10. German	(125M) (98M)

** note this list was updated Oct.1 to correct errors in list tabulation that omitted Spanish!  Apologies for confusion and thanks Kean for correcting!

As is often the case with these kinds of lists and large scale estimations, we need to keep in mind that there are many different ways of counting and measuring things, such as the amount of people who speak a given language. Do you only count the first or native language?  Do you group dialects together?  What constitutes fluency? To prove my point, I've picked two other equally interesting lists of language by population that you can find here and here. No doubt there are many more to be found by simply searching online.

What these lists and maps don't show us is how these languages are spreading throughout the world based on both the movement of people from their country of birth to other countries for work or through marriage for example, as well as the spread of languages via people learning new ones, organizations setting up offices, factories, and other operations around the world, etc. 

In the next 25 years or so, especially with the augmentation and acceleration of language-based technology and translation, I wonder if we are headed for a world that is "colorblind" when it comes to languages, and the need for these maps becomes somewhat obsolete?

Update from Guatemala

Not that I’ve ever had a schedule in any typical sense of the word, but now I will have a very different one for the next month or so, and it will have some spillover effect on my writing and recording here on OCOT. I’m currently in Antigua, Guatemala completing the first of what will be four weeks of intensive immersion Spanish language learning.  More on this in an upcoming post. Here are just some related updates for you now.

I suspect that I’ll become more fascinated with languages than I already am and always have been, so be prepared for a focus and theme on languages in many of the postings for awhile. I’m already getting more and more excited and passionate about some of the enormous demands and potential opportunities I see for increasing our multiple language capabilities and competencies at a rate to match the world of exponential change that I see us living in.

Immersion language learning is also very cognitively exhausting (especially when you don’t have a very big cog!), and between my actual “class time” and homework (which is taking up 6-10 hours a day or more), it’s a bit more of a challenge to fit this into what’s supposed to be a part-time job. And so I’ll not be writing the long (lucky you!) or deep articles that have been my custom. That in itself will be a fun change for me (and you too), since I’ll try to do more frequent and shorter postings that are simply meant to make you aware of something new and allow me to just pose some provocative questions based on things I’m pondering at the time.

Who knows, maybe I’ll not only learn Spanish, but I’ll learn to how to talk and write in English with greater brevity and clarity!

Hey, stop that snickering! I can hear you all the way over here in Guatemala!

¡Hasta la próxima vez mis amigos!

Coming to our Senses

If you have been kind enough to listen to me or read some of my entries on OCOT or my other writings, you may have correctly concluded that I suffer from a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Contrary to popular opinion (and even some “experts”), ADD is not about a LACK of “attention” but rather, an excess of it! 

And Now a Word from My Symptom

Those of us with ADD are unable to pay attention to just ONE thing at a time and are instead forced to pay attention to every sensory input all of the time. We try to make sense of things when EVERY thing is demanding our focus. All of our sensory inputs are dealt with equally and simultaneously. 

What we can’t do, for example, is turn down the volume on every sound except the one we want to focus on. We can't tune out the movements we see around us or choose not feel every input through our skin. In other words, we can only pay attention to EVERYTHING, all at the same time and all at equal levels.

I’m one of the fortunate few with ADD who, long before I knew what it even was, began to develop  coping skills and techniques to survive with these traits. They didn’t seem like anything special to me.  For the longest time, I just assumed everyone else was having the same experience.  And somehow I managed to start turning these “bugs” into features that have enabled me to be as successful as I am and to do what I do. If everything demands your attention and you find everything interesting, then life is very full!

If you are interested in learning more about ADD, look at some of these  alternative descriptions.  And on the topic of attention itself, I know of no better source than that of my dear friend and fellow ADDer Marcia Conner and her Ageless Learner site’s section on Attention and on How Adults Learn.

But now, back to the topic at hand (see what I mean?!)

