Off Course-On Target

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

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

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

Fit for Me

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

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

Fit as a way to Better and Greater Learning?

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

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

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

Exponentially Increasing the Frequency of Great Learning Experiences

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

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

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

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

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

The Snowflake Effect on the World of Things

Look around you; anything that isn’t made by nature had to be designed and built by we mere humans and what I’ll be referring to here as “things”. The Snowflake Effect is causing dramatic changes in the world of things as they rapidly transform from being mass produced to mass personalized and in the process, are becoming snowflakes themselves.

In the coming weeks and months, I’d like to explore this very large and influential meta trend of both the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization and specifically the effect on “things”. My interest in doing so is that I believe this is ushering in a new era, what some have referred to as the “Next Industrial Revolution”, and even more so than the “first” Industrial Revolution I believe that this next one will cause and require an even more profound revolution in the world of learning, education and training for all of us.

Flexible manufacturing was one of the initial enablers of this transformation from mass production to mass customization, however this was barely the beginning. With the advent of more and more computer controlled design and machining, and more recently the introduction of affordable 3D printers and scanners, we are seeing an exponential increase in the personalization of individual items which can now be both designed and produced to match the unique context of the individual person and situation for no more and often less cost that previous mass produced things.

The Long Tail of Things

As striking as these changes are and will be, let’s PLEASE avoid our history of believing that each new era will completely eliminate all of what has come before. This is about disruptive innovation not disruptive elimination. We do not want or need every thing to be unique. Large scale items such as airplanes and cruise ships for example will likely continue to be produced in quantity, but even now these items are largely uniquely built to match the individual customer and be adapted to match some specific routes or conditions. Many such large scale items are already being designed and built such that they can be changed over time to match a contextual change, predicted or not. For example, several of the world’s Navies are building their newest ships in such a way that they can be reconfigured to match different contexts of use such as switching from a configuration that is best for a military situation to responding to a natural disaster.

There will also likely be a need for some mass produced parts where large numbers of exactly the same thing is just what we want such as with fasteners like screws, nuts and bolts. For an even longer time yet there will be instances where many people will want to have the exact same thing and there will continue to be fads and hits such as popular books, songs and movies. But these will be at the front end of the Long Tail and small in number. As you move down the exponential curve of the Long Tail, you get to more and more things for more and more people which have less and less in common.

Even if I really like the pen you just showed me and we can “print” one “just like it”, I will often want to modify it a little bit to better fit me. I’ll want it to be a bit shorter or more curved to better fit my hand, match the way I write or a be a bit heavier to match my personal preferences. The same dynamics will play out if this were a coffee cup, a pair of eyeglasses, a pair of shoes, or a chair. In this way there will be an equivalent Long Tail of things and it will be a spectrum with products falling at all points along the exponential curve towards uniqueness. However as we are seeing with the Long Tail effect on music, movies, books and the like, the transition will be such that the volume of objects down at the unique end of the tail will rise dramatically and become the majority in terms of both instances, business and learning.

The Internet of Things

Above and beyond being mass customized and personalized by their design and production, things are increasingly connected, networked and interconnected to each other and to ourselves as we use them. One version of this is often referred to as “The Internet of Things”. A commonly cited example is the way in which home appliances are being connected to each other and the net for everything from monitoring energy use, setting thermostats, timing of when best to turn things off and on. Or where all the items in your fridge are dynamically updating their status in terms of how full they are, their expiration date, peak freshness and so on to help you choose what’s best to make for dinner tonight and what to pick up at the grocery store on your way home. But as we’ll cover in future articles, “you ain’t seen nothing yet”! Start to think smaller and smarter and imagine and prepare yourself for things like “smart” and digital dust, dirt, pixels, locations, ink dots and paint. More on each of this in posts to follow.

Things are Becoming Snowflakes Too

In short products or “things” are going to increasingly be snowflakes themselves; alike perhaps but no two exactly the same. And just like us as unique individuals, as things become more like snowflakes, they too will start to have their own identity, their own networks, their own conversations and even their own “social networks”. Indeed, if you’re paying attention, many already do! One of many future topics we will cover here.

