Spirited Thought

Chris Chase, a neuropsychology professor back in college, enjoyed introducing concepts with the notion that humans are more alike than they are different. It is a useful foundation for deciding what is important to study, fundamentals that apply to everyone or the anomalies, certainly not unimportant, just narrow. And yet, humans are fascinated with differences and in particular our faces and our bodies.

Slavko Milekic, the chair of my undergraduate thesis on child friendly interfaces, evolved the face flipbook into kid-friendly touch-screen interfaces. Earlier on, in a self-study project I implemented the more traditional version of a face flipbook, allowing someone to switch parts of faces but in a more literal representation to the kid books I grew up with.

Reminder: There are too many examples of literal expression in virtual spaces that fail. It amazes me that we tend to not take on the larger challenges of inventing something new instead of replicating what we know.

Slavko introduced gesture and touch based interactions to the traditional computing environment enabling object switching, size shape and position. Certainly one of his successful creations was that of assembly of faces out of a variety of common objects like vegetables. Even at a young age, even when working with vegetables - something often seen as a challenge for children - we are fascinated with the construction of human form.

Move to the more taboo example of human nudity in art or even pornography. There are books dedicated to human genitals – again, the differences. Even when considering the world of fantasy and identity, nudity and pornography depict other people doing things that you yourself could do, by yourself, with others you know and increasingly others you do not know. So why that fascination, if not for the differences. What is it like to see an attractive someone with a certain set of features? It is all about the distinguishing marks, regardless of it being labeled art or smut.

My recent move back to New York City, more specifically Brooklyn, reminded me of the diversity I missed. A great Walt Whitman quote on a Barnes & Noble ad in my subway car read,

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?

That must be what outgoing is, talking to the diversity around you instead of just observing. But, in fact, almost no one speaks to strangers – we even teach our children not to. However, everyone has the pleasure of enjoying diversity visually at fire hose volume in New York City and for me on my morning commute on the F train.

Professor Chase is still right, we are more alike than we are different and while we are consumed by those curious differences, I posit that our fascination exists because our distinguishing marks appear on a relatively common canvas.

Yesterday morning while catching up on some email a Photojojo email from July 20 featured The Simpsonizer. My results were pretty good. Interestingly enough, I find this two dimensional avatar more accessible than my Second Life me, Vienna Lamourfou. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the couple of times venturing as Vienna I ended up immobilized in a teleport.

Given a set of Simpsonized friends, could our FaceBook, Twitter and IM chats have a little more character? What kind of cartoon might that be like? How about our interactions taking the form of a printed comic? How might it change our experiences and memories of what we are doing in virtual spaces?

The human relationship with music is an interesting one. For all of its meaning in my life, it is not something I consider a passion. I have always admired friends who are musicians or loved and immersed themselves in music. One of the projects my team has worked on over the last twelve months is an internal media library, a corporate youtube if you will. The parts that have me engaged are the social interactions and the implications of leaving tracks in online spaces.

I was listening to Regina Spektor, Lucinda Williams and Rickie Lee Jones this morning. The first I heard about from my mom, the latter two from CBS Sunday Morning. Both cases were high-touch interactions, my listening to the direct recommendation by sources I trust. Finding the music on iTunes to buy and then transfer to my iPod is actually a subtly intimate affair. I have to remember the artists, find them in the iTunes store, identify the album, part with my money and then transfer to my device so I can experience the music. iPods are inherently personal. They offer custom engraved messages letting the world know mine is mine. They communicate through an 1/8th inch jack and often into ear bud speakers directly into my head. That is the bridge from the artist’s inspiration to my brain. Now the music has access to my innermost ticking.

There is plenty of work done on the impact of music on the human being – playing classical to babies in the womb to Tibetan singing bowls. Listening to music is intimate in that we construct relationships both with those who share and we share it with but also the artist, the words and sounds that resonate with us. We time code life with it and connect with other people through gifts and gifting. In addition, we are now annotating it with ratings, tagging, comments and play lists.

I am a believer that we are both the creator and observer of our own reality. What does it mean then if you have an overpowering psychological condition like severe depression, schizophrenia, bipolar or obsessive compulsive disorder? The belief can still stand, but it is fair to say that the chemistry and construction of the brain and body got a little too creative, or maybe not creative enough.

I have experienced through reading, administering developmental and behavioral experiments in college and, best of all, life, a variety of people with their demons. In every case, even when they were labeled with the same words, the demons were different and more importantly, the people were different. I start listening as if I know nothing, because for any given person it might be different and who am I to put my baggage on them.

