"Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"

Thank you Scott Spanbauer of PC World for putting words on my own aversion to a lot of aspects of the social networking craze. From the "friends" game to visually godawful Myspace pages to just how much time it takes to be a player in this arena, his article yesterday nailed it, and in a fairly witty way.

His #1 reason? What he's termed "Multiple Social Network Syndrome (MSNS)" --

"With the advent of social networking, my e-mail traffic has gotten worse, not better. Here's an e-mail telling me that my brother has sent an e-mail within Facebook. Another message informs me that Susie has updated her profile at Friendster. Another announces that Bob over at FriendNet has just brushed his teeth... And on and on and on. To reply or act on any of these events, I'll have to bring up one of the 12 social networks I've been sucked into joining, log in, and then view the ads there.

"All of that, of course, necessitates a lot of extra clicks and keystrokes, and after a while, I find that I don't really like my friends anymore."

"The Top 10 Social Networking Annoyances"
- Scott Spanbauer, PC World - May 14, 2008

Since we're on the subject of MySpace, (do I really need to link to them? It's "-.com", okay?) I think the more accurate name would be "HisSpace," in honor of owner Rupert Murdoch, who just coincidentally also owns and micro-manages the absurdly unfair and unreasonable Fox News. (Again, "-.com").

Why should I entrust this guy in particular with all the personal information that inevitably accumulates on such a site? I'm pretty damn sure he considers himself the owner of whatever resides on his various company's servers, should there ever be any disagreement over its use.

Related, here:
Half of all media will be created by consumers?
(Maybe, but will anyone else want to consume it?)
Quoted again on Boston Globe's site, on 'Web 2.0' & American Idol
Posts tagged Web 2.0

Rewarding "Appropriate Tech" Innovation

One of my favorite recurring topics has turned out to be when technology is being used for the right reasons, namely, to fundamentally improve the circumstances of life, especially where it's needed most, instead of only to produce more self-indulgent gadgetry. I didn't plan for appropriate technology to be one of my most frequent tags over a year and a half, that's just the way it happened. (Not that this came as any surprise.)

So naturally I wanted to pitch in this piece that appeared on CNet's news.com today --
The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Calif., gave out its annual awards on Wednesday night to companies and organizations that have created breakthrough devices for helping the environment and emerging nations. (Slide show of the winners.)

The first photo is of a clever stove invented for families in Guatemala, which cuts down the amount of firewood needed for a family by 70 percent. "That's hugely important in a country trying to deal with a growing population and deforestation," CNet's Michael Kanellos writes. It directly helps the families, too, not only cutting their cost for firewood, but also it's weight -- since they "often have to transport it on their backs."

Significantly, at a cost of $120, "It pays for itself in six months." (This contrasts dramatically with a personal wind power generator I'd written about last year that was predicted to pay off in 24 years!)

"Take Me To Your Leader!"

Other related posts here:
WSJ Tech Innovation Awards (9/13/06)
(Tag:) Green Tech

(Treetops photo by meire, flickr.com)

"Drumming Up Teamwork"

It's not very often that I can find some reason to write about musicmaking in here, in keeping with the (rather wide-angled yet) business-y focus of this blog. But it's Spring here at our latitude, and here's one.

Over the years, I've conducted a number of drumming-based teambuilding sessions for Idea Champions (mostly for GE at their famed Crotonville, NY, training campus,) a program begun by my colleague Nathan Brenowitz. I figured we could be doing a lot more with this and suggested we expand and spiff up the offering, so we developed a new program, and gave its page on the site a makeover.

"Hands on, energizing, and fun, Drumming Up Teamwork is the perfect way to help groups and teams see and hear what it takes for real teamwork to manifest in the workplace."

It's really all about Rhythm, because, from one perspective, everything is really all about rhythm: in business, and any interaction between people. We talk about how "timing is everything," about how people working together have to be "in step," and perhaps forget how very literal these expressions are.

But with a drum or bell or shaker in your hands, it becomes quite clear that for something to work, you have to tune in to the people you're working/playing with, you have to really listen, you have to get in sync. Then, in a musical setting, enjoyable, synchronized sounds happen -- and in a business situation, you get a team whose energies are flowing both strongly and focused.