Snowflake Things Need Snowflake People & Learning

However it is the more far reaching and more latent effects of these changes, especially those on how, when, where and what we learn that excite me and motivate me to initiate this conversation with you. If these trends have not already captured your curiosity and fascination as they have mine, then I think they soon will and I hope to help in that process.  We need to seriously and deeply reconsider things such as core competencies and skills required for a world where mass personalization replaces mass production.  We need to rethink and redesign things like learning, teaching, training, content and the like to take advantage of the increasing new capabilities of mass personalization and have have personalized learning experiences be the norm for everyone every day.  As we gain the ability to do such things as copy, replicate, modify and mash up pretty much everything, not just the 2D and digital worlds, as easily as we now do with books, documents, music and video, we will face challenges such as what does original mean, is there a role for such things as copyright anymore and if you can have anything you want at your fingertips in an instant, what DO you really want and more so need?  All these some of the questions prompting me to start this conversation and to cover in the coming weeks and months.

Just as it was the change from an agrarian society to an industrial one that produced most of our current models for learning, education and training, so too will this next era shape us as a society both locally and globally. The revolution in the world of learning, and make no mistake it is truly deserving of this often overused word, is upon us and it is as daunting as it is exciting and powerful. Yet as has often been said, the best way to predict the future is to design your own, and it is my sincere hope and conviction that collectively, we can strategically and serendipitously lead the transformation of learning, training and education rather than have it happen to us. By exploring and better understanding current trends and directions of the Snowflake Effect on the world of “things”, we will be able to bring the power of mass personalization to the world of learning such that each of us experience and help others to experience great learning moments every day.

See What if the Impossible Isn’t? in action

I believe it is now clear that the rate of most change is exponential and this certainly includes how technology is almost always on dual exponential curves of decreasing price and increasing performance.  We can therefore often see the future quite literally by looking towards the high end of the market where new products and technology are typically introduced.  Think for example of how much sooner we could have seen, admittedly when illuminated by the brilliance of hindsight, the coming of telephones, personal computers, mobile phones and most other innovations by looking at the first versions when they were introduced as very high priced products, with limited functionality and for limited markets. 

As the rate of change continues to increase exponentially we need to become better and better at not just seeing these as innovative technologies or products but to begin to imagine the impact, both positive and negative, on our lives, our behaviors, our learning and our society by getting better at imagining the impossible.  This is why I continue to wonder and ponder about WITII? “What if the impossible isn’t?”

It is in this light that I recommend you read the Singularity Hub blog for stories such as “Z Corp – The Lamborghini of 3D Color Printing and Scanning (Videos)”  Here is the lead in to the article:

While Z Corporation products are out of the price range for most individual users, they represent amazing technology that is commercially available to anyone. I doubt the average person even knows that 3D printing technology can produce color models in just hours. Likewise, 3D scanning an object is probably outside of the everyday citizen’s concerns. These products are still in the early generation paradigm: expensive and used almost exclusively in industry. But they won’t stay there. Technology gets cheaper and more democratic as it is improved, so we should look forward to a time when the kind of 3D printing and scanning we see in these videos would fit in anyone’s budget.

As this technology becomes more widespread and powerful, the ways we purchase and exchange goods are going to be different. When you shop online for a coffee mug, the vendor could just send you the CAD file, allowing you to print the mug rather than have it shipped. Free information (like open source design specs) will translate to free objects.

Even more than reading the article I would strongly encourage you to watch all the the videos embedded within (see but one example below) as they will truly open your eyes as to what is already possible and available to commercial business in the form of 3D printers and 3D scanners for use in the office and the field.  It will only be a matter of months before these levels of accuracy, color and materials are available at prices for the rest of us.  The question is will YOU be ready?  How will these types of capabilities affect you?  How will you take advantage of them?  How will these enablers help us all to find and release the promise within ourselves? 

Just keep asking and imagining “What if the impossible isn’t?”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Amazing Video of 3D Printer Art in Belgium (singularityhub.com)
• Bit and Atoms Blog - Erik de Bruijn (replicatorinc.com)
• MakerBot Math (replicatorinc.com)
• Shapeways now lets you print 3-D objects in color (venturebeat.com)

Crowdsourced manufacturing?

Here is an interesting twist to the whole 3D printing and DIY manufacturing I've been following and writing about. Makerbot is unable to keep up with demand for their very cool $750 3D printer and so they have turned to their customer base and asked them to manufacture some of the parts for them.  Read on and I think you too will see see a whole new dimension of of both the crowdsourcing phenomena and on an even larger scale the beginnings of a new era in manufacturing and what some are calling the next industrial revolution.

