via shareable.net
More people are starting to pay more attention to Bitcoin. Being such a purely abstract expression of value, I'm quite certain this will force people to start more deeply understanding how value and economics actually work.
Innovation + experience-minded design strategy. The pieces of a working model for understanding culture + change in an increasingly complex world.
Both Henry and I lived in the countryside. We were socially awkward and lonely and slept with our dogs (we both happened to have Great Danes). We were 14-years-old and best friends. Henry called our experiments adventures. Once we bribed the janitor to let us into the tunnels beneath the school. But the adventure I remember most was at my house. My parents were gone for the night. Henry and I decided to explore the dark woods behind the barn. We reached the end of the forest near the lake when the flashlight went dead. Total dark. The path was immediately lost. Our only choice was to take each others hand and venture into the dense web of the woods. By the end we were on our hands and knees. Our arms were bloody from thorns, but we still held onto each other. This is a picture of what we looked like (or maybe a picture of the woods, or our Great Danes):
Don't you wish you could see this picture? Whether it is a 3-D digital holograph or an images burned onto a piece of wood, the thing that makes you want to see the picture is the story. In the end, what's next is what always was: the story.
Thousands of people a day are signing up for a service that nobody really knows anything about.
Hipster is a new tool/service/network/magical potion that promises to change the way we interact with our community. At least that's what Hipster CEO Doug Ludlow explains in his answer to the question everyone wants to know, on Quora. But you'd never know that from the entry screen. No product promotion. No information. Just a single sign up box, over a provocative city image.
Want to sign up? Use my link, and I'll have a better chance at an earlier beta invite. The more you share your referral link, the faster you get an invite. Next, we'll find that they've been valued at $35 billion. Freakin' genius.
The above reminds me of two fascinating concepts:
1) "Haha remember when everyone thought the iPad was going to be a horrible idea (right when it was announced)?"
I couldn't find any reference right away, but I remember someone mentioning that a Saturday Night Live skit during the first week of sales poignantly called the iPad something like "the first device everyone bought without knowing at all what it does."
But there's something potentially very fascinating here. It probably comes from the same place as the tone captured in the statement "people signing up for something they don't know what it does [is a silly thing to do ]." And along the lines of one branch of what's (sometimes pejoratively) known as "social engineering." It's the following idea:
What if the service did nothing?
That is to say, it reminds me of an art project/social experiment I would consider doing: Build hype around an object that serves no purpose, so as to make a comment about the concept of hype and social spread. In this context, a wonderfully clever mechanism to help expose the core drivers behind social influence would definitely be something like "the more you share your referral link, the faster you get an invite."
It would make for a wonderfully fascinating experiment in infusing value into otherwise valueless things.
That is to say, I hope Hipster *does* do something; I've got something of an art project now brewing in my head ;)
Tattoo parlor owners must be salivating. An assertion in a Minneapolis Star Tribune article that our understanding of the zodiac is off by about a month - and that therefore people have been identifying themselves with the wrong sign - caught fire on the internet Thursday, and many folks are in an absolute panic on social media.
"If my zodiac symbol has been changed to a Libra, what am I supposed to do with my Scorpio tattoo?!?!," read one tweet Thursday.
Some vowed to get their tats removed. Others groaned about losing the sign with which they’ve identified themselves for years. The zodiac and related terms - including Ophiuchus, said to be a 13th and neglected sign - were trending Twitter topics much of Thursday
But before astrology fans scrape the ink from their arms because they think they're now a Virgo instead of a Libra, they should consider this: If they adhered to the tropical zodiac - which, if they're a Westerner, they probably did – absolutely nothing has changed for them.
That's worth rephrasing: If you considered yourself a Cancer under the tropical zodiac last week, you're still a Cancer under the same zodiac this week.
That's because the tropical zodiac – which is fixed to seasons, and which Western astrology adheres to – differs from the sidereal zodiac – which is fixed to constellations and is followed more in the East, and is the type of zodiac to which the Star Tribune article ultimately refers.
