IdeaFestival

"I, Gamer"

In a brief post at Terra Nova, Ren Reynolds wonders what the societal impact will be of a generation of game players that self-identify as "gamers." Without providing any answers - are there any now? - I just thought it was an interesting question, as was the title of his blog post.

Wayne

Information age: what happens to the "cognitive surplus?"

Making the rounds in support of his new book, Here Comes Everybody, digital media theorist Clay Shirky has been asking some provocative questions lately - for example, is there a cognitive surplus waiting to be tapped? 

Put another way - and I think this is a Shirky formulation from several years ago and a question for which I certainly have no answers - what happens to society when everything knowable can be known? He elaborates on these and other issues in the video above.

Wayne

Pretend Play and Metaphor

The importance of pretend play has long been noted as an important milestone in children's development.  Pretend Play allows children to experiment with social situations, strengthen vocabulary and build critical thinking skills. A child who engages in pretend play is also beginning the process of metaphorical thinking. 

One cannot think without metaphors. Metaphors are our way of making connections with the rest of the world; it is our way of understanding new ideas and learning. George Lakoff, another of my favorite linguists, explains the concept of metaphor and its relationship to our thinking. But what he doesn't do is talk about the process of becoming metaphorical.

That's where pretend play comes in.

What are the digital literacies?

Initial results from one of the largest ethnographic studies of kids in their native, digital environment are now available. Could the cheap availability of media be creating a new generation of creatives?

Sure, kids have long been attracted to extracurricular activities like dance or sports. But researchers say digital media is bringing up a new generation who are creators of media rather than just passive consumers of it. Within these digital environments among peers, kids who create and evaluate media are deriving a sense of competence, autonomy, self-determination and connectedness, researchers say.

The case studies discussed last Wednesday are part of a $50 million long-range MacArthur Foundation initiative, the digital media and learning project, to study whether - and how - digital media might be changing kids. Full results will be available later in the year.

More on the results of this study can be found on C|NET.

Wayne

I want to be foolish like this

Writing about the death of MIT computer science professor, Joseph Weizenbaum, Harvard crank Nicholas Carr and Discover columnist Jaron Lanier use Eliza's tale to assay against errors of the computational kind.

Let me explain.

In the 1960's Weizenbaum created a program called Eliza that would rephrase statements as questions and pose them to test subjects in what became an infamous test of computer-human interaction. Some individuals came to believe that the computer program was a human and lessons drawn from the episodes found their way into Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, which Carr references in his post, Eliza's World:

Perhaps we are beginning to understand that the abstract systems — the games computer people can generate in their infinite freedom from the constraints that delimit the dreams of workers in the real world — may fail catastrophically when their rules are applied in earnest. We must also learn that the same danger is inherent in other magical systems that are equally detached from authentic human experience, and particularly in those sciences that insist they can capture the whole man in their abstract skeletal frameworks [emphasis supplied].

It's easy now to poke fun at the subjects who came to believe that Eliza was human. But the larger lesson that I take - and the one suggested by Carr - is that reason and logic are only part of the human experience.

That is particularly true when it comes to thinking because it is belief - and theatrically, the suspension of disbelief - that makes us human. Belief combined with experience holds out possible worlds for our examination; it is on the superstructure of belief that we can absorb wisdom, practice empathy, strive for justice and extend mercy where none may be merited.

As cheaply amusing as it might be in hindsight, what Eliza demonstrated was not that we can foolishly ascribe feelings to objects, but that it is the suspension of the facts that makes foolishness - as well as soul-stirring grace - possible. The rules be damned.

An interactive Web-based version of Eliza is here.

Wayne

Insight: no exclusives

Citing examples from a new book, Group Genius, Johnnie Moore suggests that we're all too often willing to claim the exclusive to an insight. Creative problem solving isn't about eliminating constraints, it's about collaboratively working with existing knowledge.

Wayne

An American Generational Biography

[Update: Delano's slides are available.]

Richard K. Delano, who is the Co-founder LifeCourse Associates, a generational analysis consulting and publishing firm, is presenting this morning in an IdeaFestival event in Louisville.

It's titled "Millennials Rising: Recruiting, Retaining & Marketing to 'Today's' Generation."

IF plans to do more than of these events going forward. I blogged yesterday about another such event. So stay tuned.

Richard says he's at the tail end of three straight weeks on the road. He explains that he got involved in 1992 with Scholastic Inc., to manage its custom publication operation. By way of doing some research, he read the book Generations (1991), which was a big hit with the heavyweight political set in the White House and Congress. The book is about 500 pages, but the last chapter discussed the millennial generation, something he remembered. He has continued his generational study.

All generational change is nonlinear. Stepping WAY back, he says there have been 14 generations from 1584 to 2069, grouped in fours. We're on the cusp of a "fourth turn" now.

He believes that four generational archetypes are repeated every four years - Hero, Artist, Prophet, and Nomad. The corresponding periods are High, Awakening, Unraveling and Crisis.

Boomers are born in a High period and came of age in the Awakening period, for example. Returning to the grouping of four theme, he believes that Boomers correspond to the "Civil War missionary generation." I'd love to hear more about that.

He believes that there is a very good story to tell about the Millennial generation now.