For all the desire to master the brain through therapy and psychopharmacology, everyone is a unique case that we flounder to understand, the most talented among us saving our fellow man. Add to that my general feeling that we all have demons, even the most blessed and hopefully you get a sense that I am not against medication. I am, however, against what is a growing trend of medicating without answering why we are suddenly in the position of having to do so at such an alarming rate. A recent New York Times article, Proof Is Scant on Psychiatric Drug Mix for Young, by Gardiner Harris, pulled together some great research on medicating children.

Antidepressants are commonly paired with stimulants, but antidepressant use has declined over the last year after the F.D.A. warning about suicide risk. In their place, physicians are prescribing combinations that include antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs, according to Medco. From 2001 to 2005, the use of antipsychotic drugs in children and teenagers grew 73 percent, Medco found. Among girls, antipsychotic use more than doubled.

As with almost anything worth thinking about, there is plenty of complexity below the surface. This article is about how we medicate our children, apparently 1.6 million of them with 280K under 10 years old. To be counted, they needed to be prescribed two psychiatric drugs.

More than 500,000 were prescribed at least three psychiatric drugs. More than 160,000 got at least four medications together, the analysis found.

Harris tells us that some studies show adults benefiting from two drug cocktails specifically around depression, OCD, and the mania associated with bipolar. As with any study, others show no conclusions of import.

The use of two-medicine combinations in children is on much shakier ground. Even for single drugs, the effectiveness of some psychiatric medications in younger patients is questionable: most trials of antidepressants in depressed children, for instance, fail to show any beneficial effect. But hardly any studies have examined the safety or the effectiveness of medicine combinations in children. A 2003 review in The American Journal of Psychiatry found only six controlled trials of two-drug combinations. Four of the six failed to show any benefit; in a fifth, the improvement was offset by greater side effects.

If the evidence for two-drug combinations is minimal, for three-drug combinations it is nonexistent, several top experts said.

As members of one of the most developed societies, it is safe to say even the adults are struggling to make sense of their world, even the non-medicated. We have data showing that since 2001 we have begun heavily medicating our children in ways our best psychiatrists are unable to rationalize. If the reality we create in our minds, arguably the only reality that exists, is unnecessarily affected by doping, what is the affect on our ability to construct a different one?

For some, medication brings them closer to center, often with side affects, but more desirable than being consumed with self-destruction. I have heard that relative to their un-medicated state, some drugs slow things down too much or keep people in a fuzz. I think it is probably worth it if you suddenly have the opportunity to ponder the world of your design - for all you know you might be living in someone else’s.

For those of us who are challenged with loved ones who need medication, may we have the wisdom to withhold our own discomfort and psychological effects, so that medicating is done, not for us, but for you. As for the overly medicated children among us, may we not screw you up to the point where you can no longer consider what is real.

I once heard that eighty percent of what we think of today, we thought of yesterday. I enjoy optimizing my world, so increasing the percentage of new thought seems a worthy goal.

Wikipedia lists the United States having a 99.9% literacy rate, citing the CIA World Fact Book. Check the footnote reading that 44 million people (one in seven) can read but not to level of understanding a job application, a food label or utility bill. Consider the fact that when I consider literacy, I do not include this group of 44 million.

Among the educated workforce – college level and above – I routinely witness great disparities in literacy. Being able to read and write are the single most important capabilities of an educated mind and those who write well often read.

Reading is an activity where the brain is engaged. Active readers comprehend the content, exploring what it means. The content influences the formation of language and founds our ability to create more complex conceptual relationships. This complexity adds layers of depth to our thinking and appreciation of the world around us.

Add to the list of what it means to be literate the appreciation of art and music and we get closer to what real literacy is about. There is a texture that only can be felt by wide exposure to new ideas through the mediums of text, images and sound. More importantly is for us to share the pieces of our overwhelming vast and growing collection of media that we believe are of meaningful quality.

The more we read the more we change and the less yesterday’s thinking is today’s.

Being better together is part of healthy relationships. Without one of the two something possible is suddenly not. Life in general has always struck me as an endless list of Choose Your Own Adventure. Pick something, live it and pick another. Anything is possible and some of the best choices are who we pick to connect with, to relate to.

We automatically get our parents, regardless of their availability and quality. No matter their condition, parents form foundational psychological artifacts creating a relationship. The impossibility was your existence and any psychological reality they provided you with, at a minimum their absence or presence.