Two zodiacs. That's nothing new.
"This story is born periodically as if someone has discovered some truth. It's not news," said Jeff Jawer, astrologer with Tarot.com.
The hubbub started with Sunday's Star Tribune article, which said the following: "The ancient Babylonians based zodiac signs on the constellation the sun was 'in' on the day a person was born. During the ensuing millenniums, the moon’s gravitational pull has made the Earth 'wobble' around its axis, creating about a one-month bump in the stars' alignment."
"When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it’s really not in Pisces," Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, told the Star Tribune.
"Indeed," the article continued, "most horoscope readers who consider themselves Pisces are actually Aquarians." The article also asserts Scorpio's window lasts only seven days, and that a 13th constellation, Ophiuchus, used to be counted between Scorpio and Sagittarius but was discarded by the Babylonians because they wanted 12 signs per year.
True enough, Jawer says, the sun doesn't align with constellations at the same time of year that it did millennia ago. But that’s irrelevant for the tropical zodiac, codified for Western astrology by Ptolemy in the second century, he says.
In the tropical zodiac, the start of Aries is fixed to one equinox, and Libra the other.
"When we look at the astrology used in the Western world, the seasonally based astrology has not changed, was never oriented to the constellations, and stands as … has been stated for two millenniums," Jawer said.
People who put stock in astrology can ask whether they should adhere to the tropical zodiac or the sidereal zodiac. Jawer argues for the tropical.
"Astrology is geocentric. It relates life on Earth to the Earth’s environment, and seasons are the most dramatic effect, which is why we use the tropical zodiac," he said.
An objective meaning - that is, one which is inherent within the universe or dependent upon external agencies - would, frankly, leave me cold. It would not be mine... I, for one, am glad that the universe has no meaning, for thereby is man all the more glorious. I willingly accept the fact that external meaning is non-existent... for this leaves me free to forge my own meaning.
We’re moving, in other words, toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call. This shift is particularly stark among the young. Some college students I know go days without talking into their smartphones at all. I was recently hanging out with a twentysomething entrepreneur who fumbled around for 30 seconds trying to find the option that actually let him dial someone.
This generation doesn’t make phone calls, because everyone is in constant, lightweight contact in so many other ways: texting, chatting, and social-network messaging. And we don’t just have more options than we used to. We have better ones: These new forms of communication have exposed the fact that the voice call is badly designed. It deserves to die.
Consider: If I suddenly decide I want to dial you up, I have no way of knowing whether you’re busy, and you have no idea why I’m calling. We have to open Schrödinger’s box every time, having a conversation to figure out whether it’s OK to have a conversation. Plus, voice calls are emotionally high-bandwidth, which is why it’s so weirdly exhausting to be interrupted by one. (We apparently find voicemail even more excruciating: Studies show that more than a fifth of all voice messages are never listened to.)
The telephone, in other words, doesn’t provide any information about status, so we are constantly interrupting one another.
When I talk about 'glanceable' information, I'm referring to infusing potential information with an additional subtle layer of communication. Status that you can be ambiently aware of. The voice call as we know it allows for no such thing.
On some level, voice calls embedded with this kind of information might only have to look slightly different. Consider a phone that rings different tones depending on who's calling. That layer is easy enough to define (though annoying to arrange) and might be a first step.
Then imagine that as you called someone, you somehow indicated the nature of the request (not as easy to define), such that each call triggers a subtle change in that tone that could be recognized.
Anticipated length would be another important layer as well. I sometimes think that at some point URL shortening services are going to incorporate an additional digit that indicates how long the article you're about to click through to is. Once upon a time there was a URL shortening service (that I can't seem to find right away) that was intended for people in PR/marketing who tweeted occasionally about brands they worked for; the idea was that encoded into the URL was a number or two that corresponded to what kind of message it was. Something like "5" would mean it's a direct client, "4" would mean it's someone you used to work for, etc.
Obviously these are more-difficult-to-imagine layers, at least because it would require a mutual understanding of what this encoded information means.
