Posts Tagged: Books

Culture / Psychology / Relationships — 1 Comment
29
Aug 06

The rise of a truly literate class

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.

Psychology — No Comments
19
Aug 06

What happens if you cannot feel the healing?

This past Friday afternoon, I was having an interesting conversation with a friend from work. We were talking about spas and more particularly massages – the general need and healing from being touched by other humans.

This morning on CNN a story ran on a child who never felt pain. I made a comment that it reminded me of the stories one might find by Oliver Sacks in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and more specifically the one about the woman who could not feel her own body.

CIPA (congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis) is an inherited degenerative disorder affecting the autonomic nervous system – a big deal, as this is where the heart comes in and the nervous system lives. Two key symptoms surface as the lack of feeling pain and the lack of perspiration. In CNN’s story about Roberto, they mention he can not be held, because he sucks the heat out of you. My comment was not speaking to the scientific characteristics; instead it was one of the social impacts of not feeling.

What kind of mental model for pain would a person who can not feel it, have? What kind of mental model for world pain (not individual human suffering) would they have? If they do not have the concrete knowledge of pain, how would they work with the abstract concept when applied to thoughts, imagination, inanimate objects or abstract concepts like a country?

Reach back into a psychology class and thinking about Skinner and conditioning. Try and recall the experiment where the animal, I think it was a rodent, was provided food when it hit a lever – reward the rat and the rat will continue. Map this back to people with CIPA. In the absence of sensory stimuli and limited interactions with others (not being able to be held, presumably cuddled), what is created to match the Skinner-stimuli we all use to operate in the world? Roberto might be aware of a lava stone massage one might get at a spa, but not think much of it. For those who see touch as healing and the need for it, what does it mean for those with CIPA?

Business / Design — 1 Comment
5
Feb 06

Our ability to share information relates to our ability to impact and grow

My introduction to Tufte was a gift back in 1999-2000 as we finished up the first version of IBM‘s Next Generation Internet site. Mike Nelson, currently the Director of Internet Technology and Strategy, sent the team The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It was not until recently that I ordered two more Tufte works, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint and Envisioning Information. James inspired me to revisit these views on effective use of the high-bandwidth visual channel.

I read all the reviews on Amazon.com on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint before succumbing to the “add to cart” button. I figured for $7, if I learn one thing from the short essay, that it would be worth the purchase of what ended up something anyone who is already aware of the overused boiled down messages, bumper stickers for stupid people and irreverent use of cheap clipart trash knows. The value is in the thorough academic review and argument of what you might understand intuitively. It is either a validation of your current perspective or an enlightening read, because you are one of the world’s PowerPoint sinners.

Creating presentations is a necessary evil. I say evil because if we had enough time and a more literate workforce, we would have conversations and share papers. In fact, anyone who has given any number of presentations will tell you that it is all about the interaction in the room or on the call – otherwise it is just a one-way experience with limited value and increasing boredom. Yet, businesses and authors offer education on how to better deliver messages through presentation packages, regardless of their impact to ideas. There in lies the key to presenting – no amount of visual distraction or simplicity makes up for the lack of quality thinking. Fluff sounds like fluff even if it is animated.

One of my first internships was with VSI Communications Group in South Norwalk, CT an interactive production house (now called Mentor). These guys made their bread and butter on impactful communication presentations that companies were not capable of producing, but were willing to pay for. Every presentation had an art director, artists, content authors, project managers and developers looking to assemble and deliver a final self-running, cross-platform product in Macromedia Director. What made them successful was their ability to mix art, experience design and marketing to deliver a total package. If a handout was needed or a 3D animated exploratory walk through was required, it was all part of what the client was paying for.

I might be particularly sensitive to effective communication through some of my design background or general business knowledge. I have often thought of writing a book on the effective display of software architecture. An area that is often seen as a complicated series of boxes, arrows and notation that no one but the technical folks need to understand. If you have had the pleasure of being shown these types of diagrams, it usually takes at least one person or an additional thousand words of text to understand what is being depicted. I suggest this is an indicator that, regardless of standards we might adopt to represent architecture and software design, we need more focus on making these diagrams effective beyond our narrow target audience. If we can communicate our intentions to those who do not speak our language, then surely we will all understand what we are trying to do even better. There is nothing wrong with domain specific notation, but our impact is limited by our ability to translate it to those who do not understand us. If it takes special acumen to appreciate my message then I am almost literally talking to myself, something I would like to think is a rarity – after all I am not interested in thinking alone.

Business / Culture / Design / Technology — No Comments
29
Dec 05

Challenging Apple with Zen Vision

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.

Design / Innovation — 1 Comment
25
Dec 05

Thoughtless acts for inspiration

About two years ago I was recommended a book, The Art of Innovation, by Tom Kelley. It was my first introduction to IDEO, one of America’s foremost design firms.

Recently, while looking for follow-on IDEO work, I stumbled upon Thoughtless Acts? and I wanted it for the experience it might impart – it is not your average book.

At a street price of ~20 USD, there is probably no other like it. At first, it appears to be a hard cover book and then you notice how comfortable it is to open and hold – the spine is similar to tape binding, this one reminiscent of duct tape. It is hard to miss the die cut semi-circle in the cover. Regardless of which side of the book opened the reader is greeted with text in the right orientation. The book does away with all the extra pages (extra blanks, lengthy copyright, oversized ISBN barcodes etc.) – everything is designed.

The content of the book is presented in a series of photographs followed by some text explaining the intention of the book and an index with some concise descriptions of the images. There are seven sections organizing the photos: reacting, responding, co-opting, exploiting, adapting, conforming and signaling.

The intention of the images are to help the reader get out of their box and see everyday behavior as an opportunity for innovation. Every photo offers a social landscape for critical review of things we often discard as noise. The number of inspired questions and ideas that follow seem endless.

Images of the book, Thoughtless Acts?

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