From PopTech 2004, Malcolm Gladwell takes the lessons of psychology and sociology and applies them to business in ways we’ve never thought of before. Here, he deep-dives into the world of office chair invention and soft drink taste tests to answer the question, “Can we believe what people tell us?”
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From the Skoll Foundation's website dedicated to Social Entrepreneurs, SocialEdge:
Watch leading social entrepreneurs as they tell stories that had a significant impact on their lives. They also describe how they see the world in 2017. These interviews were shot at the 2007 Skoll World Forum at Oxford and are quite short (3 to 7 minutes).David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World, told Global X what happened when he was a young journalist and he first met Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh.
He also talks about his aunt Suzan, who taught him to climb the fence when necessary: "The world is a playground, and one shouldn't follow the rules at all times."
by By THEO EMERY | Published: June 5, 2007
photo: Josh Anderson for The New York Times
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Summer is settling onto Missionary Ridge overlooking this southeast Tennessee city. Swallows glide on the warm breeze rustling the hackberry trees, kudzu vines sprout along the hillside and the goats are back at work.
Chattanooga’s goats have become unofficial city mascots since the Public Works Department decided last year to let them roam a city-owned section of the ridge to nibble the kudzu, the fast-growing vine that throttles the Southern landscape. MORE>>
WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Art for Our Sake
by Sarah Rich | June 10, 2007 7:43 PM
When artist Takashi Horisaki left his native Japan, he moved to New Orleans to spend his first three years in America earning an BFA at Loyola University. He left before Katrina ravaged the area, and returned in 2006 to discover 'how seriously those of us living outside of the victimized area fail to grasp the reality of the tragedy suffered by New Orleans and the lethargic pace of recovery.' So he decided to help outsiders get a better perspective by creating a sculptural replica of a condemned house in the Lower 9th Ward.This is a continuation of a series Horisaki calls Social Dress (this one being called Social Dress New Orleans -- 730 Days "
Regardless of the debate on evolution reverberating still in America, the fact is, our brains were built for one purpose--survival in the natural world.
The brain is designed to take in massive amounts of information, concentrate on details, discriminate what is important, focus on a goal, design a plan and send out commands for action.
I was pleased to read that even in the eyeball-and-index-finger world of the web, that the same mental process is still taking place! More to the point--designers need to understand how the brain works in order to build navigation systems and information hierarchies that enable (rather than frustrate) our paleolithic instinct to hunter and gather.
According to Ben Hunt of Scratchmedia, a small consulting business based in the UK: "One way to think about designing for web users is to consider what the brain is good at, and to design to take the best advantage of those strengths."
From a post titled The Brain's Strengths on the blog, Web Design from Scratch:
Matching shapes
The minds of higher order animals are highly skilled at recognising things by their shape, or outline. We have an amazing ability to associate shapes with their meanings very quickly. This can be helpful for spotting your quarry when hunting in thick vegetation or in poor light. We're more likely to use this skill when associating the shape of an icon with 'I can make a printed version of this page if I move my mouse and click on that', or to decide to ignore a banner ad based on its shape.
Seeing patterns
Our brains are great at spotting associations between objects, based on similarities, alignment and grouping. This is helpful for working out where to move in order to separate an animal from its herd, or for telling which strangers belong to which tribes. Today, we're more likely to use this ability to find the navigation on a new site, or to tell at a glance how many unopened emails we have.
Focusing on the important; ignoring the unimportant
When we match shapes and patterns, we quickly sort what to focus on from what to ignore. This is a talent we share with all natural predators. If the brain loses its ability to filter out noise, we go mad. We use this skill every time we look at a web page, by scanning for clues that help us get nearer our goal.
High-speed problem solving
When faced with new problems, we're great at working out new ways of addressing them, even by abstracting patterns that have worked for different problems. Our minds are tuned for computing available information, and quickly choosing a most likely solution. (This capacity is one of the things that distinguishes the intelligence of apes from monkeys.)
When I lived and traveled in Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall came down, I was captivated by the interior design of utilitarian minimalism that pervaded the former East Bloc.
Whether in Slovakia or Bulgaria or Moscow, there was something so ubiquitous and clean about the architecture of dictatorship.