The idea is that the communication methods we prefer have lots of subtle information already encoded into them. These layers may or may not communicate the same things as the phone scenario above, and actually this is why different people use the same communication channels in different ways (see this lovely illustration from Ji Lee). A simple example is that a channel like twitter encodes information into the number of followers/followed individuals have, information that gives you cues on how to communicate appropriately. Context is a layer; people often talk about "Facebook is for ___, Tumblr is for ____, Linkedin is for ____, Quora is for ____"; when you have a conversation in these contexts, the communication is implicitly shaped by it's surroundings.
The idea is that value can be condensed and intentionally infused into better (or just different?) communication methods.
Spot on. Lately I've been quite fond of saying something like "economics isn't about money, it's about value.
Recent behavioral studies are finding that when you give a gift, the recipient automatically values it lower than its actual worth. Why? Simply because it's a gift.
Group payment service WePay decided to take a look at how gift-giving works and found that what you give can be worth—in the mind of the recipient, that is—up to 18% less than its actual retail value:
(Click to enlarge.)
The internet was invented as the ultimate standard, it is literally made of rules. Online content abides by some intentional and unintentional rules, and texture, smell, weight, flavour and time are flattened together for the screen. Computers appear to instantaneously transform objects into images and meaning into information.
404 Error: The Object Is Not Online brings together questionably digitized materials with undoubtedly material digital systems to explore the translation of objects into online representations. It uses objects from the CCA Collection to examine the shift, and to explore some differences between seemingly limitless cyberspace and the museum where presence and real space are the rule.
Rules = meaning.
Also of note from the exhibition's page:
"One can make out of failure a powerful strategy for working, like the bad magician transcending illusion."
– Vik Muniz
Books in traditional form are necessarily linear. So it's notable that savvy content creators are experimenting with different methods of delivery now available - writers like Stephen Fry are able to create books like "The Fry Chronicles" pictured above that deliver a story less rigidly confined. This autobiography is a book released as a mobile app, with sections represented as spines along a circular interface rather than in page-by-page form. Readers can scroll through the book by referencing the color-coded category markers, distinguishing between sections containing "People, Subjects, Feelings and Fryisms."
The interface indeed shows how linear books can be deconstructed into a form where the reader chooses how the story unfolds. It's very much in the spirit of that grail of the digital age - the personalized experience.
As more creators explore these unstructured models of delivery, I'm guessing we'll see a key question emerge: to what extent is this reader-created experience valuable in contrast to the opposing idea of the thoughtfully curated story, a structured narrative that only an artist can craft?
That is to say: I may be able to bang about the keyboard and make my own "personalized" song, but I'm a far cry from Chopin.
I expect that what we will see is thoughtful designers having to consider how to give meaningful structure to non-linear interfaces. One way to think about this is to consider than an autobiography without any structure is akin to reading someone's Twitter timeline in no particular order - sure to be interesting on some level, but likely quite lacking in terms of creating an engaging experience.
Hence the role of the designer here (as in most cases) is to create value through limiting the degree of freedom the end-user has.
"If [Tom] had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign."
Trend Number Three: Demonetization
Edahiro has recognized a shift from full-time work (that sounds similar to the over-worked, over-stressed 9-7 jobs here in the states) to part-time lifestyles that allow time for growing food for the family. Instead of being a full time writer for example, one might be a part-time farmer, part-time writer. The tides could be shifting to a "work to live" rather than "live to work" mentality.Edahiro's observed trends certainly leave high hopes. As she concludes, each could potentially dent "business models seeking profit simply by selling increasing numbers of products." This potentially green grassroots movement doesn't seem the buying type.
When I see things like the above, I see the happy evolution that humanity as a collective is reacting to its experiences and learning to more deeply understand the notion of value.
That's quite a mouthful, but basically I mean that I think we're at a place where we're starting to understand the limits of equating monetary value as the only kind of value. It's a short-sighted model of the world, and I think we're starting to understand that.
