Off Course-On Target

Living & Learning in a World of Exponential Change

NOTE: The following is the third 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 postings for details)

I run into more and more examples every day of how much our world is one predominated by exponential change and how inexperienced and incompetent we are of working with exponential rates.  Hence my brief post below and my recommendation that we all put a focus on this “new math” of exponentials so that we are able to take full advantage of what continues to be the premature arrival of the future.

If you are interested in more background on exponential change and some of my longer standing perspectives on them, you may enjoy this previous podcast (2007) as well as some examples I’ve highlighted in the past such as this one on “The Encyclopedia of Life” and this one on the effects of exponential change on expertise.

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

- Wayne

 

Living & Learning in a World of Exponential Change

We have little experience or logical models to help us deal with and understand exponential change. While we have long been familiar with examples like compound interest (and we know how to do the math), when we are confronted with new instances of exponential change, our reaction is one of disbelief. For example, if you fold a piece of paper, you double its thickness and therefore each fold increases its thickness exponentially. So take an ordinary sheet of paper and fold it in half. Then fold that piece of paper in half again and then in half again. After about seven folds, the paper is about the thickness of a notebook and you are soon physically unable to fold it any further, but mathematically, if you were able to do so, you'd find out that after about ten more folds, you would get something about the height of your house. Ten more folds after that, you'd get to the outer limits of the atmosphere. Sixty folds after that, you'd be at the diameter of the solar system. You can see how this kind of progression is something that we just aren't very good at estimating.

Cable and satellite TV enabled two channels to grow into ten, ten into one hundred, and one hundred into thousands. While that was a very steep rate of change, it felt more like a linear rate of change as we had more and more choices of what to watch. With some of the more recent changes, like the introduction of VCRs, recordable DVDs, PVRs (Personal Video Recorders like TiVo), YouTube and TV via the Internet such as Apple TV and Google TV, the increasing abundance hit its tipping point. Today, we have what is effectively an infinite number of channels and choices of what to watch.

Does the concept of a “TV channel” seem almost irrelevant when you can watch almost any show at any time in any place? What you have today might be thought of as a set of personal channels that have just what you - and only you - want to watch. The tipping point of television or video abundance obviates the whole concept of a channel. This is typical and only one example of the way in which the Snowflake Effect is causing such fundamental changes.

Lastly, consider that revolutionary change is very far reaching. Mass production not only affected manufacturing: it has indelibly altered and predominated our entire society by changing such diverse aspects as government, education, housing, clothing, medicine, styles and design. We can and do expect the Snowflake Effect changes to be even more pervasive and profound

It is increasingly critical to acknowledge the need for not just diversity and abundance, but also uniqueness. The needs of every person are different every day as they face new and often unexpected situations: and not just people in rooms with desks and computers, but those on trains, in the fields, on job sites, in cars (under cars!). This applies to everyone, everywhere, every day.

In my estimation the ability to work well with exponential rates of change is one of the top skills of our age and the centuries ahead.  This shift has already happened and will itself continue at exponential rates so we need to increase our learning and our skills in this area at a matching rate.  I’ll post more examples of both what these exponential changes are and how we can all (me too!) acquire such new skills.

Related articles

• YouTube May Imitate TV, Channels and All (technologizer.com)
• Vocabulary-Exponential Functions (tutoringtowardssuccess.wordpress.com)

Perspectives on Loss & Learning

One of the sadder points of 2010 was the loss of a great learning leader and colleague, Jonathan Kays.  For an all too brief time Jonathan was the Chief Learning Officer of the Masie Center’s Learning CONSORTIUM after following a long career with the Central Intelligence Agency, including a stint as their first CLO.  However our loss has also resulted in much gain as my long time friend and colleague Elliott Masie inspired and pulled together a fascinating collection called “Learning Perspectives 2010” in memory and commemoration of Jonathan.  This collection of “Over 40 learning leaders from global corporations and government agencies contributed perspectives on how learning is changing (and will continue to change) in the coming years” is as eclectic as it is excellent IMHO.

Nigel Pain, another dear friend and colleague, along with Elliott, Meghan and Brooke from the Masie Center somehow managed to tap all these contributors, get their submissions and expertly edit them all in mere days and the result is something Jonathan will have appreciated and smiled at.  A printed version was given to the 2000 people fortunate enough to attend the big Learning 2010 event at the end of October.  Better yet, and in part the purpose of this posting is to let you know that earning Perspectives 2010 is available for anyone as a free download at http://learning2010.com/ebook 

I’ve long since departed the USA and resumed my life of constant adventure aboard the good ship Learnativity* and have been reading and re-reading more of the articles in Learning Persepctives 2010 as I float out here in the tropical atolls of the Marshall Islands.  As I’ve been doing so I thought many of you might also enjoy starting off your new year being inspired by some of these articles and by Jonathan’s legacy and hence this post.