From We Make Money Not Art:
Daniel & Geo Fuchs have documented the architectural legacy left by the former GDR’s Ministry for State Security (Stasi), the main security and intelligence organization of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
The Stasi had nearly 90,000 official workers and 170,000 unofficial collaborators in a country with a population of 16 million. The organization was dissolved 18 years later, yet some of these sites have remained practically as they were.
The photographs show the rooms that the Stasi used to interrogate prisoners; prison cells for political prisoners; the offices of the minister for State Security; bunkers; and the files stored by the Stasi Documentation Office in Berlin - endless stacks of protocols generated by control and espionage, division and corruption – witnesses of the total control of a regime that clung to power for over 40 years.
The images are on show at La Virreina in Barcelona until July 1. Images.
From Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:
This book will make you look at every store-bought item you own or debate owning with a curious skepticism that -- after reading the book -- won't seem too unwarranted. It was published two years ago (a cheap paperback came out in the fall), but if you've yet to explore the fascinating, potentially paranoia-inducing, world of RFID and you want the cautionary, consumer-advocate perspective about the Radio Frequency Identification tracking being proposed -- and used! -- by certain companies (for instance, Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart), I highly recommend this one. I've been meaning to read it for a while and so some of the stories were familiar (i.e. the nightclub in Spain that chips its members), but there were plenty of bits that were new and interesting to me (i.e. all the patents IBM has applied for, including one for an RFID-enabled closet). Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre take a pretty sensationalist tone -- "Big Brother" is mentioned a number of times -- but the scope of the research is impressive (lots of endnotes) and their insight into how this tech could be abused is thought provoking.
-- Steven Leckart
Spy Chips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move
Katherine Albrecht & Liz McIntyre
2006 (paperback), 304 pages
$11
Available from Amazon
As a person who attends more meetings than I can stick a shake at, I sure am sorry I missed this one. It seems like some vital new updates to national policy were delivered in rare style.
From that time-honored lighthouse to truth, The Onion:
WASHINGTON, DC—In the latest in a long series of ominous public pronouncements, the Department of Evil released a statement Monday demanding that all residents of the United States must die.
Dread Secretary of Evil Hammond S. Reynolds told reporters that they, too, must die.
"Yes, all must die," Dread Secretary of Evil Hammond S. Reynolds said during a press conference in Room 1228 of Washington's Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. "There shall soon come an accounting in which all will fall before the Grim Reaper as wheat in winter, as lambs under the knife. Soon all necks will feel the steely bite of our soul- thirsting axe, wielded by the unforgiving iron hand of the Department of Evil. Thus spake I, Dread Secretary Reynolds."
As sensor technology becomes cheaper to deploy, and the metadata embedded therein and broadcast therefrom becomes richer and more detailed, we approach a time in which every tennis shoe and ham sandwich has its own backstory.
We can know whether the pig in the sandwich had a happy life, or, more important, if it was exposed to harmful bacteria or unethical farming practices.
In his book Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling makes much of the emerging product form tagged with his self-created neologism... spime.
These are "material instantiations of an immaterial system, digitally manufactured things from virtual plans." In layman's terms, these are objects that can be manufactured, tracked, interacted with and recycled through digital systems embedded in the object and the environment. Now, knowing a product's backstory is emerging as a core principle of commerce.
[Listen to Sterling's discription of spime here. Or watch the oddly unnerving interview segment, SpimeTime on Rocketboom.com.]
From the WorldChanging Team | May 7, 2007 5:24 PM
As the public gains interest and personal investment in living more sustainably, knowing the backstory becomes increasingly important. Whether it's food, lifestyle products, building materials -- most everything in the designed or built environment -- a big part of making good choices involves knowing where things come from, what's inside them, and how they got to point of use. If we know the backstory as consumers, we can make good choices; and if businesses and designers know they'll have to tell the story of their product, they make sure it's a story someone would want to hear.
Twelve years ago, I was in my last year of art school. From my vantage points as young man looking at the world he was about to enter, things looked nuts: the First Gulf War broke out; a big, nasty Recession was looming; and the Rodney King beating had become one of the first subjects of the citizen-journalism debate.
Go here to see some photos from the riots that broke out in LA after the Rodney King verdict brought the hammer down on a city seething with rage.
From Dana Graves:
On April 29, 1992, twelve jurors rendered their verdicts in a controversial case involving the 1991 beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers.One of the officers was found guilty of excessive force; the other officers were cleared of all charges.
