Your browser (Internet Explorer 7 or lower) is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites. Learn how to update your browser.

X

Undivided 2012

Today (5 April) sees the start of the IFES Europe student evangelism conference in Gyor, Hungary.

I’m planning to trial Storify as a means of documenting the event based on what is being discussed and shared online. I’m not at the event myself, but I hope the storify stream below will help give a flavour of what is happening and how people are responding. I see potential in using storify as a means to document other IFES events as they happen around the world. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Google’s self-driving car.

A well-produced video from Google, demonstrating their self-driving car.

Against:

  •  I enjoy driving.

For:

  • Has the potential to make the roads much safer and more efficient, increasing the capacity of existing road networks (especially by reducing the number of ‘middle-lane hogs’ on motorways).
  • There could be fewer, and more centralised car parks. Once you’ve arrived at your destination, you can instruct the car to park itself.
  • Could radically change the idea of ‘car ownership’, with the ability to rent/hire a vehicle on a per-trip basis. Massive environmental benefits.

How would you feel about having/using a car like this? Add a comment below.

Are you a thermometer or a thermostat?

I’m currently reading one of Seth Godin‘s books on leadership: Tribes. In the chapter I was reading today, Godin makes an interesting observation of the key differences between a thermometer and a thermostat, and how those same kinds of differences might be observed in human nature.

Mike Torres writes a nice summary of this observation, so I’ll point you to him rather than try and rephrase something he’s already done so well.

In summary:

  • Thermometers like to criticize once a direction is chosen. They’re always first to notice when something is wrong, but can’t take the necessary steps to fix it. They’re the armchair quarterbacks of the world and are great at telling you what you already know. The thermometer has an ability to lead only in so much as hindsight is 20/20. They can’t plan or adapt to changes.
  • Thermostats take the temperature of the room first and then put a plan in place to adapt. They’re the leaders and the visionaries, and the people you rely on to stay calm in a crisis and lead you to the next level. Thermostats are able to work past criticism and negativity and push forward even when the odds are against them. Thermostats exhibit self-control and stability.

 

I wonder what you make of this analogy. Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Are you a thermometer, or a thermostat?

 

Out of the box.

A great idea, if a little impractical, this is a beautifully designed concept for a technical manual.

Most phones come with flimsy manuals with complicated language and jargon. These books, which can live on a bookshelf actually contain the phone.

Each page reveals the elements of the phone in the right order, helping the user to set up the sim card, the battery and even slide the case onto the phone.

The second book is the main manual – the phone actually slots into this and becomes the center of attention.

Arrows point to the exact locations the user should press, avoiding confusion and eliminating the feeling of being lost in a menu.

Energy and the new industrial revolution.

Energy-sharing is the new internet, according to Jeremy Rifkin in this month’s Wired. In talking about the ‘Third Industrial Revolution’ he makes some interesting observations about the connectedness of both communications and energy technologies in bringing about significant societal change, as happened in the two previous industrial revolutions (more below).

I wonder what you think about his predictions about energy change. Let me know by leaving a comment below.

“History’s great economic revolutions occur when new communication technologies converge with new energy systems. Energy revolutions make possible more expansive and integrated trade. Accompanying communication revolutions manage the new complex commercial activities. In the 18th and 19th centuries, cheap print technology and the introduction of state schools gave rise to a print-literate workforce with the skills to manage the increased commercial activity made possible by coal and steam power, ushering in the First Industrial Revolution. In the 20th century, centralised electricity communication — the telephone, radio and television — became the medium to manage a more complex and dispersed oil, auto and suburban era, and the mass consumer culture of the Second Industrial Revolution.

“Today, internet technology and renewable energies are about to merge to create a powerful infrastructure for a Third Industrial Revolution (TIR).

“The democratisation of energy will also bring with it a reordering of human relationships, impacting the way we conduct business, govern society, educate our children and engage in civic life.

“The TIR will lay the foundations for a collaborative age. Its completion will signal the end of a 200-year commercial saga characterised by industrious thinking, entrepreneurial markets and mass workforces, and the beginning of a new era marked by collaborative behaviour, social networks and boutique professional and technical workforces. In the coming half-century, conventional, centralised business operations will be increasingly subsumed by the distributed business practices of the TIR; and the traditional, hierarchical organisation of power will give way to lateral power organised nodally across society.

