Off Course-On Target

3D Printing Your Own Body Parts

I received a lot of comments about my previous posting on the up and coming application of 3D printing to build new human organs. Here is another article on treehugger.com with more details and video.

Kinko's for Kidneys: 3D Printing Your Own Body Parts

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.22.09

3D printing to order is a regular subject on TreeHugger; we love the idea of making things when you need them, where you need them. And soon you will be able to order up body parts, at a sort of Ponoko for pancreas. Now people sit on waiting lists, hooked up to expensive equipment while they wait for donors and fly body parts all over the world; soon you will order them up fresh and hot. Perhaps, like Philip K. Dick did, we might even call them artif-orgs.

There is some good explanation of the technique in this posting on SmartPlanet.

This stuff easily makes it onto my "What if the Impossible Isn't?" list for the year!

All of this adds to my conviction that the big change required to make the most difference in the world is to check and change our historic baselines and assumptions.  To switch from thinking that we need to plan within the constraints of what we think is possible and increasingly design and strategize with the assumption that most anything IS possible, or soon will be.  We need to be more imaginative, more creative, more demanding than ever in the increasingly unconstrained world of abundance which more and more of us are privileged to live within.

Think about it.  What if the impossible isn't?  What, if it were possible, and would have the most positive and profound affect on your profession, your world?  What will you do when it is possible?  Are you ready?

-- Wayne

Write You Are!

For many years now, I’ve more often than not taken great exception to those traits and characteristics which  the “experts” and pundits say are the norm or the coming trends of our societies. They just don’t seem to match up with the reality I see all around me and what my sense of these trends are.

For example, I still keep reading about these grave concerns that we (especially the younger generations) are becoming isolated individuals who:

• Live in dark rooms lit only by the glow of our computer screens
• Have no social life and only limited “real” human contact
• Read less and write less
• Passively sit there all day clicking our mouse and watching endless video

I don’t know where all these masses of people are who the experts say are out there and are becoming the norm. I see mostly the opposite among all of the many groups, ages, nations, and cultures that I’m privileged to spend time with around the world. I see people of all ages, classes, and cultures who are more social than ever—communicating, sharing, reflecting, observing, analyzing, and otherwise engaging more than I think we may have ever done.

I think the reason for this vast difference in observations is mostly because these interactions don’t look and feel like they used to. Behaviors have changed and they don’t fit the norms and definitions of the past. But make no mistake—from all indications and observations I can make, the fundamentals of socializing, interacting, communicating, writing, probing, being curious, and other such fundamental traits are not only alive and well, but they are at an all time high and are increasing exponentially.

You can therefore imagine my delight in finding more and more examples in the past few months of others who have been noticing this same counter-trend. Even better, some of this has now been formally studied and evaluated, so it is no longer just a matter of opinion and a collection of anecdotal observations.

The “Stanford Study of Writing”

One of the more recent examples is the massive study called “Stanford Study of Writing” that was recently completed by Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. Clive Thompson did a good synopsis of this study in a the Sept. 2009 edition of Wired magazine called “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Lunsford studied college students from 2001 to 2006 and used over 14,000 samples of their diverse writings including formal assignments, emails, blogs, and chat sessions. Tellingly, 83% of their writing took place outside of their academic assignments. One of her conclusions particularly rang true to me when she remarked, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”

Perhaps most importantly, this study showed that it is not just volume but effectiveness of writing that has increased so dramatically. I picked up a new word (always a great find for me) in Clive’s article that Lunsford uses to quantify a critical competency that her study showed had dramatically increased. Kairos is the ability of a writer to “assess their audience and adapt their tone and technique to best get their point across.”

New World Encyclopedia notes that in Panathenaicus, Isocrates wrote “educated people are those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action.” Sounds like a pretty important skill to me!

According to Clive (something of particular note to those in education), Lunsford observed in her study that “students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.”

My Lessons Learned

Here is a short spur-of-the-moment list of some of my recent observations and learning regarding writing— both my own and that of those around me. I would be most interested to hear from you about how well these match or conflict with what you are seeing when it comes to writing and communication skills now and what you think will happen to them in the future.

