IdeaFestival

Equus dance

And now for something completely different. Here is some stunning video from the 2006 World Equestrian Games, which come to my home, Lexington, Kentucky in 2010.

The big ideas? Grace, precision, tireless practice, physical fitness, coordination, performance, subtlety, interspecies communication and beauty.

Wayne

See the video at YouTube. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

Brett Jeffreys

I just wanted to let IF readers know that a new contributor, Brett Jeffreys, will post from time to time at IFblog. Brett heads up business development at a Louisville, Kentucky ad agency, Paul Schultz, which has worked with the ideaFestival, designing among other things the nifty orange IF logo at the top of this web log.

Brett plans to talk a little bit about life in the business of creativity.

He is also one of the nicest people I've met, which makes perfect sense once you find out he's from Toronto. Being an all around good guy must be a requirement for the Canadian passport.

Welcome, Brett.

Wayne

Laptop XO, gaming platform?

At the Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning, Benjamin Stokes offers a couple of macro shifts he thinks might be occurring in gaming, one of which could be the beginning of a shift away from traditional consoles like Nintendo and PS2 toward something else.

He links to a post, Games for Good, which had this to say about a potential gaming platform that I hadn't considered before, Laptop XO.

Given that One Laptop Per Child, the brainchild of MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte, aims to seed delivery of 10 million machines to children in undeveloped countries by the end of 2008, 50 million by 2010, and 150 million million thereafter—with the goal of eventually distributing a laptop to every child in the undeveloped world—it’s not hard to see why Suzanne Seggerman, a founder of Games For Change, described the development as “the single biggest thing to happen to our community, perhaps ever.”

It’s also a great challenge, one that even [S.J.] Klein [who keynoted the recent Game Developers Conference] acknowledged. It will require developers to completely rethink their approach to serious games, which are often designed using conventions and motifs that target specific populations of literate, well-educated, already tech-savvy gamers—precisely the opposite of Laptop XO’s target users....

Given my belief that virtuality could make the next generationa a bit smarter, I really dig that.

Wayne

Put your hands up and step away from the Macbook

The Register has published a nice piece on Intel anthropologist Genevieve Bell, who believes tech can indeed be tedious.

I've mentioned Ms. Bell before, but in addition to her study of the cultural subversion of technology, the Register article brought this mystery to my attention:

Bell says people outside the mainstream are often more useful in determining attitudes of the whole, though we didn't entirely understand why.

Though I'm clearly not ready to pitch the electronics, the constant chirp of technology can be tiring - and there are times when I think the culture around me could benefit from some time on the therapy couch. But like Dr. Bell, I've been privileged to get to know some people who've made a commitment to an alternative, to slow living.

The Mays Lick Asparagus Festival is on the horizon and I can't wait.

Wayne

Hat tip: Putting People First.

What toread?

What are people bookmarking to read later?

I've always found the social bookmarking site del.icio.us useful - using items tagged "ideaFestival" to fill in the Daily Linkage on IFblog, for example - but I had never seen this tag before. At the time of this writing there were quite a number of information technology-related posts tagged for later reading, but two others, "Intelligent Designs," which discusses the work data visualizer Edward Tufte, and "Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy" from AlterNet, appealed to me.

And I thought I might just work them into a post.

The subscription URL for that tag is here if you'd like to add it to your feeds.

Wayne

Language of light

In a follow up on a story he wrote about a single photon server, Roland Piquepaille at ZDNet has written that French researchers have managed to record the life of a photon, something previously thought impossible.

French researchers ... have used ultra cold atoms of rubidium to record the full life of a photon. This was one of Einstein's dreams, but it was thought as an impossible one before. In fact, a photon disappears when it delivers its information. But with what has been described as an 'experimental masterwork,' the physicists have observed the 'quantum jumps' done by single photons for as long as half a second. This discovery should lead to important developments for future high performance computers and quantum computing — and certainly to the field of physics.

I'm attracted to the words, "a photon disappears when it delivers its information, which, if I'm not mistaken, is synonymous with "deliver its energy." Piquepaille has also made note of quantum biology on his blog.

I don't know what I don't know about quantum computing, but the idea that physics, or for that matter, biology, is fundamentally information just fascinates me.   

Wayne

Wikipedia: qubit

Med students learn artful diagnosis

MSBNC has posted an interesting piece, Art Classes Hone Med Students' Visual Skills, on how medical students are learning to better their observational skills through art appreciation.

In a collaboration between Jefferson Medical College and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, first and second year students are taught how to take a visual inventory of paintings, paying particular attention to subtle elements, such texture and brightness, and specifics details, such as body language and facial expressions. For the 2007-2008 school year, classes such as "Accuracy and Perception," "Hand-Eye Coordination," "Art in Healing," and "Sculpture and Surgery" have been planned.