It All ADDs Up

So why are my ADD tendencies relevant here?  Because its a way to introduce a meta theme that I'd like to address on OCOT. Just as my own natural sensory interface presents challenges, so too are the challenges of developing human/machine sense-based interfaces. Over a series of postings, I'd like to address:

• The use of our human senses as ways through which we communicate and interact with machines, computers, and technology, and ourselves. 
• Other interrelated topics both individually and as a collective whole. 

I’ll do my best to stay "on target" as I wander around "off course" and divide my pursuit of this trend toward more natural and sense-based interfaces into several separate posts. I see it playing a critical role in the future I am both designing and imagining.  

The Missing Link?

Interestingly, this whole topic of natural or sense-based interfaces does not seem to have any common singular term or definition. Or perhaps I just have not found it and some of you can point me to it?  I’m aware of categories such as:

• HCI  Human Computer Interaction/interface
• HMI Human Machine Interface/interaction
• User Interface

But these all seem to be differentiated based on interactions with specific types of technology, computers only, or segmented into individual human senses, such as touch with the use of haptic interfaces and technology with tactile feedback . And I can find definitions of HCI, HMI such as this one from Wikipedia that describe them as:

“...the 'layer' that separates a human that is operating a machine from the machine itself.”

However, my interest is in the larger meta theme of using all human senses and eliminating the “separation layer” between machines and ourselves so that they are invisible and we can directly connect and communicate through our senses. I’m want to ensure that we are taking the more holistic and inclusive view of the use of ALL of our senses, not only because we have so many that are being underused, but also because it is often the combination of multiple senses that make up our best experiences and interactions.

Making Sense of and Better Use of Our Senses

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll address the meta theme of sense-based and more natural interfaces through a variety of posts, podcasts, and perhaps some interviews over the next few months. I’ll alternate between the big picture view of the use of senses in general and the use of them collectively, then look at the use of individual senses such as touch and feel, audio, visual, and so on. I will also cover the use of combinations of senses for better, more innovative designs and solutions for interacting with technology...and each other. Add to this the coverage of tools, technology, and examples of real world applications of sensory-based and natural interfaces and I think we’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot in the process. These posts will be intermixed with other topics on a regular basis and spread over many months for as long as my and your interest continues to be high.

Oh!  Look at that cool blue butterfly that just flew by!  Hmm, I wonder what kind of plane that is flying overhead?  Now what was I saying?  Oh yeah, senses, interfaces, human interaction... 

Hang on, fasten your seatbelts low and tight, we’re about to take off on what should prove to be a fun and very "off course", very "on target" sensory journey!

Trust, Decisions, Communities, and Snowflakes

Trust still matters!

Surely it should come as no surprise to us that there are some basic characteristics that have always been and will probably always be required for successful human interactions, including those augmented by technology. One of these attributes—at the top of the list, some might argue—is that of trust. It’s a good example of something that has been a necessary component of success throughout human history, and is one that continues to reign supreme in our latest and greatest technology-infused solutions. 

For example, years ago Tim Berners-Lee had what he termed “the web of trust” at the top of his list. His vision of the architecture of the web and its future, laid out in his famous “birthday cake” diagram, placed trust at the top. As the excerpt below from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C0) explains:

"The Web is a collaborative medium, not read-only like a magazine. In fact, the first Web browser was also an editor, though most people today think of browsing as primarily viewing, not interacting. To promote a more collaborative environment, we must build a "Web of Trust" that offers confidentiality, instills confidence, and makes it possible for people to take responsibility for (or be accountable for) what they publish on the Web. "

In my previous postings, such as "Trust as a competency?! - Part 1 and Part 2" and  "Trust is Good!", I too have commented that trust can be thought of as a human competency and one which we can work on improving.  Stephen MR Covey has most recently done the most to promote this notion in his book “The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything”.

Trusted Advisors:

I was reminded of the importance of trust while I was reviewing “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” the recent study by Forrester Research, which was written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  A Crave review "Study: Our friends are the best product reviewers" touches on trust and mentions this same study. I would have added to the title "even if we've never met them"!  FastCompany also had a good review on this study, including an interesting excerpt of one chapter.