• The diversity and quantity of outlets and motivation for writing and sharing is increasing at an exponential rate. It is easy to forget how much the pace of new forms of writing and distribution is accelerating. Not that many years have passed since many of us switched from paper-based writing of letters, books, and articles to the much more prolific digital forms of word processors. In the last few years, we saw the exponential growth of connectivity via the Internet and saw the rise of email and online forums. Laptops and mobile phones became mainstream and provided some of the catalyst for more outlets, such as instant messaging and SMS text messages. And in the past few months, we’ve seen even faster growth of phenomena such as Facebook and Twitter (to name but a few). Each of these provides yet another outlet and demand for writing, and we seem to be answering the call in droves.
• There is an equally rapid growth in the diversity of types and styles of writing. If you have been reading much of my writing, or worse had to listen to me, you know I graduated with honors from the University of Never-a-Sentence-When-a-Paragraph-Will-Do. For me, the brevity which outlets such as “tweets” and SMS texting ruthlessly enforce has been helped me to write (sometimes) with greater clarity and conciseness. As my dear friend Marcia Connor recently put it in an article she wrote about social media,  “If my friend Wayne can tweet, anyone can!”
• The motivation factors for writing are also increasing at similar rates and for more and more people. When I talk with others who maintain blogs, journals, websites, and email lists, and have a presence on Twitter and Facebook, most of them mention that knowing people are reading what they write, often commenting on it, adding additional points of view, etc., significantly motivates them to develop the habit of writing more often and sharing more of their experiences.
• Writing is becoming more immediate and more authentic. It resembles a conversation in terms of its characteristics—it is more spontaneous, more serendipitous, and more personal. And as with a great conversation, these tend to be much richer in their content and context.
• Writing is becoming more and more personalized, another example of “The Snowflake Effect”. This writing trend reflects firsthand experiences—writing about what you know, reflective writing, and writing that is much richer in value.
• Skills in analysis are becoming less important since this is increasingly automated and done for us with a mouse click. But  having skills for synthesizing is growing in value as we consume ever larger quantities of disparate information sources and types, reflect upon them, and put together our thoughts and ideas on what they mean and what trends and patterns we see.
• These changes in our writing provide more examples of how we are increasingly becoming societies of prosumers. For example, I don’t regard myself as a writer or a reporter, but when I recently found myself in the midst of the tsunami in Pago Pago American Samoa a few weeks ago, thanks to the wonder of modern communications technology, suddenly I was just that: an on-the-scene reporter, able to provide firsthand, immediate and very personalized reports via my tweets, emails and my blog.  You can read my accounts of this experience by following these links:
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part I
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part II
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part III

  These accounts were subsequently picked up by news services around the world, many of which were able to call me on my sailboat via my satellite phone and do a live interview as I was literally in the mist of the tumultuous effects of the tsunami in real time. This is not only something that was technically impossible a few years ago, but serves as a dramatic example of just how much we are becoming the “prosumer” society which Alvin and Heidi Toffler so presciently described in their book “The Third Wave” wherein we are no longer either a producer or a consumer, but are both at the same time.

• These changes in our writing skills and habits are not at all limited to the younger generation. This is a phenomenon affecting all of us who are living and writing at this time and in these environments.

Your Turn to Write!

I’m sure you can come up with many more examples of other trends and directions, skills, and consequences of the changes happening with our writing and communications. I therefore hope and encourage you to add yet another example of this trend by either posting some of your observations on your own blogs, tweets or Facebook pages, or directly here. I hope that my  own writing here is reflecting the positive traits of this exponentially accelerating trend.

Referring back to the Wired article I mention at the start of this posting, I thought Clive made a great point in closing when he noted: “knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing might be the most crucial factor of all.” Write on Clive!

Wayne

PhotoSynth: Mashups of Our Collective Intelligence via Photos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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?

Coming to Our Senses: Touch

As I sit here typing on my keyboard and clicking my mouse, I find myself desperately hoping we may finally be moving beyond our narrow view of what form interfaces between humans and technology can take to one where we can be more creative and innovative...and effective!

Seems to me that today, almost every interface is limited to no more than a variation on more button pushing!  Computers, for example, come with keyboards and mice, and we even carry this metaphor of button-pushing onto the screen with “virtual buttons” that we have to "push".  And  even smaller devices, such as mobile phones, are designed with button-driven interfaces.