I say evolution in my first statement above because short-sightedness comes from lack of perspective, and perspective comes from experience - in this case, it's the kind of experience that only amasses over hundreds of generations, and within conditions that allow for the rapid spread of ideas.
(The rest of the Treehugger article "Japanese Trends Worth Watching "is here.)
Forbes columnist Rich Karlgaard predicts that the next big thing in business (a potential trillion dollar industry) will be to help people become smarter. Whether it’s tools like smartphones or body performance enhancing drugs or even chip implants, people crave to become smarter and faster than their compatriots, especially in the current recession.
Karlgaard says:
It is dawning on people, in this age of the Scary Smart, that the best — really, only — way to play the economic game successfully today is with high IQ, creativity and energy. We therefore will pay for more IQ, creativity and energy. This is why energy drinks and smart phones have been two hot categories in a cold economy.
But we’ve only seen the beginning. The Scary Smart business will start to command larger portions of GDP.
Today, everyone’s job and career is on the line. In a global economy that:
1. Increasingly favors the Scary Smart
2. Ruthlessly culls winners and losers
… Workplace intelligence becomes the next trillion dollar industry.
Smart phones. Smart data. Smart content. Smart drugs.
I'm certain this scenario sounds scary to some. Dystopic, even.
It's hard for me to find it either of the above.
One notion of value it points to is the idea that differentiation is value. This isn't that profound, it's really just to say that if you're smarter than others, or you tire less than others, or if you're faster than others, then you've achieved a kind of value to others.
It's part of the idea of scarcity, which I argue is a pretty high-level order of value: "smart" isn't valuable; scarcity is valuable. Consider as an analogy: "fast" isn't valuable, rather it's the case that scarcity is valuable. Imagine that a hundred years ago I told you that in the future there will be machines that make people faster, which is fine enough, but people will be able to purchase this fastness and there will be businesses built around selling these machines that "make people faster than their compatriots." And expected you to feel worried about this scary future where humans bought fastness.
We now know these machines as automobiles. And we also know that the status and value one derives from their automobile has much less to do with its speed and much more to do with its it's scarcity.
So the above article makes me wonder: what is it exactly that's being called "smart" here? I think we can rest assured that there will always be some distinguisher between "smart" and "intelligent" or "wise." Or whatever you want to call it, really - I'll likely just continue to call it scarce, which is to say that true value in the realm of "smartness" comes from the ability to identify and act on what everyone else isn't.
(I imagine this is exactly why Hugh decided to draw the below):
The law of conservation of mass tells us that matter cannot be created or destroyed - matter can only be rearranged.
There is no law of conservation of value. Value can in fact be created, and it is precisely the rearranging of matter that creates value.
In Shaping Things (PDF here), Bruce Sterling notes that one of the distinguishing characteristics of mankind is our unparalleled ability to create rubbish. Rubbish is what happens when we rearrange matter to a form where it no longer contains any value. Not any we can intuitively infer, at any rate - in fact this principle is precisely what Justin Gignac takes advantage of in the above. Not many have the ability to rearrange what is typically rubbish into a form that captures value. It's not intuitive, and therefore this transformation is scarce, and as you remember, scarcity is value.
If you'd like a definition of art, it is the value that is captured in the rearranging of otherwise disorganized and valueless things. It's is precisely why art is valuable, because it is an act which is not easily subject to replication.
(The rearranging of ideas creates value, as well - this results in what we call "rules." I'll expand on this later, but if you'd like you can listen to Paul Romer talk about the manipulation of matter and ideas in A Theory of History, With an Application.)
As I go through my RSS this morning, I inevitably see a bunch of short-term thinking and can't help but think: the goal is not necessarily just to know things (in this case, hot items of public discourse that quibble over the 2-3 year impact of things), it's to figure out what matters. The even more difficult - but appropriately valuable - task is to figure out why it matters.