Nathan tells stories of sessions he's run where longtime adversaries have experienced working in concert for the first time, and the letters he got from their relieved and grateful managers. It can be that powerful.

But hey, people express their appreciations even just for its time-honored value of stress relief. My favorite part, I'll admit, is when we drag all the drums and percussion into the middle of the circle, and tell the people to pick the one they want. Just for a moment, everyone becomes a kid again as they race to grab the shiny instrument they had their eyes on, and the room is filled with laughter and gleeful noise. And by the end, you always get at least a couple people who've experienced the transformation that connecting with Rhythm never fails to bring.

Which reminds me...

As long as we're already this far out on the limb (of having proposed that music be taken seriously, I guess), this must be my chance to relate another project I've been hot on this past month, while I obviously haven't been blogging.

That would be putting together "the World Fusion Open," a hybrid open mic and/or relatively open jam for the many people here in New York's Hudson Valley region who play instruments from around the world, or have been influenced by those musics. The first one will be at the Arts Society of Kingston (ASK) in their double gallery in the historic Rondout riverfront neighborhood, on Thursday, May 8th, and will run monthly through the summer.

Slo-mo "lifestreaming"- on being creative, & listening

Never one to be shy to "repurpose" a little "content," here are a couple comments left on blogs around town that I follow, on the tightly interrelated subjects of being creative and of looking for the simplest approach to fulfilling a need.

This might be my very manual, carefully edited slo-mo version of "lifestreaming" -- because I personally have no interest in inviting the world and all the people in it to look over my shoulder all day and night. (Don't they have anything better to do?)

Oh, yes, that's right, the other connectivity bit here is that it turns out the authors of these two blogs know each other, although I "stumbled upon" their work separately.

- To Nettie Hartsock on her "Five Ways to Be Creative Today" (next)
- To Lois Kelly on her "A true story about a chair"

Do We Act, or just React?

To "Five Ways to Be Creative Today," posted by book publicist Nettie Hartsock on her blog (3/7/2008).

Among her five were, "Turn off your computer, TV, radio, PDA and anything electronic and revel in the silence," and, "Spend time contemplating your navel and the deeper meaning of the world and how we’re all connected to one another."

(Yes, that's Nettie with
the great Willie Nelson.)

(In the Comments, I wrote,)

Nettie, this is very good to hear, and very practical advice. (Except maybe for the "navel" part -- ewww -- although I do understand what you're trying to get at. ; - )

I figured out at some point -- and yet I have to keep reminding myself, or be reminded, as you have here -- that if I start my day by checking my e-mail or reading news on the web, that I'm allowing other people to set the tone of the day for me. Ideally, first I need to hear the voice of my own thoughts before I start to consider everyone else's.

In other words, I need to Act instead of just React. The only way to do that is to find and start from some mental/emotional place of your own, like in the ways you've suggested here.
- BR
===

Nettie Says: (March 18th, 2008 at 5:47 pm)

"Bill,
"What a great insight in terms of starting the day with yourself instead of the email or news on the Web. I’m going to try to spend a few minutes every morning in my office just listening to music and writing before i hit the email and Web.
"I love the Act instead of just React."

Nettie

"A true story about a chair"

Lois Kelly is very big on the value of genuine conversation as a marketing tool. Her book, "Beyond Buzz," has been named as various types of "best" of 2007. (Gold prize winner in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards in the Ads/Marketing/PR category, and called one of the best business books of 2007 by Library Journal, one of editors’ two top picks for marketing and branding books. Just FYI, because the natural question here is what was the other one, it was "Made To Stick" by Dan and Chip Heath.)

In her blog, she posted this intriguing bit:

>> "Patrick Schaber over at The Lonely Marketer
has a beautiful post about his friend Jill, who put two chairs in the middle of a busy corporate campus and sat down to listen to anyone who had something to say.
Needless to say there was a line of people waiting to talk and be heard. This is one of the more innovative employee communications strategies I’ve heard in a long time." (3/3/08)

===
(I wrote,)
Hi, Lois,

This story about the lady and her two chairs really strikes to the heart of a great principle we all need to routinely remember to return to: looking for the Simplest approach to fulfilling a need.

The key to being able to see simple solutions? It almost invariably starts with being willing to
s l o w... d o w n...