As a way of making a point on perspectives, the generations are like trains going through stations. The view is changing along the way but the perspectives might not.

More quickly now. I'll apologize in advance for not capturing everything:

G.I. generation participated in improving youth trends, particularly when it comes to education. It's a perspective that they've carried forward.

The Silent Generation ages 62 - 80 now were told to keep their heads low and were largely rewarded. One typical big concern for this group in the workplace might be about work pensions, something most people now don't even count on. They stayed in the background and remained socially conformed.

The Boomer population is actually a smaller percentage of the population than X-ers and Gen-Y. In a funny line, he says Boomers "took drugs to think outside the box, and give their kids drugs to think inside the box."

They were a generation of one worsening youth trend - SAT scores declined. Boomers famously resisted authority.

Since 1967 a poll of incoming freshmen has shown a decline in people who say developing a meaningful philosophy of life is their most important goal.

X-ers - 25 - 46 in age, take a more jaded view, in contrast. They want to get to the point. That realism is also combined with a certain pessimism toward the job they have. They are much more quick to job hop.

Gen-X parents focus on cost when it comes to what they want out of a college.

Millennials, who were born in 1982, are community focused. It sounds like the G.I. Generation of four generations ago. They are also the most diverse generation; it will be known for the assimilation of those immigrants.

The biggest divides between Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials are gender, race and money, respectively.

Millennial personality traits are special, sheltered, confident and team-oriented, among others traits he lists. But ironically, this generation, which will be so accomplished, may be less socially adept - something pointed out to the business owners and managers in the audience.

There is more trust in institutions and the fairness of rules. They accept peer pressure more readily.

There is a ton of data on screen that I'm not capturing as he scrolls through the Millennial data, sorry.

It's a "Harry Potter" generation - smart and educated and more oriented toward institutions than the recent past. Walt Disney, Google, Department of State, FBI and CIA are top job choices for this group. They have a very different sensitivity toward life and community. For companies, making social commitments are important to Millennials. Google exploits this by not limiting social networking on the job.

The number of passing AP exams also continues to rise among all racial groups in this generation.

But don't think that the group will think outside the box - he emphasizes that each generation has its strengths and weaknesses. It's a steady refrain.

There is, however, a huge shift from "I" to "we," something that should be applauded.

In conclusion, the generations are now spinning into the "fourth turning," where the Millennials take the country can't be predicted with accuracy. It's simply not a linear process, he cautions.

He also touches on similarities the between the generations in the U.S. and China, something I'd like to hear more about.

And with that, we're done.

Wayne

Nice people get more

Do nice people get more? Freakonomics:

'People who punish others the least earn the biggest rewards in repeated interactions, according to a new study published in the journal Nature and authored by Martin Nowak, director of the evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard University'.

Yeah, they do.

Wayne

Spend your way to happiness

Money can buy you happiness. Spending money can buy you happiness. Spending money on others can make you happier.

Wayne

Business is getting real five different ways

While reading a variety of business related articles lately, it occurred to me that commerce is getting real in five different ways. To wit:

Describing the video streaming site Hulu, BusinessWeek had this to say about what characterizes Gen-Y design.

  Hulu's chief design theme, one that clearly appeals to this market, says David Wertheimer, executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California, is its pared-down aesthetic, which 'gets at the bare essence of the product.' Hulu's simple pages are unencumbered by advertising, while the user interface is uncomplicated and intuitive. "There are no blinking lights, no flashy buttons all over the place," says Wertheimer. 'It's a simple, high-quality streaming experience.'  

In contrast, other streaming television services, from ABC, CBS, as well as Fox and NBC's own branded sites, are advertising-heavy, often work poorly, and are generally more complicated to navigate.

One commenter in the story added that "being fake is worse than being uncool."

In other words, consumers are demanding that economic transactions must somehow be believable - whether buying a product's storyline or being directly involved in a good story, people increasingly want - my view - to have faith in their transactions. And from my experience as well, younger people are less likely to purchase from individuals and organizations that substitute blinking lights for solid content.

Elsewhere, Hugh MacLeod has posted the third installment of Hugh & the Rabbi. Gathered 'round a data connection, the group, which includes Hugh, Rabbi Pinny, Johnnie Moore and Mark Earls - freely use words like "infinite" and "love" and "purpose" and "playful" and "belief" to elaborate on the idea that fake is the unforgivable business sin.

And as I've discovered more recently, economics and economists are getting real too.

I recently finished a book, Pulse: the Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things, that has an interesting and lengthy chapter on the impossibility of divorcing macro economics and monetary policy from physical reality. The author, Robert Frenay, calls on economists to get outside their heads and into the nature of business. The basic idea is that the story of free enterprise is (partially, thus far) the successful story of adapting economic transactions to the ways of the world, to the reality all around us. How loosely joined activity can result in a common good is, of course, Adam Smith's central insight. And Frenay builds on this point by suggesting monetary policy be built around a clearer understanding of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics! It's as unlikely a comment on money as you'll find.

And finally, the understanding of people as rational economic beings is undergoing a revolution. Behavioral economists are ditching the idea that people make obviously rational decisions. As it turns out, you and I as consumers aren't terribly logical. But you already knew that, right?

Wayne