"There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003," Schmidt said, "but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing"
I've seen the above tossed around a bit lately. It's generally shared with a bit of surprise tossed in. I am in fact a huge fan of open data, and our increasing ability to do fascinating things with it. But I don't think the the above warrants any surprise - it helps to remember that "the amount of data created" hasn't increased, only our ability to usefully capture it.
One way to look at this is with the following assumption: if I snap my fingers, I've created data. We don't typically look at it that way, and this wouldn't count as 'data' as defined in the quote above. But I could very well snap my fingers before 2003 - why doesn't this count as data?
The answer is that for us to count something as data requires only two things: 1) we can quantify it, and 2) we can do something useful with the quantification of it.
What happened in 2003? Before, if I snapped my fingers, nothing quantifiable happened. The difference is simple: now, if I snap my fingers, I can potentially have some type of acoustically-sensitive piece of sensor-based technology easily attached somewhere on my body, a device whose sole function is to translate physical acoustic wave properties into numbers.
That solves requirement #1. Requirement #2 is more interesting: what would I do with that information?
The answer is: I don't know yet.
Perhaps I collect it over time to see how many times I snap my fingers in a year. Maybe that's useful - I don't know yet. Perhaps I connect my sensor to Pachube, and use it to unlock a connected door whenever I snap my fingers. Maybe that's useful - I don't know yet.
This is precisely what is so fascinating about the rise of open data - we have tons of it and we're just now learning how to extract value from it. What is the value of tracking and sharing every purchase you make via Blippy or every link you click via Voyurl or every place you visit via Foursquare or every meal you eat via Foodspotting?
I could easily conjecture on some potential values here, but to varying degrees there are a lot of people out there who say there is no value and that these things are a waste of time.
But the argument sounds a lot like the old musings that used to come up: "why on earth would it be that important to have a compass on an iPhone? What could you possibly do with that (besides find North)??"
What people are going to do with their open data (and others' data!) I don't know - but I do know there are a ton of people out there thinking about it. And it's the combination of this data/sensor tech/sharing that's ultimately valuable; if you take video recognition and combine it with that useless compass - you've got augmented reality. If you take the shared usage behavior of people's location data along with say their biometric health info, you've got a real-time sense of what health conditions are surfacing where.
So it helps to remember two more things as well: 1) our ability to capture data is only going to get better 2) the number of things data is be useful for will only increase. We might not know what we're doing with it yet (and there'll be a lot of debate of what is 'valuable' along the way - should deep biometric data be shared?), but as we figure it out it'll be increasingly more fantastic.
edit: I just coincidentally ran into this appropriate passage, during a reading of Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things:
The above is from Analytic of the Sublime within Kant's Critique of Judgment; his distinction between art and handicraft is characteristic of Seth Godin's idea of art as a gift in his book Linchpin.
As you may know, Kant is known for his demanding definitions. Relevant in this case is the definition of "free," as in "free to create something of value." For Kant, no act is free if it is ultimately by an external motive. That is to say, if the motivation is money, then the act is not art, because the thing ultimately driving the act is not the doer but the thing providing the reward (this actually applies even if the intent is to use the money for something internal, like the desire for food - in this case, nature is the driver, not the thinker). No large point here, just another exploration of natural value in contrast to monetary value to consider.
The following is a collection of research and insights that point to how games are at least as valuable as reality.
A year ago, games researcher Jane McGonigal developed SuperBetter as a game-based method for recovering from the traumatic brain injury she was suffering from at the time, and has now announced the upcoming launch of a Kickstarter project aimed at funding a published game guide. In the 5-minute video below (and in a longer TED talk here) she gives her take on how games can change behavior and the world.
Jane’s thesis challenges our notion of what it means to play a “game.” A glance at traditional definitions of “game” will lead the reader to notions of a game as an abstraction of reality (and therefore less valuable than reality) or a mere form of entertainment: games are what children play, reality is what adults engage in.
Jane argues that it is in fact this very abstraction from reality that makes games valuable. Games can provide an environment where:
In her other works, Jane goes on to describe how games are in fact developing important skills within societies (and have been, since the advent of dice) - skills that will be critical to overcoming global challenges facing humanity.