Recently we’ve transferred button-pushing over to “touch” screens on phones and we think that this is just "oh so cool' and innovative.  Give me a break!  Most examples don’t even work as well as a real button!  Ever tried to type more than a word or two on a touch screen keyboard?

Enough with the buttons already!!

There is a glimmer of hope, however, in the world of interfaces!  Some of the new phones from Samsung (currently only available in China) use Immersion’s VibeTonz technology, a tactile feedback that simulates the feeling of pushing a mechanical button even though the surface is completely flat and does not move. It is the latest example of a new breed of haptic technologies that do for the sense of touch what high definition displays and surround sound do for eyes and ears. (see links at end for more on haptic technologies)

But I believe that the lack of feedback in touch screen devices will severely limit their success and adoption, and that someday we will shake our heads when we remember how we lived “out of touch” for so long without the use of touch in interfaces.

Hope on the Horizon?

But surely we can be more creative and innovative with our interactions and interfaces than limiting every solution to simply a variation on more button pushing!  Currently we are seeing innovative uses of touch screens that provide a better interface and interaction with our digital world. Applications on the iPhone and other smartphones, for example, let you flick or flip things around, such as a set of digital photos or stacks of music CD artwork. This use of “gestures” as a way of interacting has great promise and recent examples, such as the Wii controller and some of the multi-person, multi-touch interfaces on digital surfaces are showing great promise. 

Since touch works in both directions—as feedback to us and feedback from us—I'm delighted to see the use of haptic interfaces with the Wii controller, which generates physical feedback to your hands as you strike a tennis ball or golf ball, for example, and simultaneously uses your physical input to provide velocity and angle as you swing a golf club and the resultant force applied to the ball. Airplane and car simulation game controllers (joy sticks, steering wheel, brake & gas pedals) also provide similar haptic feedback. Flight simulators for training pilots and amusement park “virtual reality rides” show us how truly real, natural, and effective touch interfaces can be.

Let’s Stop Flapping and Start Flying!

But these incremental improvements, like touch screen buttons and limited haptic feedback, also serve to continue our "flapping" behavior of mimicking physical button pushing.  Our tendency to focus on copying what worked well in the past, such as designing planes that mimic flapping wings on birds or pushing buttons for machines, is in fact holding us back from truly "flying"!  If you are not familiar with my use of this metaphor of "flapping vs. flying", take a few minutes to read or listen to my story on “Confusing Flapping with Flying”. 

To start truly "flying", that is developing truly innovative solutions, I think we need to focus on the use of touch and tactile feedback as some of the essential elements of successful interactions and interfaces.  For example, the ability for us to feel and touch any object even though it is not “really there” and similarly for our technology to acquire the sense of feel and touch.

Less Virtual, More Real

Early applications of virtual reality used to seem pretty cool but now they seem, as my daughter liked to say to me, “Oh so yesterday, Dad!”.  These early efforts failed because they were too virtual and too far from reality. Today, we can see clearly how much of a difference it makes when, for example, motion, sound ,and color is added to movies. More recently ,the addition of some 3D, high definition, and high fidelity has narrowed this "reality gap" to our eyes and ears. And virtual reality applications required all that extraneous equipment, such as headsets, goggles, helmets, gloves and even full body suits, to provide the feedback to or from us, which severely separate or distanced us from the reality of the situation.

So, what if we moved towards being more real and more natural?  What if we had digital models with haptic interfaces that let us feel, handle, turn, assemble and disassemble them? How about applying full haptic feedback to a holographic images? Imagine if holographs provided not just stunning visual 3D reality, but also came with haptic feedback to your hands, so that you could feel their edges, curves, and shapes?

Digital Clay:  Digital Prototyping gets Real

Moving along the reality scale, we already have very functional and bidirectional digital prototyping via 3D scanners and 3D printers.  Together these can both create digital models from existing objects (input) as well create new fully-functional physical objects (output). Such digital prototyping can all be done BEFORE we start using large amounts of materials and energy to produce the “real things” ** and before we use the energy and resources to create these physical entities. This capability may well turn out to be one of the single greatest ways of conserving resources and energy and bringing some much needed practical reality to the “green” movement.