As you can see from the graphic below, topping the list (83%) is the opinions of friends or acquaintances who have used the product or service. I suspect most of us would have guessed that. But I was surprised at the continued high regard for information on the manufacturer’s site (69%) and the low scoring of online reviews by a blogger (30%).

What stood out even more though was the collective power that is emerging from the feedback loops of reviews by a variety of sources of consumers. By my count, reviews from other consumers make up 5 or 6 out of the top 10 sources listed in this study (depending on whether you count bloggers as consumers).

This study seems mostly right based on my personal experiences and habits. When I’m looking for a new product or service, my first quest is to seek out the recommendations and reviews of others who have already used them, and then I too check out the manufacturer’s site. But the key distinction here, as noted in the study, is the reliance on the manufacturer’s site to give me “information” (or what I would say is more accurately called data), on their products and services rather than the opinions, which all the other sources represent. Like those in the study, I value the opinions of those whose values and preferences I know, but I also value highly the opinions of those I’ve never met, but who have used the products or services I’m interested in. 

Context = Relevance = Value

Better yet, I’m even more interested in and value the opinions of those who share some of my interests and contexts. Using myself as an example, I’m what is referred to as a “bluewater cruiser”, someone who lives aboard their sailboat full time traveling the world’s waterways and oceans. If I’m looking for some decision support for solutions to some of my boating-related needs (when aren’t I?!), my hierarchy of relevance might progress from boats to sailboats to liveaboards on sailboats to bluewater (open ocean) liveaboards on sailboats. Each one of these additional levels of context typically represents a very significant jump in relevance, such as the difference between what would matter if you were a weekend sailor rather than living aboard full time. So when I’m looking for solutions to problems and am trying to make better decisions and choices, finding others “like me” in this momentary set of conditions is of huge value.

Snowflakes One and All!

I suspect that my limited example how my contextual hierarchy can be relevant to me is not the shared by even one of you. Certainly there is no question that I have a penchant for the extreme. But try this: take a few minutes right now to come up with just one example of a hierarchy of relevance for something you have recently been needing some “decision support” for. Got it?  Now ask yourself, "How many others reading OCOT would share the same list?"  Probably few to none, depending on how much detail or how many levels you put into your hierarchy. Equally, however, I’m sure that if you took that same list and looked elsewhere on the web, you’d find a group of people who do indeed share many of these same attributes, and thus you will have found a highly valuable resource for making your decision or choice.

Recommender systems are helping to synthesize the often overwhelming volume of such input and feedback from these sources of opinions and reviews. These systems reveal patterns and key factors that characterize our very personal usage patterns and preferences—ones that even we are often not aware. They constitute some of the evolution of what Erik Duval and I are referring to as The Snowflake Effect (see also  "Do blind people dream?" and "Musical Snowflakes Continue to Fall All Around Us" for some recent examples).  In this case, it means that we are increasingly able to tweak and tune these recommender systems and decision support tools to be ever more relevant to the combination of conditions and circumstances that make every one of our situations into one that is truly unique...like every snowflake. Using the results of the Forester study as an example, consider the multiplication factor that comes into play when you can not only get reviews and feedback from friends and other consumers, but you can narrow this down to those who share your values, interests, preferences, and the like. 

The Value of Communities

I raise all of this in light of the continued interest in (and lots of hype about) “communities”. I think, at their simplest level, communities can be two or more people with something in common. This study points toward one particularly tangible and powerful attribute of communities—as a collection point and source of reviews, recommendations, and opinions, which we will continue to value highly and use daily to help us make decisions. It is likely safe for me to assume that anyone reading this has the distinct advantage and privilege of living in an environment of plentitude and abundance and perhaps the greatest challenge presented by such an existence is that of making more and better decisions and choices. 