“Today, however, the collaborative power unleashed by internet technology and renewable energies restructures human relationships, from top to bottom to side to side, with profound consequences. The music companies didn’t understand distributed power until millions of people began sharing music online, and corporate revenues tumbled in less than a decade. Encyclopedia Britannica did not appreciate the collaborative power that made Wikipedia the leading reference source in the world. Newspapers didn’t take the blogosphere seriously; now many titles are either going out of business or moving online. The implications of people sharing energy are even more far-reaching.

“The democratisation of information and communication has altered the nature of global commerce and social relations as significantly as the print revolution. Now, imagine the impact that the democratisation of energy across all of society is likely to have when managed by internet technology.”

Jeremy Rifkin is president of the Foundation on Economic Trends and the bestselling author of nineteen books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on the economy, the workforce, society, and the environment. 

Why I support the protest against SOPA/PIPA.

If you’re not sure what this SOPA/PIPA business is all about, this video is a great introduction.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

 

Whilst my own thinking on this issue is still developing, there are some specific issues I have with SOPA/PIPA.

  • The legislation is driven by old-media content-companies who have struggled to monetise new media to extract the level of profits they are used to. We are living in a new environment with new opportunities and challenges. Legislation will stifle creativity, not protect it. The only aim of this legislation is to protect the profits of large corporates.
  • If this legislation is passed, it highlights the hypocrisy of the West in pointing the finger at regimes that control access to the internet in other parts of the world, whilst doing the exact same thing within their own borders. We need to get a grip.

However, it does also raise the question of what freedom actually is. We don’t always have the same perspective on this.

I’ve been reading the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, and this morning read of an email exchange between Jobs and Ryan Tate of Gawker media (where, apparently, today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news, hmmm). By evoking Jobs’ love of Bob Dylan, and asking what Dylan might feel about Apple – “Would he think the iPad had the faintest thing to do with ‘revolution’?” – he suggests that revolutions are about freedom.

Interestingly, this was Jobs’ response: “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’…”

Whilst I’m not a 100% advocate of the Apple procedure for approving apps etc, I’m struck that where many were advocating the choice for porn, Steve Jobs was advocating freedom from porn. The freedom to choose (even when this might cost others) versus the freedom from bad choices. Again, I’m not sure I trust Apple enough to always be making good choices on my behalf, but I do find it refreshing how another side is brought to light in this exchange.

Tellingly, Jobs even suggests that Tate “might care more about porn when you have kids…”. Porn enslaves millions, if you count both those forced into the industry through economic desparation, and those for whom the internet enables the secret continuation of bad choices.

Freedom and choice is a complex issue, and I recognise that many of the ‘freedoms’ I enjoy today have come – and still do – at the cost of others.

As you wrestle with these difficult choices, what advice might you give to help others make good, well informed decisions?

Educating the future-makers.

In this month’s Wired magazine, Bas Verhart asks whether education is failing the future-makers.

He says: “Some of the world’s greatest creative leaders dropped out, found a way to create the type of education they needed, and changed our world”, citing the examples of Edwin Land (co-founder of Polaroid), Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the geodesic dome) and, of course, the late Steve Jobs.

In exploring why today’s future makers are dropping out he gives some interesting examples (see the full list in his article):

  • Society is changing so fast that science-based education can barely keep up, meaning students often know more about subjects than their professors.
  • Instead of looking at absolute truths based on the past (which gives a false sense of certainty), futuremakers imagine scenarios that don’t yet exist.
  • Because futuremakers get a rush out of the next big thing, they are constantly following their instinct for change.
  • They typically have an explorative and analytical mindset, and are divergent and convergent thinkers.

“…maybe the concept of an ‘institution’ is all wrong”, Bas continues, “…maybe these thinkers had to drop out in order to find the various pieces of education, inspiration and experimentation they needed to achieve vision. Today’s schools seem to be missing out on teaching ‘discovery skills’, described in The Innovator’s DNA (Clayton M Christensen et al) as associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking.”

I wonder what this might look like in our education systems, where we are concerned both about the knowledge that is shared, but also the environment in which learning takes place, allowing real educational experiences of discovery. Where we give educators the freedom to create students with inquisitive minds, applying their knowledge and experience to the world around them. Where our indicators and metrics of success are radically different, and measured for the long-term.

My work with IFES gives me opportunity to interact with students around the world. We are driven by a passion to see the students of today formed into the leaders of tomorrow; students trained and transformed to shape their societies. We are in the business of equipping future-makers.

Education is changing, and must change. The rate of change in education has to increase to keep pace with the rest of society.

“Does the world need more dropouts? Probably not. But we do need more future-makers. Imagine what these edgy, creative, crazy minds could achieve if they stayed in school — the right kind of school, that is.”

What is your vision for the future of education? How can we best serve the future-makers?