Certainly this is all in the very early stages and has a long way to go before this is mainstream, but I think the implications are enormous and NOW is the time for us to begin thinking about how this will affect us and how we will be prepared to take full advantage as it evolves as I'm equally convinced that the rate of this change will be exponential like almost all other change.

As but one example, I am of the opinion that this and other changes are ushering in a new industrial revolution that will be as dramatic a change of our world as was the first industrial revolution and the move from an agrarian society to an industrial one.  One of the most important requirements will be an equal amount of change in the education and training required of the new workforce. Just as it was the demands of the first industrial revolution which drove most the educational and pedagogical models and systems we have still have today and I think we will see this same degree of influence from this next new industrial revolution.

MUCH more to follow ......

Makerbot is Asking You to Help Make More Makerbots

August 17th, 2009 by Aaron Saenz

So here’s a situation we’ve all been in. You just started a new company that builds and sells table top 3D printers. To save money, and be a badass, you use your 3D printers to make parts so you can build more 3D printers. Then, too late, you realize that you can’t keep up with your production schedule because your printer is too popular. Man, if I had a nickel…

Read more

via singularityhub.com

In the Next Industrial Revolution Atoms Are the New Bits - Wired and WITII?

As you've been reading here in many of my previous posts, one of the best examples of the Snowflake Effect and my constant quest around the theme of What if the Impossible Isn't? (WITII?), is that of the extreme mass personalization of the manufacturing process.  This is essentially democratizing manufacturing and therefore most of our physical world of human designed and made "things".  This all ties in nicely or is part of the often called the "Internet of Things".

Of course this is pure delight for me as The Snowflake Effect hits manufacturing and represents a huge surge forward in the transformation from mass production to mass customization.

IMHO, the importance and the long term effects of this new industrial revolution will be no less than and likely more than that of the previous.  Consider that most of our society, our education systems, our design models, our assumptions and our way of life are indelibly permeated by a mass production orientation and the influences of the initial industrial revolution.  Imagine, as I do, this is changing and doing so exponentially rapidly.  The future is a much more “Do it Yourself” DIY model, based on groups of individuals, access, collaboration, crowdsourcing and centered around great ideas.  Brace yourself for the future, it is already here.

I can therefore heartily recommend that you spend the time to read this recent Wired article in its entirety, watch the video and click on some of the many links in the article to learn more and likely convince yourself just how real and how big this coming revolution is. I’m confident you’ll agree it is a good use of your time.

The video is below and below that I’ve pulled a few quotes out which caught my mind’s eye.

Atoms Are the New Bits

Added: January 25, 2010

In an age of open source, custom-fabricated, DIY product design, all you need to conquer the world - and to profit - is a brilliant idea. Welcome to the next Industrial Revolution.

Some other significant out takes from the Wired article include:

"Within minutes, you have a whole new physical object: a rip, mix, and burn of atoms."

“Transformative change happens when industries democratize, when they’re ripped from the sole domain of companies, governments, and other institutions and handed over to regular folks. The Internet democratized publishing, broadcasting, and communications, and the consequence was a massive increase in the range of both participation and participants in everything digital — the long tail of bits.”

“Now the same is happening to manufacturing — the long tail of things.”

“Three guys with laptops” used to describe a Web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.”

“Hardware is becoming much more like software,”

“As Cory Doctorow puts it in his new book, Makers, “The days of companies with names like ‘General Electric’ and ‘General Mills’ and ‘General Motors’ are over. The money on the table is like krill: a billion little entrepreneurial opportunities that can be discovered and exploited by smart, creative people.””

“For a lens into the new world of open-access factories in China, check out Alibaba .com, the largest aggregator of the country’s manufacturers, products, and capabilities. Just search on the site (in English), find some companies producing more or less what you’re looking to make, and then use instant messaging to ask them if they can manufacture what you want. Alibaba’s IM can translate between Chinese and English in real time, so each person can communicate using their native language. Typically, responses come in minutes: We can’t make that; we can make that and here’s how to order it; we already make something quite like that and here’s what it costs.”

Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed - ReadWriteStart

Both the original  list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010" from Slideshare and the "connected" list from Dana Oshiro at Read Write Web are well done and well worth your time to read and reflect upon.