Unlike those in Groundswell study, I place a very high value on the opinions of other bloggers, but I would note that more and more of these are blogs from those who share some similar and relevant characteristics with me as it relates to my decision support needs. Using my previous sailing example, some of my best sources of decision support come via other blue water cruisers who are using blogs as a way to document their experiences, and especially those with whom I share other specific similarities, such as routes, locations, ship type, engines, rigging, etc.  Many of these bloggers are also typically members of larger online communities, such as one I frequent a lot lately comprised of other bluewater cruisers who are on the west coast of the Americas and are heading south. So this is another example of contextual hierarchy.  You can probably imagine the extremely high value that this select group offers for helping me to make better decisions on everything from finding great anchorages to route planning, weather updates, recommended (and not) equipment. And, of course, I’m able to add value back by posting my feedback with answers and responses to questions posed on the community site and by posting my experiences and observations to my own sailing blog.

Personal?  Professional?

Best of all perhaps, the extremely high value of these sources that provide highly relevant decision support seem not to be bound by the distinctions of "personal" versus "professional". Hence, we are seeing the increasing use and value of more “professional” sources, such as LinkedIn and other sites, such as FaceBook and MySpace, for very job-related and professional applications. They are certainly not limited to use by any one demographic group, such as the “younger generations”....whatever that means.  After all, what could be more personal than one’s vocations, jobs, hobbies and work? All the more exacerbated by the blurring distinction between one’s “personal life” and “work life” (for better and for worse, I might add).

But before I digress any further, this blog is called Off Course – On Target for a reason you know, I’ll leave it at that for today.  My purpose in this posting is to observe the growing need for continuous improvement to the decision support structures we use so that we can all survive and thrive in the new economies of abundance and a world of exponential change. For me, these are a wonderful combination of timeless human attributes such as trust and conversation augmented with new capabilities and reach provided by technology. Let’s do keep in mind that as a percentage of the world’s 6.6 billion population, a minority of us are privileged enough to live in these economies of abundance and have these very good problems to solve. As we work to have this abundance flow to all, so too will we be helping by developing effective decision support structures, habits, and techniques to share and accompany the spread of abundance.

I’d be curious and anxious to hear some of the other attributes and sources that you are using for your own decision support. What helps you make more and better choices from the exponentially growing list of options? Which tools and services are you using?  Which new techniques and habits are you trying?  What do some of your contextual hierarchies look like?  Who, what, and where do you go for opinions to help make decisions and using "trust" as a delimiter, how would you rank these?  

Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery and Design?

Perhaps it is just a case of seeing what I want to, but I seem to be finding more and more evidence to support my long-term prediction that for the next few decades at least, we will find that one of the greatest sources of innovation, new ideas, and inspiration will be the developing regions of the world. This is due to:

• The benefit of starting with a a clean slate and having no pre-existing infrastructures, customs, and behaviors to overcome.
• The driving force of necessity, which, as the saying goes, is "the mother of invention".
• The fact that creativity and innovative thinking lies within all 6.6 billion of us on the planet! 

Whatever the reasons though, I think we all have a great deal to learn and benefit from these often overlooked and unexpected sources.

Amazing Afrigadget (www.afrigadget.com)

The most recent example of one such fabulous source of innovation and invention is called Afrigadget. Thanks to Kelly Rupp, my champion at Autodesk, and Jeff Wilk at TenCue for the link.

I highly recommend you check out some of the fascinating postings on the AfriGadget site.  Some recent ones that I think you might find particularly worthwhile and interesting include:

• An interview with Simon Mwacharo, an entrepreneur whose small business CraftSkills, is based in Nairobi, Kenya. His business focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places that do not have access to the electric grid.
• "Powering African Schools with Toys", which is the story of a young inventor, 23-year-old Daniel Sheridan, and his vision of how children playing on a school yard teeter-totter (seesaw) could supply significant amounts of electrical energy for the area.
• A fascinating online overview with lots of great links to mobile phone solutions from another great resource, Jan Chipchase, who works for Nokia. As AfriGadget says, Jan “can best be described as a design and usability ethnographer. He explores the way mobile phones are used worldwide, and reports back to Nokia’s design team. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, and I thought I might highlight some of the stories he’s come up with while exploring in Africa.”
• The Village Phone project (by Grameen Bank) happening in Uganda. Jan has taken an excellent picture and annotated it with the important facts about this project in a rural Uganda.