Leaping (and lurching) further forward, wouldn’t it be great have true virtual digital prototyping that gave us an experience equal to that of having the real thing in our hands?  How about if we could move beyond digital clay to “real clay” where haptic sensors and generators were built-in at the nano level or could be more like the holographic + haptic models I mentioned previously.  With this digital clay in your hands, you could now create any shapes and objects you like "by hand" or you could add some "clay" to your 3D printed models or you could use 3D printing to create a whole model out of digital clay and use this as the starting point of your design work or testing.

AND, now how about if we also hook up some of that digital clay “backwards”, so that rather than limiting the feedback to one direction—from our hands to the clay— it could also move from the clay to our hands?!

Say what, Wayne?

Well, imagine you are on a team whose members reside in many different locations. Your team is designing some physical object, such as a new smart phone. Rather than “just” having a 3D printer create the latest design iteration of the phone on your desk as a “solid”, what if every team member had one made out of digital clay and whenever you changed the phone's shape or moved some buttons, for example, the other phones at the other locations changed accordingly. You each would have a working version.

THAT sounds a lot more real and a lot less virtual to me, and it's all possible by adding the use of our sense of touch to our interactions with technology.

** BTW, this example starts to show how increasingly strained the concept of “real” is becoming and what I see as another trend towards the closing and ultimate elimination of the “reality gap”.  But I’ll expand more upon this in a future posting.

eSkin

The integration of sensory feedback and control within technology provides another look at touch working in reverse (so to speak), and it is equally important and fascinating.  One recent example is the progress being made with “e-Skin” for robots. This new material  is the first that combines two key characteristics:

• The ability to stretch like rubber
• The ability to conduct electricity like metal into a single substance

They’ve accomplished this with carbon nanotubes and used it to allow robots or machines to “feel” heat, pressure, and texture. I was equally intrigued with e-skin's potential to to stretch into larger sizes and onto curved non-flat shapes. I can imagine how this could lead to having displays in your pocket that you can pull out, unroll, and stretch into a large scale screen for viewing, or applications as "skin" grafts for burn victims.

Hiding Everything but the Benefits

Some have suggested that Jules Verne completely missed the computer and all its technology in his futuristic books such as 2000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. But I think Verne got it completely right by NOT focusing on or imagining computers and technology. He simply assumed that the compute power was just “there” behind the scenes. I loved the way he kept the focus on the fantastic capabilities and the grand adventures we would have if such capabilities existed.  Who cares how or what enables them?

So it is my belief and my hope that we are finally seeing technology dissolve into the background and into ourselves so that the focus can be on people, challenges, solutions, and great adventures in life. I know I'm signed up for the pursuit of joy and as such I welcome and champion any and all movement towards more natural interfaces and the use of all of our human senses to communicate and work more effectively with each other and with our supporting cast of machines and technology.

BTW, here are links to some good animation on haptic interfaces/technology from Grabriel Robes-De-la-Torre and a full paper on “Haptic interfaces and Devices”.

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!

Spontaneous Creative Combustion?

"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." – Scott Adams

Cultivating Creativity?

In my previous post “Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery & Design” we looked at the growing number of examples of great innovation and creativity that are to be found in developing regions of the world.  I’m interested in looking at these developing regions, not only for the innovations and ideas emerging from them, but also to study these unique environments to better understand their essential elements.* By understanding them, we might be able to replicate and share, and thus raise the volume of creativity, innovation, and invention to all new highs. We certainly have plenty of problems that are begging for creative solutions!

So I’m pondering this with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation, invention, and the like, so we can work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match the world of exponential change (and its accompanying challenges) that we are now living in.

It seem to me that most things are the result of the environment and conditions we are in at the time, and I think this holds true for something as fleeting as creativity.  So I’m wondering: how can we better understand the environments and conditions that seem to spark the most creativity?  Based on this understanding, we could create more of such environments—ones that are enriched with these characteristics and bring out the creativity, innovation, and inventiveness more often and for many more people than the current and historical norm.

*See my previous posting and podcast “Confusing Flapping with Flying” for more on my thoughts about essential elements of great inventions and innovations.