Social Media Secrets and Resources Revealed

Written by Dana Oshiro / January 12, 2010 4:30 PM 

Presentation company Slideshare recently released its list of "5 Social Media Secrets for 2010". While these secrets certainly sound like great suggestions, we thought we'd connect them to some concrete tactics and resources that you can use to improve your social media strategy.

via www.readwriteweb.com

Printers that Print Printers? WITII?

If you've been reading some of my posts over the past few months you know of my ongoing asking of the question What If The Impossible Isn't? or WITII? as I've been abreviating it.  This arose from my previous observation that we are living in a world of exponential change and the purpose of this theme of WITII? is to show that much, perhaps even most of what we assume to be impossible is actually now, or is about to be, possible.  And possible in this context is not so much that something has just been invented or accomplished in some research laboratory.  Possible in my the WITII? context is about products, services and capabilities that are available, affordable, accessible and usable for "the rest of us".

One of the more fun and significant examples of my ongoing quest for examples of "What if the impossible isn't?" (WITII?) and the Snowflake Effect of extreme mass personalization is that of 3D printers; machines that can create or "print" fully functional or "real" objects and assemblies.  3D printers are a good WITII? example in that they are not new, but they are beginning to reach a price point, availability and a functionality that can put them on your desktop on your budget and enable you to make things that you would want.  The application of this technology is also expanding dramatically as demonstrated by my previous post on the MIT Cornucopia project which looked at a 3D printer for food!

However as fun and exciting as these developments are, one of the most profound changes which 3D printers are ushering in is that of machines which can self replicate.  Simply put, you can buy a 3D printer which can "print" a copy of itself (some assembly required). 

Pause and think about that for a minute ...............  

Better yet, watch this video that will show you a recent example, the RepRap (short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper) self replicating 3D printer.  Well worth 8 minutes of your valuable time to see this in action and have Adrian Bowyer, the originator of the RepRap project explain it.

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

As per the video and the RepRap site:

“ This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €350). 

Not counting nuts and bolts RepRap can make 50% of its parts; the other parts are designed to be cheaply available everywhere.That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machineyou can use it to make another and give that one to a friend.

Talk about exponential rates of change!  This not only affects the rate of change for making these kinds of machines, it equally changes things like business models, sharing of designs and actual parts and machines.

I don't know about you but that sure get's me excited and has my head reeling!  See what I mean about "What if the impossible isn't?", what was once just something you read about in science fiction novels and movies is now on your desktop! 

I'll let you think on it a bit more and be back to you in future posts with both more examples and implications.

How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? – The Edge Annual Question – 2010

Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and read recent editions of Edge ...

Playwright Richard Foreman asks about the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". Is it a new self? Are we becoming Pancake People — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.

Technology analyst Nicholas Carr wrote the most notable of many magazine and newspaper pieces asking "Is Google Making Us Stupid". Has the use of the Web made it impossible for us to read long pieces of writing?

Social software guru Clay Shirky notes that people are reading more than ever but the return of reading has not brought about the return of the cultural icons we'd been emptily praising all these years. "What's so great about War and Peace?, he wonders. Having lost its actual centrality some time ago, the literary world is now losing its normative hold on culture as well. Is the enormity of the historical shift away from literary culture now finally becoming clear?

Science historian George Dyson asks "what if the cost of machines that think is people who don't?" He wonders "will books end up back where they started, locked away in monasteries and read by a select few?".

Web 2.0 pioneer Tim O'Reilly, ponders if ideas themselves are the ultimate social software. Do they evolve via the conversations we have with each other, the artifacts we create, and the stories we tell to explain them?

Frank Schirrmacher, Feuilleton Editor and Co-Publisher of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has noticed that we are apparently now in a situation where modern technology is changing the way people behave, people talk, people react, people think, and people remember. Are we turning into a new species —informavores? — he asks.

W. Daniel Hillis goes a step further by asking if the Internet will, in the long run, arrive at a much richer infrastructure, in which ideas can potentially evolve outside of human minds? In other words, can we change the way the Internet thinks?

What do you think?

---

The Edge Annual Question — 2010

HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?

---

John Brockman
Editor & Publisher

via www.edge.org

If the Edge World Question Center is new to you, give yourself the gift of reading some truly thought provoking ideas you’ll find there.  The name and basis of the Edge Foundation, which started in 1988, is:

To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

BBC Radio described The Edge (back in 2005) as "Fantastically stimulating ... It's like the crack cocaine of the thinking world.... Once you start, you can't stop thinking about that question."  My experience matches this and these questions are definitely cognitive crack for me!  so consider yourself warned:

The Edge World Question Center is SERIOUSLY ADDICTIVE!