  

  For more information about Jan, read this recent NY Times article, and of course, you can subscribe to his blog, Future Perfect.

Well, you get the idea, this site is just full of inspiring stories of powerful, yet often very simple, solutions coming out of Africa. I highly recommend the AfriGadget site as a worthwhile place to spend some time during your next web surfing session.

Benefiting without Eliminating?

As I noted at the start of this posting, one of the key reasons why developing regions are such a rich source of ideas and innovation is that they lack the prior use, habits, and infrastructure that are present in the more developed parts of the world. As you check out the postings on AfriGadget , consider one of the ongoing questions I ponder about all this:

How we can find a way to reap the benefits of these new discoveries, inventions, and innovations, have them spread to everyone and everywhere who could benefit, and yet not interfere or negatively change or inhibit these sources? 

The value is partly that people in these regions have not been affected by our thinking, models, assumptions, etc., and so what concerns me is how do we tap into these sources without affecting and changing them?

100 Days and it’s gone?

Perhaps we can't avoid affecting and changing them. Maybe we just want to be sure to maximize the benefits and innovation coming from these sources. This situation might benefit from a tactic I’ve long practiced with new employees, staff, or team members who join an organization that I am part of. I make it a point to meet with these new arrivals, not only to welcome them, but to tell them that for the next 100 days, they have a unique and special value to offer. Because they are new and not indoctrinated, they will see things differently than those who have been with the organization for some time. They will have different assumptions, and they will suggest different solutions to problems. My choice of 100 days is relatively random, but in the several decades I’ve been doing this, it seems to be the amount of time it takes before their newness is lost, and with it this unique and transitory value.

Of course, I am also quick to point out that this is hardly the end of their value (let’s hope!), but rather that this is the moment in time when they have a unique value to offer.  My specific recommendations are to have them ask those '”dumb questions” quite loudly and proudly, since they often serve as the spark of new thinking that leads to a better solution. I recommend that those who are around these new arrivals tap into this special value and ask the newcomers for their opinions, their perspectives, and ideas.

More commonly, new people tend to be quiet, study the situation, and assume that they won’t have as much to offer until they get “up to speed” with the norms of the organization and thinking of others, but that approach misses out on a great opportunity.

Learning from the OLPC example?

A more direct example, that I’m still pondering, is the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and similar efforts like:

• The Classmate PC, a low-cost laptop by Intel
• Digital Textbook, a South Korean project that intends to distribute tablet notebooks to elementary school students, and put computers in the hands of the masses in many developing regions. 

More specifically, I wonder whether OLPC's decision to offer only the new equipment, but no teacher training, set curriculum, guidelines, and “how to” type of information, was a “bug” or a feature?  In part, this was apparently a budget issue—no funds for such materials and programs—but as you might guess, I actually think that purposefully NOT providing this type of training and guidance will produce much more innovative uses and outcomes than if all the “experts” had provided their guidance, opinions, directions, and methods.

Les extremes se touche?

However, I believe there are ways to bridge these two extremes of providing no assistance and providing too much.  There are LOTS of parallels here to what makes for great teaching and great learning, and I’ll explore some of these themes later. But for now, sparked by the brilliant light shining out of these often overlooked sources of creativity, I want to focus our collective attention on them to see what we can learn from them, and how we might all benefit more.

I am not suggesting that these developing regions are the only sources of inspiration, innovation, and ideas, nor am I suggesting that as they become more successful, they will lose this wellspring of inspiration. Certainly human history shows otherwise.  No, I’m pondering this idea with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation and invention. I'd like to see us work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match this world of exponential change and its accompanying challenges that we are now living in.

I think about these questions ALOT, and so I’d like to develop them a bit further in a future post.  For now, I leave you to enjoy and benefit (I hope) from checking out Afrigadget and stimulating you to both look for more and send along some of your favorite sources of innovation, creativity, and invention, wherever they may be.