Spontaneous Combustion

We could use a favorite analogy of mine to help us with this—that of spontaneous combustion.  In my own layman’s terms, spontaneous combustion is when fire unexpectedly and unintentionally breaks out without any apparent cause of ignition, such as sparks or flames. I learned about spontaneous combustion firsthand in some of my former lives when I was a mechanic, a woodworker, and an industrial technology teacher and became critically aware of the fire hazard posed by leaving oily rags, sawdust, paper, etc. lying around or in open waste containers. But as I’m often wont to do, I inverted this negative and dangerous characteristic into a powerfully positive one and abstracted it into a conceptual model, so what I really took away from it was a fascination for indirect causation that still sticks with me today as you’re about to see. 

From what I’ve been able to read and research, we (scientists) still don’t fully understand spontaneous combustion,† but what we do know are the conditions that make it more likely to happen, such as the presence of chemicals (oil, resin, varnish combined with flame supporting materials such as rags, sawdust, paper and oxygen). The simple preventative solution therefore is to make sure things like oily rags are stored or disposed of in sealed containers to cut off the air/oxygen supply.

†Of course we do have this YouTube video on “How to: Do Spontaneous Combustion”.   BTW, for most of you, I recommend it for watching and NOT for experiential learning!

Brains on Fire! Spontaneous Cognitive Combustion?

I’m sure you can see the connection here to creativity, which seems to me to be a form of spontaneous creative or cognitive combustion—when a sudden creative thought that just comes to you, an unexpected "Aha!" moment bursts into flame without any apparent cause. 

So what if we want to purposely cause a chemical spontaneous combustion? What if we want to have a fire break out without directly causing it, such as by lighting a match?  In a lab, we can do so by carefully controlling a set of conditions (types and amounts of flammable liquids, supporting materials, etc.) and creating an environment (temperature, oxygen, humidity) that raises the probability of spontaneous combustion. We may not know just when or where the fire will begin, but we can expect that it will happen somewhere in the experimental container relatively soon. 

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. What are the conditions, materials, and environments that lead to spontaneous cognitive combustion?  What are those essential elements that can reduce the amount of "flapping" we do and increase our innovation, invention, and creativity?

At a very general level, some of this can be addressed by thinking differently, outside the proverbial box so to speak, being contrarian, converting the negative energy of naysayers into positive energy that drives you to succeed all the more.  But let’s try to go further.

To help us do so and to use this opportunity to start a few "fires" on this topic... I’m sure we’ve all suffered from bouts of what might be called “creative constipation” when, try as we might, we just can’t seem to squeeze out a new creative thought, solve a problem, or otherwise "hit the wall"... I thought that Robert Lucky put it well in his IEEE Spectrum article (Jan 2007) called "Great Thoughts" where he posited:

"There is a theory of creativity that holds that creativity is most often the product of the unexpected intersection of two previously unconnected thoughts. If you are thinking very hard  about one such thought perhaps you are suppressing the other thoughts which could connect with it."

This leads to the often observed benefit of taking a break, going for a walk, or otherwise distracting yourself from the problem at hand. But it is the theory on creativity that I most strongly concur with—the notion that there are very few truly new ideas, but rather that we are constantly building from and upon previous and existing thoughts and ideas and the new springs from the intersection or collision of two or more previously existing but unconnected thoughts.  Hence my fascination with the concept of mashups‡ and why I see these as a fundamental characteristic of the future. 

‡ I also like the fact that my spell checker keeps wanting to correct the spelling of mashups to smashups as I’m equally big on the need for disassembly and “creative destruction”, but I’ll wander and ponder that with you in a future posting.

Inspiring Combustion: Why Wait?

One of the most common and rewarding comments that I receive from many of you after my talks and postings is that they help you connect a set of dots/thoughts which you knew about and that were previously “out there” but which had not been connected the way I strung them together.  A “necklace for the mind” as one most complimentary person put it to me. I take these as the highest compliments I can receive—to have helped to cause (in my own direct fashion) some spontaneous cognitive combustion in others. I’d be honored to be regarded as a cognitive pyromaniac and can only hope to continue to cause and stoke more "fires" and "fan the flames" of global creativity.