I'm increasingly intrigued and delighted by the apparent resurgence of the Q&A (Question & Answer) format.  I've long been struck by the observation that great questions are more powerful than great answers, though I certainly want and need both.  You'll find plenty of both here in The Edge and with this most recent question of "How is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?"

My friend Erik Duval, who’s recent Tweet prompted me to read more of these answers, liked Harold Rheingold's answer of "Attention is the Fundamental Literacy" and his recollection of many of the thoughts from Doug Englebart such as:

From the beginning, Engelbart emphasized that the hardware and software created at his Stanford Research Institute laboratory, from the mouse to the hyperlink to the word processor, were part of a system that included "humans, language, artifacts, methodology and training." Long before the Web came along, Engelbart was frustrated that so much progress had been made in the capabilities of the artifacts, but so little study had been devoted to advancing the language, methodology and training — the literacies that necessarily accompany the technical capabilities.

and the need we all have for fundamental skills such as;

Crap detection — Hemingway's name for what digital librarians call credibility assessment — is another essential literacy. If all schoolchildren could learn one skill before they go online for the first time, I think it should be the ability to find the answer to any question and the skills necessary to determine whether the answer is accurate or not.

Some of the one’s I’ve read, an ongoing process, which stood out to me included:

Kevin Kelly's answer "AN INTERMEDIA WITH 2 BILLION SCREENS PEERING INTO IT"

Uncertainty is a kind of liquidity. I think my thinking has become more liquid. It is less fixed, as text in a book might be, and more fluid, as say text in Wikipedia might be. My opinions shift more. My interests rise and fall more quickly. I am less interested in Truth, with a capital T, and more interested in truths, plural. I feel the subjective has an important role in assembling the objective from many data points. The incremental plodding progress of imperfect science seems the only way to know anything.

And Kevin's observation that:

Rather than begin a question or hunch by ruminating aimlessly in my mind, nourished only by my ignorance, I start doing things. I immediately, instantly go.

I go looking, searching, asking, questioning, reacting to data, leaping in, constructing notes, bookmarks, a trail, a start of making something mine. I don't wait. Don't have to wait. I act on ideas first now instead of thinking on them.   For some folks, this is the worst of the Net — the loss of contemplation. Others feel that all this frothy activity is simply stupid busy work, or spinning of wheels, or illusionary action. I think to myself, compared to what?

Steward Brand's answer "One's Guild":

I couldn't function without them, and I suspect the same is true for nearly all effective people. By "them" I mean my closest intellectual collaborators. They are the major players in my social extended mind. How I think is shaped to a large degree by how they think.

Our association is looser than a team but closer than a cohort, and it's not a club or a workgroup or an elite. I'll call it a guild. Everyone in my guild runs their own operation, and none of us report to each other. All we do is keep close track of what each other is thinking and doing. Often we collaborate directly, but most of the time we don't. Everyone in my guild has their own guild---each of theirs largely different from mine. I'm probably not considered a member of some of them.

And Brian Eno noticing in his answer “The Authentic has Replaced the Reproducible” that:

I notice that everything the Net displaces reappears somewhere else in a modified form. For example, musicians used to tour to promote their records, but, since records stopped making much money due to illegal downloads, they now make records to promote their tours.

I notice that, as the Net provides free or cheap versions of things, 'the authentic experience' — the singular experience enjoyed without mediation — becomes more valuable. I notice that more attention is given by creators to the aspects of their work that can't be duplicated. The 'authentic' has replaced the reproducible.

I notice that almost all of us haven't thought about the chaos that would ensue if the Net collapsed.

I notice that my daily life has been changed more by my mobile phone than by the Internet.

As for my answer to this question of “How is the internet changing the way you think?”, if I had to condense it down to a single phrase or title, I’d say I wander more, I ponder more, I wonder more.

I don’t find that the net is changing the WAY I think, that is still as wonderfully weirdly Wayne as ever, however it is absolutely changing the quantity of WHAT I'm thinking about, and hopefully some of the quality. While there are many dimensions to this increased quantity of thinking, most specifically and powerfully for me, is that the internet supercharges my curiosity and exponentially increases my serendipity factor; the probability that I’m going unexpectedly discover and create completely new (to me) ideas, ways of thinking and perspectives. And this increase is exponential because as I pursue these serendipitous discoveries they lead me to more things I become serendipitously curious about and pursue.