An obvious relationship is that of the significant other, the wife, husband, girl-friend, boy-friend or lover. These are the people with whom you are truly better with than without and the one that society will identify as your other half. Together quality of life is often enhanced and more psychological artifacts are created, offering future possibilities to work through our reality and conceptions therein. We hope this person will deliver the trust, security and love it requires to break down deeper fears and barriers to wonderment.

Other fantastic relationships are those who are our mentors. Mentors are objects in the mirror that are closer than they appear. They are often individuals who can see something about you that you desire for yourself or they know you need and can help you achieve. In business, mentors are invaluable. They should be sought after even more in life. Even the bad ones teach some of the best lessons. The best transform in a way that no one else could – the envy of a significant other, the one who desires to be all things to their partner. While a significant other might be a mentor, they tend not to have the objectivity or know-how to articulate the required personal change. Mentors are often reverse mentored receiving from the relationship, not just giving. Together, both individuals have the opportunity to grow, create some more psychological artifacts, hopefully more building blocks than plaque.

Muses are a bit tricky. A muse inspires. Together the fruits of that inspiration better the world, regardless of the significance. The psychological artifacts come from both the interactions with the muse and the resulting product of the inspiration. For some a muse helps create better poetry and art. In other instances it is a significant other inspiring to create a better life, be a better person. Mentors could be muses, both helping move in a specific direction and acting as the model and inspiration for how to execute (i.e. how to act a certain way by replicating seen behavior). They can be people we do not know well or those who are our closest friends. Muses are important to have so that we may dream the next turn in our adventure instead of just turning the page to find out what happens.

Figments are things of our own creation. We are the lone creators of the psychological artifact. They help articulate the relationship we have with ourselves. Figments can be dreams or visualizations of our how we want the world to be.

One of the best questions I recently started asking of any relationship, is why am I looking for something here instead of somewhere else. It forces you to articulate the purpose of your actions and identify meaning specific to this relationship and in turn, the connections you have with others. With the multitude of relationships we create in the world, knowing why we seek the company of one and not another can deepen our understanding and connection to all.

In recent years, the topic of social networking has gained a considerable amount of buzz. I wish a week could go by without someone showing me yet another graph visualization of an individual’s contacts and concepts they share with others.

I approach this kind of exploration with a more fundamental reasoning which purports that the most efficient social network is powered by people. We do not know who we do not know someone else knows and that is one of the reasons people are fascinated with social networking visualizations.

If you could show me the people my friends know and their friends know, I would know so many more people! On the other hand, deliver semi-random connections, like the introductions from Monster.com, and they are as good as or better than the contacts resulting from people who know people I know. Is it possible a semi-random introduction is as valuable as an introduction that was sent through a social network meat grinder?

Consider friends-of-friends and so on, and my list of potential contacts grows exponentially with very little effort. People marvel at the volume of connections six degrees of separation yields. How valuable are contacts that do not know me and know someone I do not? It is not about the network. It is about the people acting in the network.

I have participated in social network communities and have seen a lot of visualizations showing my connections to others, but let’s face it, I already know my network and the topics I share with others. Accordingly, my network nourishes itself bringing people together around any topic inside or outside the inner circle, in a way only human intention can. Do I really expect that a computer’s analysis will provide unique and unexpected connections?

I am not a complete naysayer, there is merit in this work, but the current state of eye candy provides little value, showing people what they already know. If, by chance, users discover something new, the value of the system diminishes, because there is even less to unveil – a tough proposition for social systems to overcome.

The Big Moo is a book that I found refreshing, both in format and in content. It had many authors, each with their own story and that was part of what made it compelling. After the read I started looking up the authors of interest and landed on Amit Gupta’s blog. Amit has been involved with several ventures, one of them called ChangeThis.com.

ChangeThis starts with the premise, that in a world of brief MTV moments, where the attention span of almost every modern human would qualify for Ritalin, there are actually people who have a voice, an argument, one that is well thought out and crafted to be declared a manifesto. Manifestos worthy of reading will propagate organically through the digital waves into the hands of people that get turned on by thinking and possibly changing their point of view. Published in Adobe Acrobat format means virtually universal accessibility. The design, common across all manifestos, is easy to read on digital screens. Each inherits the same navigation and focus on the content. The best part is that ChangeThis is not about making a buck, something that is rare in our jazzed Web 2.0 sphere.