- BR

===
Related, here:
“Serious Fun Dept.: The Playpump”
Simplicity (tag)

More from Lois Kelly in -
“Can trends be predicted, much less created?”

A Shift in Perspective

(A Saturday afternoon post...)

"Everything is familiar, Daniel M. Tani said, but 'it feels a little alien.' He did not have some of the problems adjusting to gravity that other astronauts have had — absent-mindedly leaving an object in mid-air and being startled to see it crash to the ground. 'You’re very conscious of that,' he said.

"But he still marveled at the mundane. 'You take the lid off the bottle, and you put it on the table,' he said, 'and it’s just amazing that it stays on the sink.' In space, it would have flown away unless it was secured. 'You don’t have to find a piece of velcro to stick it to,' he recalled. 'that seemed like it was magic to me.'"

"Adapting to Earth After 120 Days in Space"
By John Schwartz, NY Times "The Lede" blog, 3/11/08

(Photo uploaded to Flickr by kEnObAnDo)

"Google: Huge Idea, Simple Insight"

(Extract of a recent post written for Idea Champions' "Heart of Innovation")

"Discovery's Science Channel Has Good New Series On (the) Internet." (Search Engine Watch)

Download: The True Story of the Internet, by former editor and writer for Wired, John Heileman, "is no softball show.. . the series gives it to you 'warts and all' and does not hold back the punches on how things have developed so far. The last show I watched discussed the development of search..."

"We hear amazing stories," The Discovery Channel tells us, "of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal... with first-hand testimony from the people that matter."

I also was watching that episode on search, one of four. To me, the most arresting observation was that while the original, breakthrough idea at the root of Google's effectiveness and success came from a programmer, cofounder Larry Page, it was a very simple thought. Page was not crouched over a keyboard or remembering any computer code in order to come up with this construct.

The billion-dollar insight was just this: that a link to a site from another is like a vote for that destination. The more sites link to yours (and the more linked-to their sites are), the better yours must be... (one of) the ones which the most visitors have "voted for with their feet," or in this case, their eyeballs.

[ more ] on The Heart of Innovation

That's most of the Google logo as of the Spring equinox,
which is coming up within the hour.

"The Sweat That Eureka Demands"

(Extract of a recent, very up-to-the-minute post of mine in Idea Champions' "The Heart of Innovation"... a couple weeks back:)

Serious about doing something innovative? Be prepared to spend many long, focused hours working on it (and working and working and reworking...)

Thomas Edison  (Wikipedia)

"We want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance," Janet Rae-Dupree writes in the New York Times. But, "Innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time."
...
(As one of the greatest inventors in memory, Thomas Edison, knew so well:)

In an interview in Harpers magazine, February 1890, (stay tuned here at Heart Of Innovation as we present the latest, greatest breakthroughs! ; ) Edison explained his method:

"I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory."

(More of "The Sweat That Eureka Demands" here...)

Related, here in Rosswriting: 
inventors (tag)

Front Seat TV Found "Distracting"

A situation sorely in need of a firm grasp of the obvious:
I was astonished by a recent story in the NY Times on the problems being caused by television and other screens in cars' front seats. The caption of a photo of one such cockpit display read, "Safety experts say electronic devices can be distracting."

Well, DUUHH! Excuse me, but how could the people in positions of responsibility for launching products with such obvious critical flaws not see the problem here?

Even if you're fine with an utterly distracted state from a philosophical point of view, didn’t anyone bring up the issue of the potential liability? (Or if someone did, and you figure that's the likelihood, why didn't the decision makers get it?)

The best part of the article was a quick mention of how legislation came to be introduced in New York to ban all “display generating devices” in the driver’s view. To it's credit, the state already has a law against TV sets in the front seat.

State Senator Carl L. Marcellino, who sponsored the bill, "learned this firsthand while riding in a cab in Miami — the driver was watching a boxing match on a television mounted on the dashboard." I can testify that having lived in Miami for many years, I have no problem at all imagining this. (It can be quite a surreeaalistic place.)

"High-Tech Invitations Take Your Mind Off Road" By Bill Vlasic

Related, here:
(Tag:) Focus

(Image uploaded to Flickr by wiseacre photo)

Just Keep Swinging

In the process of backing up my machine here (since I'm taking it in for a repair before the service contract is up,) I came across one of those inspirational quotes that you save to get you through discouraging interludes.