A 2001 Journal of the American Medical Association study found that medical students at Yale University taking similar courses displayed sharper observational skills than their colleagues who didn’t take such courses, according to MSNBC.

The piece reminded me of this bit of data from another study reported at Cognitive Daily that compared the eye movement of trained artists and casual observers while looking at the same images. It concluded that those trained in the visual arts just see more.

Wayne

Somethingness is irresistible

Andrew Sullivan links to this fantastic exchange between the author of Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and one reader, Michael Weiss, on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. A Kibitz on Pure Reason is a sporty and high minded discussion of the philosopher's rationalism, exploring, among other subjects, the passions of supposition. It put me in mind of Jaron Lanier's hope, expressed at The Edge, that rationalism will become ever more romantic. Given that our conceptual faculties leave our senses wishing for more, it's a fond desire.

Goldstein certainly believes that behind his hyper-rationalism, Spinoza had a big heart.

But for me the the second day's dialog gets down to it, asking the question lurking behind that cool rationalism, a question that is the subtext for a great deal of philosophical inquiry:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Rebecca Goldstein, commenting on Wiess' suggestion that the encounter between Gottfried Leibniz and Spinoza described in The Courtier and the Heretic was a bit of mismatch, touches on foundationalism, perhaps a lesser known bequest of the Enlightenment, in her answer:

Both of them were committed to there being an ultimate answer to that question. That question could serve as a fine way of dividing up philosophers, according to those who think that that question has an answer, even if it's one we can't get at, and those who think that there's simply no answer out there at all to that question. On this score, Spinoza and Leibniz were playing in the same band, tooting on the same horn and singing the same lyrics, to wit that there is, because there has to be, an explanation for the world at large.

The question that divided them was whether logic alone provided that explanation. Spinoza said it did, thus committing himself to the claim that this is the only logically possible world. Leibniz, who was by far the better logician—-in fact, the advances he made in mathematical logic are staggering, though he kept almost all of them to himself—said there was an infinite plurality of logically possible worlds, so logic itself can't answer the question of why this particular world is the one that got realized.

For Spinoza, logic has generative powers; logic is the only thing that explains itself, the very causa-sui itself—that's his famous Deus sive natura.  But for Leibniz, the logician, logic isn't generative. Logic is perfectly inert insofar as existence is concerned...

Logic generates itself? Of the two, I'll take Leibniz' view.

In another stab at the answer that has always appealed to me because it bypasses the head and goes straight to the gut, science author K.C. Cole suggests that oblivion is unstable. Nothingness is rather hard to maintain, "somethingness," irresistible.

Check out the Kibitz on Pure Reason if you get the chance. And fasten your rhetorical seat belts.

Wayne

Nussbaum: design a process, not product

In his column at BusinessWeek, Are Designers the Enemy of Design?, Bruce Nussbaum reprints a recent speech of his suggesting that designers are their own worst enemy and offers this bit of advice: get over yourself.

He also makes this observation about the evolving role of design that I find interesting:

Maybe the object of design is not a finished product but a set of tools that allow people to design their experiences for themselves. Think iPod and iTunes. Think TiVo. Starbucks. Fortunately, design has tremendous tools. In fact, design has evolved from a simple practice to a powerful methodology of Design Thinking that, I believe, can transform society. By that I mean Design, with a capital D, can move beyond fashion, graphics, products, services into education, transportation, economics and politics. Design can become powerful enough to be an approach to life, a philosophy of life. But it can do so only when Design by Ego ends and Design by Conversation begins.

I don't know how Nussbaum's notion of a "design democracy" will evolve - except to say it probably doesn't mean the kind of cumulative aesthetic achieved at SwarmSketch - but I hope he continues to track the idea. Design-as-process does offer much, much more than a finished product. It might, if the Open Architecture Network is any indication, just narrow the intention deficit.

For another take on the Nussbaum article, check out JustinIdea's "Democratizing Design."

Wayne

Hat tip: Putting People First

Iconic science: the "spell of equations"

A well told story is indispensable. But discussing the urge to pull narrative whole from science fact, Robert P. Crease in his physicsweb essay, "Equations as Icons," offers a useful distinction for determining whether those urges help or harm.

[Remarkable equations like Richard Feynman's e^iπ + 1 = 0 or Albert Einstein's E = mc²] serve as clear and concise examples of what equations and formulas do: they show how seemingly disparate elements are implicated in a unity, and do so concisely, with few moving parts, so to speak. They bring what equations do out into the open. They are like a really good joke the economy of which reveals the structure of a joke, or a proof so concise that it demonstrates what a proof is.

If equations have a dark side, it is that they can also lead us to think that knowledge resides in the equation itself, rather than in the ongoing processes of construction and renovation.

Though Crease does not use the word, strenuous efforts to find a neat resolution to problems, or to wrap a bow tie around difficult issues, become something else if they put an end to inquiry. In that case they become idols, both sign and referent.

Wayne