IdeaFestival

Prize philanthropy

Ethan at my Heart's in Accra links to a story from the Christian Science Monitor on Africa's $5 million prize for top leaders. The Mo Ibrahim Prize, about which more can found at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation web site, was awarded to Joachim Chissano, the former president of Mozambique.

If you're interested in so-called "prize philanthropy," give Tom Vander Ark at the X-Prize Foundation a read. He's lately been giving a lot of thought to the what and why of prizes, contending that they play an important fourth role after markets, governments and non-profits. I've certainly seen a lot about prizes in the news lately - and to the extent that groundbreaking efforts are encouraged and recognized, it sounds like good news to me.   

Wayne 

2018: What will "literate" mean?

What will it mean to be literate ten years from now? MacArthur Spotlight on Digital Media contributor and a researcher with the University of Chicago Center for Urban School Improvement, Nichole Pinkard, suggests this definition:

In essence literate in 2018 will mean being multi-literate - the ability to critically consume and produce media such as print, video, sound and screen. Of course this conjecture is not new. Many technologists, educators, and policy makers are espousing this future. However, while the synergy regarding what it will mean to be literate in the future is growing, the blueprint for getting there is still on the drafting table. If we are to prepare our sixth graders of today for the world they will face tomorrow we must begin today to rethink our definitions and methods of supporting youth in becoming multiliterate.

I don't the answers either, but clearly media literacy has moved beyond writing letters to the editor or critically reading the newspaper or watching the evening news with whomever.

We can all produce media now.

Wayne

Manage innovation lightly

Delving into its archives, Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge is out with articles on innovation, linking to pieces on managing creativity, "user innovation," harnessing disruptive change and "open source science."

When managing people, the first piece suggests that "creative types shouldn't necessarily be customer focused" - and that to get a new outcome, "do something different." Well OK. Sound advice. I might add if the organization is really forward looking, total quality management and six sigma programs might just slow innovation.

Business school professor Karim R. Lakhani is the author of the piece on open source science, an article I mentioned last December.

Wayne

Winning the design "peace"

Having won the war to convince business of the value of design, will designers now be able to win the peace? 

This brief post at Intangible Economy reminded me strongly of a recent trend in the information technology industry. Because information technology has simply become business technology, surveys show that organizations looking for technologists to fill senior company positions now strongly prefer those individuals with an understanding of business that is at least as strong as their understanding of technology. I suspect the same transformation may be occurring in the design profession. Great illustrators and industrial designers, for example, need to know - and clearly enunciate - how their work supports the overall enterprise.

The source for the Intangible Economy post is a Bruce Nussbaum column in BusinessWeek, The Crisis of Success in Design/Innovation.

Wayne

Epimetheus and Titan

Here is another spectacular image taken by Cassini, now in its 19th tour of the Saturn system. Battered and beaten Epimetheus can be seen in the foreground with the planet's A and F rings. In the background is shrouded Titan where Huygens' rests, one of the very few places in the solar system with an atmosphere.

On the 15th of the month, the imaging team for Cassini released many, many wonderful images to celebrate the 10th anniversary the mission, all of which are free to the public.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Wayne

Finding real people for (virtual world) jobs

So how does the MacArthur Foundation tackle the challenge of filling positions for virtual world openings? Global Kids’ Director of Online Leadership, Barry Joseph, share a story about hiring for virtual worlds positions most people don't even know exist.

The effort is part of MacArthur's study of the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds.

Wayne

Finding ourselves in the stars

Centauri Dreams has posted a number of interesting ideas in the past several days, perhaps none more thought provoking than finding (self) consciousness among the stars. Commenting on recent spate of news regarding the search for life elsewhere in the cosmos, Paul Gilster wonders if we will find minds to go along with that intelligence.

While the suggestion has very old philosophical roots - what is this other thing we call consciousness? - it springs from an even more basic question: what is life? Amplifying the first point, he quotes from the book Lonely Minds in the Universe. 

...if it may be easier to give a theoretical definition of consciousness than of intelligence, it is much more difficult to tell whether a being is self-conscious or not.

And he concludes:

I suspect SETI will be a long, hard search. And if it ever does snag an undisputed signal from an extraterrestrial civilization, I would wager that it won’t be a directed beacon but an extraneous transmission that we’ll probably never be able to decipher. A huge event in human history, to be sure, but forever enigmatic, reminding us that in terms of communication, the distance between species, as sometimes between individuals, may dwarf our merely human comprehension.

If you are at all interested in the technologies and the questions behind the reach for the stars, please check out Centauri Dreams.

Wayne

Wikipedia: extremophiles

Drumming up culture

What does a six second drum solo from the b-side of a 1969 single have to do with creativity and the history of music?

Quite a bit, actually.

I found this fascinating video via Steve Hardy at Creative Generalist, who points out that innovation and culture build on themselves and must, consequently, have access to the past. Thanks Steve!

If you'd like more on the development of a creative commons, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has written and talked extensively on the subject and maintains a frequently updated blog.

Wayne

How valuable is the Web?

At Internet Evolution, Stowe Boyd asks: "what's the Web worth?"

Wayne

"Proust was a Neuroscientist"

Where in human history have poets and novelists predicted modern technological breakthroughs with their art? A book I plan to purchase, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, makes the case for relevance of poetry and prose to science.

Similarly, in a March editorial Jason Pontin, editor of MIT's Technology Review, described the influence of science fiction on science fact this way:

Most of us came to technology through science fiction; our imaginations remain secretly moved by ­science-fictional ideas. Only the very exalted are honest about their debt. In his collection of lectures on the future of technology, Imagined Worlds, the great theoretical ­physicist Freeman Dyson writes, "Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams...."

Fans decry any emphasis on their favored genre's predictive power (science fiction, they say, is really about the present day); but nonetheless, the accurate predictions of many science fiction writers are justly famous. Geostationary telecommunications satellites were first proposed by Arthur C. Clarke in a paper titled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-Wide Radio Coverage?" published in Wireless World in October 1945. Space travel has been a staple of science fiction since Jules Verne published De la Terre à la Lune in 1865. Robots first appeared in Karel C˘apek's play R.U.R. in 1921. Indeed, it is more useful to ask, What hasn't SF predicted?

And while I'm on the theme, artists and designers can draw inspiration from science as well. One designer finds common ground between microbiology and graphic design in an October 16 editorial at Design Observer.

Wayne