At various points throughout the city that afternoon, people began rioting. For the next six days the violence and mayhem continued."
These photos are what I saw in & around my LA neighborhood of Echo Park.
An Iraqi artist carries a ladder as he walks past mural paintings on a concrete security wall in Baghdad's Saadun street April 29, 2007. REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud
"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi artist Murad paints a flower-covered balcony overlooking a tranquil ocean view, but his work on a long stretch of blast walls in central Baghdad seems a world away from the tension that surrounds him.
Wailing sirens and gunfire from speeding official convoys frequently scatter the slow-moving traffic that fills the air with exhaust fumes in Saadoun street, a major commercial road where a 600 meter-long (1,968 ft) concrete blast barrier protects a hotel and banks from bomb attacks."
[ read Iraqi artists bring color to dull blast walls | Reuters.ca ]
Since 2004, I have had the privilege of being the Pop!Tech House Scribe, creating large paintings and drawings while lurking in the upper balcony of the Opera House in Camden, Maine.
Now you can see and hear these exciting and sobering presntations on-line. From Andrew Zolli, Chief Curator of the annual Pop!Tech conference:
Pop!Tech, the extraordinary thought leadership forum and social innovation network that I'm involved with, has just released it's first twenty-two Pop!Casts -- free, online video and audio presentations that you can watch online or download to your iPod!Available at www.poptech.org/popcasts, and on iTunes, the Pop!Casts feature provocative and engaging presentations from leading and emerging thinkers from many different fields -- and we'll be releasing new ones ever two weeks throughout the rest of the year!
Thomas Friedman — Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Times Columnist.
Serena Koenig — Global health leader and Director of Haiti Programs for Partners in Health
Brian Eno — One of the world's leading pop musicians
Richard Dawkins — World renowned biologist and evolutionary theorist
Zinhle Thabethe — Renowned AIDS activist from South Africa
Chris Anderson — Editor in Chief of Wired magazine and author of "The Long Tail"
Sinikithemba Choir Performance — South African Choir of Zulu men and women who provide support to persons with HIV/AIDS
Bunker Roy — Founder of the Barefoot College in Tilonia, India
Carolyn Porco — Chief Imaging Scientist on the Cassini Mission to Saturn
Erin McKean —Editor-in-chief of U.S. Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and self-proclaimed "word geek"
Juan Enriquez — Leading futurist and bestselling writer on the future of nations
Neil Gershenfeld — Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms
Jonathan Coulton — Singer/Songwriter and the official Pop!Tech Balladeer
Thomas Barnett — Strategist and expert on national security and best-selling author
Jesse Sullivan and Todd Kuiken —Jesse Sullivan and his doctor, Todd Kuiken, work together to make Jesse the world’s first bionic man
Martin Marty — One of the most prominent interpreters of religion and culture
Theo Jansen — Dutch "kinetic sculptor" who creates wind-powered robotic "animals"
Marcia McNutt — Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute director
Reggie Watts - Human Beat-Box Polymath Musician and Comedian
Marian Weems — Artistic director of the new media theater ensemble The Builders Association
Homaro Cantu —Inventor, entrepreneur and molecular gastronomist
Lester Brown — Preeminent environmentalist and head of the Earth Policy Institute
Kent Nichols — Co-Creator of the wildly popular website and podcast AskaNinja.com
These Pop!Casts are brimming with ground-breaking ideas, and are being made available to the world with the help of our friends at Lexus, with production support from Yahoo! To encourage their distribution, we're releasing all of these as open-source, non-commercial Creative-Commons licensed content.
You can also subscribe to Pop!Casts within iTunes -- available by going here:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=251125472
From Rob Beschizza on WIRED Gadgets:
As much as that headline sounds like a the title of a steampunk epic, it refers to something absolutely real. Liverpool, Europe's Capital of Culture for 2008, needs to get rid of its legions of flying rats (and their leavings) in time for the celebrations. Robot falcons will be in their campaign's vanguard.
Essentially, they're animatronic scarecrows, whose presence, it's hoped, will scare away the city's now-unwelcome pigeons. The team of 10 "Robops," as they're inexplicably named, are modeled on Peregrine Falcons, which eat pigeons, and will look around, flap their wings and utter menacing squawks.
