Recently in innovation Category
NY Times columnist Paul Krugman lays out the right plan for solving two immense problems at once:
1. Economic depression
2. Environmental ruination
Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall -- when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."
He says - surprise, surprise - that Americans need to "greenify" (my word) the marketplace. Or else.
"Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we're living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets," argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: "Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts."
The Grand View Coffee Shop opened in tiny Vassalboro, ME yesterday. The signs on the window read as follows:
6 a.m.-6 p.m.
Over 18 only.No cameras, no touching, cash only.
Why? Because the baristas and wait-staff are topless. Yes, topless. How (un)fortuanate.
Happy Darwin Day everyone! Celebrating the man who wrote one of the most influential books the world has ever seen, The Origin of Species.
Tonight the TED Prize recipients will make their wish live from the annual, inspirational conference featuring the best and brightest future-shapers of the world.
What a wonderful book idea over at Snarkmarket. They're exploring emergent fields of the kottke-termed Liberal Arts 2.0.
I'd like to get more into this later but here is a totally unorganized synopsis from the ongoing discussion of what LA2.0 is.
Art
Design
Photography
Music
*
Languages
Literature
Philosophy
*
History
Politics
Economics
*
Mathematical Sciences
Natural Sciences
Biological Sciences
*
Food
Per Jason in the comments section:
Here's the list I came up with shortly after concocting the term for a talk I did in early 2007:
Graphic design, freakonomics, photography, programming, film, remixing, video games, food, advertising, internet life skills, journalism, fashion.
To be sure the concept must be explored more, but the idea is that young people need a new skill set these days.
There is a new home economics to learn - as they discuss on the aforementioned pages - and video games are no longer the exception (now they are the rule).
So last night I was introduced to the Gigapan.
Gigapan is a collaborative project of Google, Carnegie Mellon University and NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division's Robotics Group. It is a robotic platform that attaches to a digital camera and some computer software. The robotic platform allows a user to take a photograph, then it will re-aim the camera with great precision, to take another photograph. After taking many photos, the software stitches all the pictures into a gigapixel image.
The results are absolutely stunning. Check out this panoramic picture from Obama's Inauguration. Zoom in. Keep going and going and going and going and going and well, you get the point. The shot contains 220 individual pictures and totals a whopping 1,474 megapixels! Enjoy crowd surfing.
If you want to check out more photos using this technology head over to the Gigapan website. (thanks morgan)
cre⋅a⋅tiv⋅i⋅ty - the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.
Creativity, the forefather of innovation, is paramount. As Americans, our chief export for years has been the fruits of our innovations. Especially in the struggling global economy, we'll need to strengthen our strong suit to stay relevant. So that means we need to be more creative. How do we do that?
One of the preeminent thinkers in the field of creativity found the zone. You know the zone. You've been in the zone. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it the flow. You've felt the flow. You know the flow.
Creativity is a fickle beast. Csikszentmihalyi claims that only two elements come into play when finding the zone: skills and challenges (see chart). If your challenges are greater than your skills, you'll find yourself apathetic, worried, or anxious. If your skills are greater than your challenges, you'll find yourself apathetic, bored, or overly-relaxed. Feeling of arousal in the former and control in the latter signal a close proximity to the flow. It's there. We just need to find it. And we need to find it fast.
If you get it right - if your challenges and skills grow together - you're in the flow. That's where we all want to be. It is the state of "intrinsic motivation." It is a self-powering, serendipitous feeling that comes about when work and play overlap.
Csikszentmihalyi found nine byproducts of "feeling the flow:"
1. Clearer goals
2. Higher degree of concentration and focus
3. Loss of self-consciousness
4. Distorted sense of time
5. Direct and immediate feedback to action
6. Balance between ability level and challenge
7. Sense of personal control over actions
8. Activity becomes intrinsically rewarding
9. Increased awareness of action results
In the past, Kottke has talked about the nearly identical realm of "relaxed concentration." He gives examples from sports and entertainment, among others. Csikszentmihalyi calls it "focused attention," but that is a distinction without a difference. Either way, all else falls away save the task at hand.
Knowing how to find the flow is important, especially with the upcoming rise of the creative class. Yes, green-collar jobs will be extremely important and creativity must play a role in that, but the creative class in general will be the backbone of the American ideal in the near future. If we are to continue the longstanding tradition of the US as trailblazer and leader in the global economy, creativity must be fostered. Innovation will die if creativity is stifled. Innovation will stall if creativity is just left alone. Innovation can only thrive if creativity is actively pursued. This shall be our task.
Dr. Richard Florida uses the term "creative class" and found it's existence tied directly to three requirements (or the three T's):
1. Talent, or the need for a highly talented, educated, and/or skilled populationThat's it. That's all we need for creativity. Then we match skills with challenges and get in the zone. And off we go. Happy. Healthy. Wealthy. Wise.
2. Tolerance, or the need for a diverse community and a "live and let live" ethos
3. Technology, or the need for technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture.