And as always I’m VERY interested in your perspectives and views. Does this match examples that you are seeing?  What are some of the best sources for innovation, invention, and ideas that you are aware of?  Think about your last "Aha!" moment, streak of creativity, or invention.  What were the conditions and the environment as this was happening?  See any common elements in these?  Or do you see any common elements that we want to avoid—those that stifle or reduce creativity?  I'm anxious to hear your comments, and I’ll be back shortly with more of my thoughts on increasing the volume and diversity of creativity in the world.

Living and Learning at the Beginning of the Cognitive Age?

The New York Times recently published an article by op-ed columnist David Brooks"The Cognitive Age" that I think is very worthwhile reading. While I have no interest in the political aspect of this piece, I do have a great deal of interest in his main point about the economic connections to skills, and about the future being one of "cognitive talent", as well as Brooks' keen observations about the connections to learning.

I've often observed that for the past few thousand years, we as humans have focused on leveraging and augmenting our physical abilities—initially with basic tools such as the lever, the wheel, pulleys, screws, etc. and then on through machines, internal combustion engines, hydraulics, electricity and robots. All of these enable us to do things we either could physically not do ourselves or give us the ability to do them faster, easier, and at greater scale. While this will likely continue for some time, my sense is that we are at the point of diminishing returns (have been for some time), and that the future (and some aspects of the present) is about putting more and more focus on leveraging and augmenting our cognitive capabilities. The most obvious example is computer technology that enables us to do things with our brains that we either could not do or now can do much faster, easier, and at greater scale. 

Of course, much has been written about the "knowledge worker", but the most common picture painted seems to be based around an office or desk job model. I think the vast majority of jobs will be elsewhere: on site, in the field, mobile, and other environments. What's more, many jobs—the majority I believe—have been categorized as skilled labor, blue collar work, and other such labels.  It's thought that these jobs will either be eliminated or relegated to low skills and low wages.

As mentioned in my previous post "Human History is Additive Not Subtractive",  these prognostications of the experts seems very much at odds with what has actually been happening. Consider everyday needs of most people for services, such as car repairs, plumbing, health care, and manufacturing. In all of these cases, we find perhaps the most amount of change. They are becoming more and more cognitive-based, rather than manual-labor-based.  While you still get your hands dirty doing many of these, it is the brain of those doing these jobs which is doing more and more of the work. Brooks points out this same kind of disparity with globalization:

"But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S."

The article goes on to make the key point for me:

"The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked."

I think it is also worth noting how well this matches up with and augments the astute observations that Daniel Pinks makes about the characteristics of the coming "Right Brain Economy" in his book Whole New Mind.  You can read more about this and how it ties into this same theme in my previous posting "Getting it Right".

In his blog "Connecting the Dots", Steve Borsch had a recent posting called "The Cognitive Age: Why Social Media Matters", which references Brooks' New York Times article and adds some interesting observations. He sees social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well as trends I've commented on previously, such as crowdsourcing (originally coined by Jeff Howe in this worthwhile article in 2006 Wired magazine), are tied into the emerging cognitive age Brooks outlines so well.

For me however, Brooks synthesizes this all down to make the most compelling point about the often misguided views of globalization with his note:

"The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called 'the Chinese' or 'the Indians,' are doing this or that.

But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy—the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. (emphasis added)

If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner."

This certainly matches up with my experiences of traveling the world and working with so many people of diverse cultures, countries, industries, and jobs. Going back to my opening comments, you can see why I was drawn to Brooks' observations that we are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, and that indeed the future is all about leveraging and augmenting our cognitive abilities. 

As Brooks notes, this all aligns very well with the need for an increased focus on learning. In some future articles, I am going to look at the flip side of the learning coin: teaching as a skill set that we will all want and need be more competent with if we are to survive and thrive in a cognitive age. 

And what do YOU think?  Does this match up with what you are seeing within your own job and practice as well as within your community, your children and your experiences with the world at large? Send in your comments, critiques, counter views or additional examples of these trends.