But what about YOU?  Take a few minutes—you deserve the break—to think back to times when you have been particularly creative, inventive, inspired, or your brain was otherwise "on fire". Look for some patterns. What are their commonalities?  In particular, I encourage you to focus on the overall "environment" you were in at these times, such as colors, sounds, furniture, views, movement, other people, time of day, lighting, what you were doing just beforehand, and so on. Please share (either with comments here at OCOT or on your own site) the essential elements of creativity you come up with. 

Here’s to creating a world of spontaneous cognitive combustion for all of us.

Is the Sky Really Falling?

I recently read the article "AT&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010", which is pretty much summarized by the title and the opening line:

"U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T has claimed that, without investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010."

You can read more in the article, although they digress into some net neutrality issues.  However, this latest prediction reminds me of similar predictions throughout history that "the end is near", and I'd like to explore them further here.

The "Limits" of Physics

I can recall back in about the late 80's when experts were making similar predictions and warnings that we had reached the upper limit of how fast data could be transferred through phone lines via modems—9600 baud! These same experts claimed that we'd reached the limits of physics and it was just a "fact" that we needed to accept. 

As we can now see (with the benefit of hindsight, of course) that entirely new materials and techniques, such as optical fibre, compression algorithms and other breakthroughs, were developed to get around some of the limits that existed for wire-based data transfer. Wikipedia has a good history of modems, bandwidth, and the inventions along the way.

It's interesting to note that these types of warnings and stories are usually accompanied by quotes from the experts and other "facts", which prove that they are "true" and inevitable.  It reminds me of this quote from a  great scene in the movie Men in Black:

"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

BTW, you can find this quote and just about any other kind of movie-related trivia from the handy Internet Movie Database.

The "Limits" of Technology

Going much further back, dire warnings in the late 1800's said that we needed to seriously curtail the expanding use of horses, cows, and beasts of burden or else the planet would soon be covered in several feet of manure!  The experts had "done the math" and this was an inevitable and irrefutable prediction. But ooops! We didn't allow for the invention of the internal combustion engine, electrical power, and other energy sources that significantly reduced our reliance on animal-based power. Of course, we also didn't anticipate the whole new series of problems and challenges of global warming that many might argue make the manure problem look like a good one!

I sometimes have the sense that some of the more dire predictions about global warming and other imminent disasters are similarly exaggerated and misdirected. Please do NOT misconstrue my comments here to mean that we have nothing to worry about or to work on. I want to champion quite the opposite reaction!  To be sure, all of us have much to be concerned about. We need to be more diligent and work harder than ever to ensure the sustainability of ourselves and our environment so that we can ensure an ever brighter future for us all. 

The "Limits" of Human Capacity, Foresight, and Imagination

History has shown that we are capable of doing some VERY stupid things and can exhibit great ignorance and lack of foresight.  However, as illustrated by my prior examples, history also shows that we need to take into account our even greater human capacity for invention, discovery, creativity, innovation, and design.

I'm sure that many of you may have similar Chicken Little "the sky is falling" * stories, and I'd be most appreciative if you'd post these to your blogs or send comments here to help all of us learn from these historical examples.

I'm was in Mexico recently and I'm told that the story of Chicken Little (and the saying "the sky is falling") are well known there and translates to El Cielo Se Esta Cayendo. For those not familiar with this reference the previous link will give you the background.

In the end, I have huge faith in our collective powers for invention, creativity,  innovation and designing solutions. What we need to watch out for is the flip side of this where we become smug, arrogant, or cynical based on what we "know for sure" today.  I hope that examples such as this latest prediction about the limits of Internet capacity will only serve to help us balance these forces and inspire and motivate us all to work towards new ways to improve our lives and those of all others. 

Rather than imagine what we'll know for sure tomorrow, imagine if ................ Not only is the sky NOT falling, it is the limit of what is possible.

Google Oceans: Another wish comes true!

While I  can neither take credit for nor claim any influence on Google's recent announcement, I'm pleased to say that some of the things I wished for last year in my posting "New Perspectives; Looking Down and Under" are about to come true!  In that posting, I wished that we would soon have similar capabilities as those provided by Google Earth and Google Sky, but these would vary in that they would look down and under to the earth's oceans and seas. Well, the title of this posting pretty much says it all, and you can read about it in the WebWare article "Google Diving into 3D mapping of Oceans".