* Cut and paste these lat/long coordinates 07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E  into Bing or Google Earth to see my current location

As another gift to yourself courtesy of the Masie Center I’d encourage you to go check out the enormous collection of even more great content including lots of video and audio from the Learning 2010 conference that is all available at www.learning2010.com  Even if you’ve been there previously it is worth return trips as there have been lots of additions in the last two months.

I was humbled and honored to be asked to submit some content for this tribute to Jonathan and I’ll be posting some out takes from that in the coming weeks here to stimulate some additional comments from you and inspire me to add more of my own so please stay tuned for those.

Wherever this note may find you today I hope that 2011 is floating your boat as well as it is mine and look forward to another fun year of learning, loving and living.

Wayne & Ruby the Wonderdog

Back aboard the good ship Learnativity
moored off town of Uliga on Majuro atoll, Marshall Islands
07 06.274 N, 171 22.358 E

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Skype + Facebook = Better for Learning?

The most recent update of Skype for Windows this week (Oct. 15, 2010) added two signifiant features which will be useful for many but I think these are also worth trying out for their potential in learning situations. 

With this new partnership with Facebook, Skype users now have a Facebook tab which lets you monitor typcial FB content such as news feeds, status updates, comments and “Like” things from directly within Skype.  You’ll also see that within Skype you have a FB phonebook enabling you to call and text your FB friends and if they happen to be on Skype as well you can do a direct Skype to Skype call with them. 

With all the remote locations I am in while out sailing around the planet I use Skype a great deal for almost all my phone calls.  Most of my friends and family as well as my sailing and professional “peeps” are using FaceBook so this integration is particularly welcomed by me but I would think this would have broad appeal to most users.

However it was the addition of a new group video feature to Skype that most caught my attention and which will be most useful for learning applications.  I’ve only had time to give it a very quick try but my initial reactions are very positive for video calls with a small group of people.  The interface moves its focus to the person who is talking at the time which goes a long ways to making it easy to follow and after a few minutes you start to see past the interface and just focus on the conversation much as you would do in person.  Still a long way from true telepresence of course, but with this ability to have group video calls should make for much richer conversations amongst a group. 

While I’m obviously in a relatively unique situation I would think that this integration of Skype and Facebook creates an extremely valuable combination of resources for anyone in learning, training and education.  And I’m still amazed at how we have evolved to a point where these are all availalbe to us for free.  Can you imagine if you had suggested this just a few years ago?

Enjoy and let me know as you gain more experiential learning with these tools.

Getting to "just right" getting closer

A recent posting on TechCrunch "Check-Ins, Geo-Fences, And The Future Of Privacy" had a good summary of the balancing act between privacy and geo-location and worth a quick read.  The addition location related information is a key component to the critical addition of context required by the the Snowflake Effect principal of getting things "just right" as in just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time on just the right device in just the right way.  However there is, and likely always will be, the need to keep this location based information in context itself so that your location information is being used when you want it, with whom you want it and where it will add value.  And it can't require too much explicit input or action on our part as we simply won't remember and won't take the time and trouble to do so all the time which severely reduced the value for us and others.  So we need all the help we can get to help us make smart decisions and do so as automatically as possible yet all the while maintaining the various levels of control each of us will want, which in itself is a context based "it depends" type decision that is constantly changing.

And we are getting more and more help with all these decisions from many sources and each of us have an growing army of support in the form of other people and all their input as well as devices that are finally beginning to gain some "smarts" and be able to do more than what we explicitly tell them to do.

It was therefore most interesting to me to read the comment:

As apps and mobile devices become more geo-aware, a balance will need to be struck between the over-sharing creepiness of constant location broadcasting in the background and the annoyance of the constant check-in chore. On Tuesday, at our Disrupt conference, Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox described a future where phones are “contextually aware” so that they can “check into flights, find deals at grocery stores,” and do other things for us at that right place, at the right time. “These things take a bunch of clicks now—it’s all wasting time,” he said. “The phone should know what we want.”

And in other location related news:

Latitude’s New Dashboard View Is Exactly What Passive Location Needs

Tweetdeck Adds Location Column, Integrates Foursquare

Friends Around Me IPhone/iPad App Lets You Interact With Friends Or Strangers, Just Like They Were Really There

Context and contextual awareness IS the next great frontier when it comes to technology advancements and the continued exponential rate the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is increasing.

Wayne

via snowflakeeffect.wordpress.com