Games as design for the better
Jane’s charge is in opposition to the idea that reality is the only proper training ground for developing these skills. The primary difference invoked between games and reality is that games are narrated by a designer, while real life is complex and unscripted. Other opponents to the rise of gaming often point to the value of the classroom.
As for the narration issue, it’s worth noting that to the extent that games are designed and “less than real,” so too is the professor’s lecture. Both can be well designed, constructed for efficiently challenging others towards real learning. Alternatively, either can be a mind-dulling exercise built to captivate people just long enough to accomplish some short-term goal – beating the game or passing a test – doing nothing for long-term or valuable learning.
In a discussion of how to build systems for understanding the impact of pollution and CO2, professor and game programmer Greg Niemeyer of UC Berkeley talks about the critical difference between telling someone something important – however critical it is – and having them experience the meaning behind it themselves. Games provide an means through which difficult environments can be more directly experienced in this way.
On the inherent value of reality
It’s also worth considering the inclination to view reality as a value in itself. This is sometimes based on the complexity of reality as the source of it’s value, as noted above. Kevin Slavin of the game design firm Area/Code has noted that it is again abstraction of reality from complexity to simplicity that shows the value games have, by isolating key concepts. The value of virtual currencies in games like Farmville (”who would pay $1 for a sheep that doesn’t even exist?” is the question often asked) helps illustrate the strong social component of the things people actually value – something doesn’t necessarily need to be tangible and ‘real’ to be valuable.
More often than not, though, the argument is simply “reality is just better – period.” Psychologist Joanna Starek studies the nature of self-deception, and takes issue with the absolute value of reality, most notably in a Radiolab episode on deception. She primarily studies athletes, finding a relationship between those who are able to perform better than others who are their physiological equals, and their ability to better abstract themselves from reality (as measured by Sackeim & Gur’s classic self-deception test) - in this case, the measurable physiological reality of their ability to perform. In short, the athletes who recognize the reality of potentially over-exerting themselves fall short of their physiological equals – “reality” does not necessarily translate to “better.”
As we see increasingly more innovators abandon the traditional conception of “games” as subordinate to “reality,” we will see more developments encouraging behavior change for the better through the values McGonigal points to above. These will range from the Epic Win to-do application with individual-level implications to IBM’s CityOne Smarter Planet game with global-scale implications.
The above talk is by Cameron Herold, titled "Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs." Like most I find the entrepreneurial spirit valuable and inspiring.
Though, watching the above actually left me with the following idea: what all entrepreneurs are good at is taking advantage of opportunity. But almost no entrepreneurs are good at taking advantage of opportunity to do anything besides make money.
A rare few people know how to take advantage of opportunity as a means to do something valuable. It requires being comfortable with seeing feedback from one's actions not in immediate "if, then" terms, but in nebulous, extended terms. This is in direct opposition to the comfort of seeing feedback from one's actions immediately and being able to immediately draw causal inferences from them. It requires an understanding of long-term value. These are not skills that are natural for humans, thus they are not skills that most people have. It's an idea that's been sitting on my mind lately, something that seems appropriate to share now having just run into the following:
"The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti bc they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit." -Banksy
Some people truly argue that that short-term gain - immediate return - is the only real measure of value. What an unfortunate perspective to have developed.
Hello friends and collaborators. I deal in innovation, working to build fantastic experiences enabled by the digital world. As part of this I track cultural change, primarily through observations guided by models and filters calibrated over years to sort out the cream.
These pieces of thoughts here reflect concepts that are elements of those models: ecosystem thinking, long-term value, information filters, and pattern recognition.
("How to break anything" is an abstract notion that reflects my background in observation and analysis. Rules are meant to be broken, but only through understanding the rules - observing them with an empathetic eye - can they be broken constructively.
So how to break anything? Observe everything.
[You can't observe everything so how do you know what to observe? That's another project that I call Filter Theory - see the About link above.])