I embrace this change.  I purposefully let myself go.  I wander more, both literally with my sailing around the world, which the internet has significantly enabled, and I figuratively wander more as I pursue these new questions and paths.   I wonder more in that I'm continuously led to ask new questions, to wonder "What if?" and "Why not" and I ponder more as I reflect more deeply on possible answers to these questions.  For me then, this is simply an exponentially increased form of learning, a way of living and I love it!

How is the internet changing the way I think? I wander more, I ponder more, I wonder more.

What’s YOUR answer?  How is the internet changing the way YOU think?

Your product may no longer be your product - Harold Jarche

When I started this blog six years ago I knew that I would “giving away” my thoughts for free. Some might say that’s all they’re worth. I’ve also kept the site ad free for a couple of reasons – ads don’t pay much, they get in the way of readers and I want people to focus on the conversations here or just get information they need. No ads sets me apart from many other sites, so that’s a good thing in the long run. I make my money mainly by consulting and less from speaking and writing. Externally, this blog is one big business card. Internally, it’s my knowledge base that informs my work. In addition, it’s a way to communicate with my peers.

I would surmise that ten years ago it was easier to sell a research report than it is now. There was less information available online for free. However, I think there is still a growing market for mass customization. That means a customized research report for me that’s different than one for somebody else. That’s pretty well what I sell: customized strategy & analysis for the specific context of each client. The challenge for Janet (and all of us in the custom information business) is figuring out the 90% that we should give away for free and the 10% that has market value and that we can charge for. 

via www.jarche.com

This posting by Harold Jarche, and the ensuing links and comments, has an interesting riff going on emerging business models and the tension between what is free and what is charged for.  Worth reading and contributing to.  Here's some of my thoughts;

One of the things I got from Kevin Kelly when he first wrote "New Rules for the New Economy" (still excellent reading IMHO) was that there is an inverse relationship between value and ease of copying/distributing. As with most, this is not an absolute rule but I think we are seeing this played out more and more and I find it helpful to think in of value being tied to uniqueness and that which can not be easily copied or distributed.

Along these lines, the notion of "mass customization" resonates strongly with me as it is the root of my incessant championing, along with my great friend and colleague Erik Duval, of mass personalization and The Snowflake Effect. However the other distinction which I find helpful is to see the transformation, metaphorically speaking, of the movement of value from nouns to verbs, or conceptually at least, from product like to more service like. 

Information is a noun/product when it is in the form of a report or document created on spec or in advance of a specific use or client. Whereas it is a verb/service when it is a collection of "just the right" information matched to a specific person/group and context. I would posit that information in and of itself has little to no value.  The value of information comes when it is Snowflaked or "just right" as in just the right information for just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right context on just the right medium/device, etc.  

The key term in here is context.  IMHO we will continue to see context, contextual computing and contextual technology play an increasingly critical role as the value of the Snowflake Effect of getting it "just right" becomes more and more the focus of our economy and life.

Hearing the Future? The YouTube Piano | Click and Play!

via www.youtube.com

*  see also this earlier version using an image of a keyboard rather than video

What caught my eye (ear?) was not so much the on screen piano this provides but the clever use, or more correctly re-use and re-purposing of video and timelines.  This piano example by itself is a bit of a novelty and one which wears of soon.  However, start to imagine how you could use this for other applications? Think about a new level of interactivity that anyone can add to any of the increasing volume of video that is being posted and a new way of creating and re-using/re-purposing video content. Try using this on a touch enabled screen such as your iPhone or Android.

Perhaps it helps to think of this along the lines of "scanning" rather than needing to recreate from scratch, to almost instantly capture that which already exists and use this as the raw components to create whatever YOU have in mind. 

As the fidelity of audio and video continues to increase the gap between real/original and simulated/recorded lessens to the point of being indistinguishable.

For me, this is yet another example of how we are transforming from consumers to creators and to a society of "ProSumers" the likes of which McLuhan, Nevitt and the Tofflers so presciently described back in the 70's.  And of course I also see this as more examples of how we are also becoming a society of "Tearners" (Teacher/Learners)  

Give this video piano example a try and see if you start to hear the future as you play?