Google Ocean (the name is tentative), shares similar goals, as well as the potential of increased collaboration, mass contribution, and "networking" that Google Earth and Google Sky present.  See my previous posts "New Perspectives: Looking Up" and "New Perspectives: The Third Wave" for more details and context about how powerful this can be. These views were summed up in the article:

"In addition to the 'wow factor" Google Ocean will no doubt have for amateur oceanographers, marine enthusiasts, and anyone fascinated by the movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the project has the potential to promote more collaboration and advance research."

They also reflect my previous comments about how little we know about the 70% of our planet that is covered by the seas:

"'We hope that one of the outcomes of Google Ocean will be an understanding of how much remains to be explored,' said Miller of Scripps. 'We know far more about the surface of Mars from a few weeks of radar surveying in orbit than we know of the bottom of the ocean after two centuries.'"

Unfortunately, Google Oceans is not yet released, and Google is not saying much officially yet.  I'll be watching for the first chance to start using this new capability, and let you know as soon as it happens.  Since I live full time at sea now, this announcement is particularly relevant and practical for me. I already use Google Earth extensively for surface information, such as exploring a port or anchorage I'm about to put into.  In addition to my charts of the area, the photos and the ability to fly over the area before I get there have made a huge difference in terms of safety and in my confidence for sailing to new places, especially at night or  in poor weather with low visibility.  But I suspect that many of you would have similar fascination with the earth's oceans and be just as anxious to learn more. Perhaps some of you will have research or other information to contribute, and we can add yet another way in which mass contribution and the power of networking helps us all get better at getting better.

This announcement about Google Oceans is yet another great example of the power of wishes and how they often do come true (you might want to read about another wish come true in my recent posting "The Future is about Winning!", which highlighted the wish that turned into Pangea Day).

Although we may want to be careful what we wish for, I could not be more serious or sincere about my wish that you'll keep believing in the power of wishing and do some of your own!  I'll continue to share some of mine. I'm also interested in knowing what are some of YOUR wishes for positive change.

Sailing Into Uncharted Waters

There are a number of changes coming up for both myself and Off Course - On Target (OCOT), so this posting will be a bit different to provide you with a quick overview of what's coming your way.

Ship Shape

Through to the incredible support of my company, Autodesk Inc., and my boss (thanks Kelly!), I'm going to be off work through January 25th, 2008, and busy using up my large collection of years of accumulated vacation time. I'll be using this time to finish getting my sailboat, the good ship Learnativity, all ship shape and ready for some upcoming extended world cruising.  I'll start posting more details for you on my new adventures at sea in the new year and Elliott Masie and I are going to join forces in a larger context as he too sets out to live, learn, and explore this great planet of ours. We've dubbed our collective effort as the "Grand Learning Expedition" and will have a variety of ways for you to participate and learn along with us in the new year.

With all my time and attention devoted to this and all my online time spent learning more about all things nautical, including finding the best sources and prices for the seeming unending supply of equipment a seaworthy sailboat requires, my one regret is that I won't have any time to devote to Off Course - On Target until I return to work at the end of January. BUT, never fear, there are some very interesting alternatives and additions for you, and we'll continue to ensure that OCOT remains "serendipity central" and lives up to being the place "where unexpected paths lead to great discoveries."

New Perspectives, New IQ Points?

I've always been intrigued by and have often quoted Alan Kay's estimation that:

"A new perspective is worth 80 IQ points"

and this quote came to mind as I was pondering what to do with OCOT while I'm out. Of course, one perfectly fine option is to simply hang up a "Gone Sailing" sign and give you a rest and a chance to spend more time on the many other sites I'm sure you are trying to stay up with.