While my blogging is not habitual, this certainly was a delayed post. It came inspired by a most recent The Rewritten Rules of Management by Tom Ehrenfeld. Funny enough, Ehrenfeld rated Moo a “B,” which is actually quite fair– it probably depends on how any one of the 33 stories impacts the reader. The person that gained irreversible insight probably gave it an “A+.” The manifesto is about Bill Swanson’s recent plagiarism. Which reminded me of an article in the Communications of the ACM, “Plagiarism on the Rise” by Ronald Boisvert and Mary Jane Irwin. It discusses the general reasons for the increase in plagiarism and introduces the new ACM Plagiarism Policy. One would think it goes without saying that taking another persons work and calling it your own is problematic. In fact, I thought this type of behavior was already prohibited in the ACM Code of Ethics under the section of honesty. Conceiving and nurturing an original idea is hard work and for some impossible.

A professor once told me, there are no new ideas, and for the ones that are genuine there is someone on the other side of the world that thought of the same thing at the same second and its all a race to see who is capable of communicating it first. I have seen so many people hand me documents that were from a website verbatim, that I think it might actually be part of a new generation of thought – why actually try to think when others have thought for you… just remember to give credit to the people who took the time to think. And, by the way, Ehrenfeld’s manifesto is about a “B.” It could have been shorter, tighter and delivered with more consequence.

My first exposure to the world of 3D animation was the Luxo Jr. Movie shown in an Introduction to Computer Science Course lead by Lori Scarlatos now at Brooklyn College, CUNY. This past Monday (Jan. 2) I got the opportunity to check out the Pixar exhibit at the MoMA.

The amount of art – sketches, storyboards, colorscripts, and sculptures – was impressive. There were plenty of items that you might want prints of, all of it original and inspiring.

The idea of a colorscript is to visually communicate the color and often lighting of story, end-to-end. Colorscripts deliver visual emotional detail that informs the animation production. One of interest showed three rows of small monsters rendered in three different color palettes. Each color scheme represented a different part of the monsters you would find in different environments. For example, the blue and gray pallet represented the corporate characters. An interesting tie in here is the emotions that colors impart and connote. Thinking about Donald Norman’s work, Emotional Design, it would seem the proper use of consistent color potentially delivers more emotionally engaging work, even for your next PowerPoint presentation – making the visual part of a presentation be as informative as the speaker, appealing to different channels of perception.

There is also something to be said for the colorscript showing the whole story in small post card sized vignettes. I have seen many user experience and user interface presentations none of which show the entire application, end-to-end all at once. Often you see a rendering of sorts, often termed wireframes along side numerous annotations informing how the screen might be interacted with. What would happen if everyone had a copy of the entire application design on a 30” x 60” poster informing both the key views of the application, the position of relevant activity and interesting characteristics like color treatments, sounds and animation? There is something wonderful about having one effective record of a project that is seen in its entirety – the forest instead of the trees. It reminds me back to a previous posting on what happens when we limit our canvas and force only the necessary information to appear.

One of the interesting interpretations Pixar’s work was a 14 minute loop transitioning from the many irises of the characters. I took a small video clip of the projection to remind myself how we do not always know how something is going to be used, but if we do not create the work, it can never be used or (re)interpreted.

I just came across an article by John Biggs on the new Creative Zen Vision:M in the Circuits section of the New York Times. Creative’s new personal media player is positioned to compete with the Apple iPod, and it will undoubtedly fail.

Very often, businesses and people identify the best practices of the current time and employ them to better their position. In many occasions this is a prudent course of action. In Creative’s case it ensures that the Zen Vision:M will never be remarkable. Creative’s new offering looks like a copy cat with its rounded corners, large display and minimal controls. It is priced in the same range as an iPod. It plays various bits of media – more variety than an iPod. It offers a touch sensitive scroll bar as its primary navigation interface. Creative’s brightest minds can only hope that consumers are looking for an iPod alternative – maybe they can take some of Apple’s potential customer base.

As the new owner of a black video iPod, I might be biased, but I doubt it. I just finished up Donald Norman’s Emotional Design. Apple is all about their emotional brand and their emotional designs. A purchase with Apple grants access to the identity and mystique of what Apple and, in this case, the iPod have become to the modern world. What do white ear buds mean to you? What do you see when someone draws a rectangle with a circle in the lower half? Those who are not members wish they were or, at the very least, are curious as to what it might be like. For all we know, the Zen Vision:M and the iPod are manufactured by the same company and in the same factory in China, but no matter what Creative does, the emotional component of the personal music player remains with Apple.