Liverpool apparently has 8 workers on full-time guano-cleaning duty, the slick white smears ultimately costing the city $320,000 a year to deal with.
I wish that I could have attented the council meeting in which all this was approved, so that I could have suggested that the robot falcons be equipped with sidewinders and lasers.
Here's some video, at the BBC.
From On the Media, an online interview with an artist who re-enlisted in order to capture accurate, artistic images of American soldiers in Iraq. The mission of a Marine combat artist, dating back to World War I, is “Go to war, do art.” Combat artist Sergeant Kristopher Battles talks about the challenge of drawing a picture while escaping sniper fire. The artist describes his experience creating drawings and paintings in a war zone at kjbattles.blogspot.com.
From Under Consideration... [thanks to Bo Maupin]
A rock anthem for every designer who has ever heard these cruel, cruel words. This is two minutes and thirty-six seconds of the rockingest rendition of Make the Logo Bigger that you will ever hear.
This classic rock ballad has been composed and performed by Burn Back for I Have An Idea's Portfolio Night 5. And may we recommend some reading to go with your easy listening.
From AIGA by Steven Heller:
Miraculously, most of the great underground comix artists of the late ’60s are still alive and kicking. Compared to the burnt-out, drug-slain rock stars of the same era, their unscathed record is rather amazing. Now in their late 50s and early 60s, many are also doing their best work. Along with R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith, Kim Deitch is one such exemplar of the art of underground “funnies,” an author and illustrator who transcended his beginnings in the age of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll to become a mature comics storyteller.
Currently, his collection Shadowland (Fantagraphics) is earning critical acclaim, and anticipation is high for Alias the Cat (Pantheon Books), due out in April. We caught up with Deitch to discuss the longevity of comics, the dubious term “graphic novel” and his constant growth as an artist.
from Studio 360:
A creative community called LVHRD, pronounced "live hard," hosts Iron Chef-like contests for creative professionals. Lu Olkowski attended a special LVHRD challenge: two teams of landscape architects going head to head, designing in cheese.
From Forbes.com via Associated Press:
Four-year-old Bernas isn't the computer wizard his mom is, but he's learning. Just the other day he used his lips and feet to play a game on the touch-screen monitor as his mom, Madu, swung from vines and climbed trees. The two Sumatran orangutans at Zoo Atlanta are playing computer games while researchers study the cognitive skills of the orange and brown primates.
The best part? Zoo visitors get to watch their every move.
The orangutans use a touch screen built into a tree-like structure that blend in with their zoo habitat. Visitors watch from a video monitor in front of the exhibit.
The computer games, which volunteers from IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) spent nearly 500 hours developing, test the animals' memory, reasoning and learning, spitting out sheets of data for researchers at the zoo and Kyle Frantz's team at Atlanta's Center for Behavioral Neuroscience, a partner in the project.
From Worldchanging blogger, Sara Rich:
paraSITE is an exploration of temporary urban living spaces, with an historic point of inspiration, and a more utilitarian/humanitarian purpose.
Michael Rakowitz traveled to Jordan in the mid-90s on a study program where he focused in part on the nomadic tradition of the Bedouins, and the architecture of their tents. When he returned to Boston, where he was a student at MIT, the presence of the homeless population in the city triggered a quandary for him regarding the contrast of a nomadic lifestyle by tradition versus by necessity. The nomadic patterns of the urban homeless, particularly in the cold months, were dictated by the location of heating vents releasing exhaust from HVAC systems inside houses and buildings. Many of these systems had been designed like boxes, such that a person could sleep on top of the vent and stay warm; but viewing this as a problem, the city had begun installing vertical vents which slanted downward off the building, making it impossible to rest on them.
from Worldchanging LA local blogger, Eliza Thomas:
ECO-LA’s driveby art gallery brings me so much joy. Officially opening on Earth Day, the exhibit, “Off the Wall 3,” will feature original paintings on reclaimed vinyl billboards. These 14’ by 48’ works of art will display both inside ECO-LA’s Gallery, and outside on the buildings exterior. But curator and founder Peter Schulberg is most stoked by the space LA billboard owners have donated — five billboards in choice spots around the city on which he’ll display several of the pieces during the months of April and May, before the paintings are taken down and sold to art lovers in a “Back to Earth” event at the gallery.
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