But I thought of some other options as well.  For example, I've long been interested in having more diversity of content within the blog format, and I think we need to understand more about the boundaries of that format before we switch to another one, such as a wiki or newsletters or shared documents or e-mail threads. I've also been planning doing some interviews, and featuring new perspectives from others to add to my own. Now I have the luxury of expanding upon this. In keeping with our theme of experiential learning being such a great teacher, I've picked out a small group of people I know who come from extremely varied backgrounds, professions, locations, and interests, and of course, perspectives. I've asked them to consider sharing their thoughts and ideas with you here on OCOT in text, audio, or video. I've left it completely open to each individual to decide everything from topics to format to frequency, and have simply asked that they choose topics they have a passion for and ones they think would be of interest to you. I'm excited by the prospect of having OCOT be a forum for the range of ideas and points of view this eclectic group will undoubtedly come up with, and am very confident you'll really enjoy it immensely.

I'm also interested to see how this works for the invited guests.  I've purposely picked a very broad range of individuals, and some have their own blogs, so this is in part an experiment to see if it makes sense for them to use OCOT as an additional outlet or to speak through their own blogs and use OCOT for connections I might make, providing comments, etc. Other invitees don't have a blog, but may be considering starting one, so this is a chance for them to experiment. For others  who don't have the time or desire to commit to a regular flow of content that a blog requires, this opportunity provides an outlet for them whenever they would like to use it. You can come up with many other options I'm sure, and again, this will be a chance to experiment and discover some of these combinations, and learn more about the variety of presentation that works within blogs and what needs to go beyond these boundaries.

We'll keep this wide open and informal, so just how many of them can find the time to contribute and just how often they choose to do so remains to be seen. I see this in keeping with our focus on experimentation and discovery, rather than being very directly tied to my being out for awhile, and my hope is that we find this works out very well and we can continue to play with this additional type of content on OCOT long after I return. My goal is to bring you interesting people and perspectives, along with the extra IQ points you can gain from visiting OCOT! So be watching this space over the next few weeks for some additional new posts by these individuals, and let us know via your comments, how it works for you, your reactions to both this new type of content, as well as the topics themselves.

My thanks in advance to those guests who took me up on this offer, and have fun with the experiment.

OCOT 2.0?  Looking for a Few Brave Beta Testers

Finally for today, I'd like to talk about one last but very exciting bit of new experimental and experiential learning we are going to be starting. We're adding entirely new capabilities to OCOT. As per my previous comments about exploring the boundaries of blogs, I'm also anxious to learn "beyond the blog" and to join forces with you to try out new forms, formats, and features that continue to improve and grow our mutual communication, collaboration, and value. For example, I'd like to learn more about when a wiki type of format is more appropriate for  soliciting more direct and detailed input from the rest of you. I'd like to have us learn more about when the voice of a single author makes sense, and when the collective voice of a group of people creating, editing, and evolving content, conversations, and knowledge make more sense. I'd like to see how well we can blur the boundaries and barriers that formats sometimes put in our way. Is there a more transparent and blended way to have content be "just right" for us and matched to our constantly varying moods, context, and conditions?  As we have more and more options and ways to communicate, we will need to become better at choosing the right tool for the task at hand. 

To do all this, I've been working with a talented developer, Tony Freixas, to create a test site with a whole new look and feel and a mashup of many different features and capabilities that might make sense for the next iteration of OCOT.  At this point, we have the first prototype up and running as a temporary test site, and we're looking for a few brave and curious volunteers to take this prototype for a test run and get their feedback on the experience to help guide future directions and capabilities to bring to all of you out there in OCOT land.

If you have a few hours in the next 2 months and would be willing to try out this new OCOT experience and provide us with your reactions, experiences, and suggestions, please send a short e-mail to Tony and he will send you instructions on how to participate and contribute. My thanks in advance to those volunteers. We'll be back to the rest of you with results in the New Year.

Bon Voyage!

As we all begin to wrap up yet another year that seems to have flown by, and ramp up for the start of 2008, I want to thank each and every one of you for reading, listening, and watching OCOT. I take it as a great honor that you would choose to spend the most valuable currency there is—your time and attention—and I hope you continue to find it to be a good use of both (why else would you come?). I hope that OCOT continues to take you down some very unexpected pathways, which lead to even more unexpected and even greater discoveries. I'm about to head out on some grand new adventures, journeys, and discoveries of my own, and look forward to sharing and learning more with all of you next year. 

Thanks for helping to make 2007 such a truly great year, and here's to making 2008 even better!

w
a
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Wayne Hodgins
Strategic Futurist
Autodesk Inc.
+1-707-803-3579