This, from one of baseball's greatest hitters, is one that I found printed across the top of the local paper's sports page a few years back, right over the scores from the various high school teams. At the time, I really needed not just to hear this, but to keep it in the forefront of my thoughts. So I taped it at the top of my monitor, where it always fed me a little encouragement and direction every time I looked up.

"My motto was always to keep swinging. Whether I was in a slump or just feeling badly, the only thing to do was keep swinging."

- Henry Aaron

Now, here's a guy who, I think we can say, probably had a lot more reason to feel downhearted at times than most. As I'm sure most people realize, when he was on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record, he was receiving death threats and hate mail on a regular basis.

After the last game of the 1973 season, having reached 713, one short of the record, Aaron stated that his only fear was that he might not live to see the next season. So when he said, I just keep swinging, that was quite a statement.

(I suppose it was stressful to be receiving threats of indictment while going after Aaron's record, but I don't think they quite compare.)

1974 baseball card uploaded to Flickr by brettbigb

On "Blog Coaching"

Just received this very kind letter today from Mitch Ditkoff, the President of Idea Champions, the "culture of innovation" trainers/consultancy, about my ongoing blog coaching services for them. He explains so well what we do in that space that I don't need to add a further word of explanation.
I figure he won't mind me excerpting the longer letter here:

"Thank you very much for all the fine work you’ve done to help Idea Champions create and launch it’s very successful Heart of Innovation blog...

"Your efforts, insights and support were the missing piece. You helped me sort through the choices, consider my options, and made some very insightful recommendations. I appreciate all your flexibility, responsiveness, and commitment to see this project through to the end.

"I see your blog consulting service as a kind of 'chiropractic adjustment.' You have a light touch, know what you’re doing, and are all about the 'health' of your clients.. . I needed the human touch – the Walk Me Through It school of education. So thanks again for hanging in there with me and helping manifest a 'good idea' into a bottom-line reality."

(For my part, I've just got to say that we should all be so lucky to have such enlightened and light-hearted clients.)

Can trends be predicted, much less created?

I came across a provocative, realistic thought in Lois Kelly's "Bloghound" today, in a discussion of whether it's possible to jump-start a trend by trying to influence the influencers. She quotes a "Columbia University network theory scientist" named Duncan Watts who argues otherwise, saying, "the complex network effects on society mean that trends occur randomly."

In an article in Fast Company, he says, "If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one — and if it isn't then almost no one can." In other words, Nothing Is As Powerful As An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Find one of those and then you've got something to work with.

That concept and this post produced a range of pings for me: I've been quoting a related idea for a long time, said to be one of the Laws Of Hollywood: "All Hits Are Flukes." (Just anecdotally, I remember this was reported as seen on the office wall of Trip Hawkins, back when he headed Electronic Arts.)

Yes, you've got to do your due diligence, put out as much intelligent, engaging signal to the right audiences as you can. But then there's always that point where you can only See What Happens. Farmers can plant the best seed at the right time and apply all their Best Practices; but then, it's largely up to the weather.

Companies are understandably nervous about investing money in marketing -- because the more time and money you've spent on marketing that came up empty, the more antsy you get -- so marketers can feel understandably pressured into issuing guarantees. But aren't those almost invariably fiction? What a marketer can do is stay on top of what's going on out there as much as possible, and give a company the best chance to succeed in getting their message out to fruitful effect.

~ ~ ~
Lois Kelly's angle on getting the message out is based on what she calls "conversational marketing." In the sample chapter of her book, "Beyond Buzz," she explains, "The big idea is simply this: marketing is about having conversations, engaging with people in interesting discussions, through new and traditional channels. Technology may be becoming the heart of marketing and communications, but conversations are the soul."

(I find it a parallel, complementary idea to the ongoing focus here on pursuing business by dealing with people face to face. I'll toss in here that while in-person contacts are still ideal, advances in videoconferencing are now making that medium the next best thing. Especially when it means you wouldn't have to undress at a trot in a cold airport.)

Photo of the Hollywood sign, chosen because it symbolizes
the empty facade that area is, posted to Flickr by Kiran Ambre.)

Related, here:
Interface or Face To Face?

Serious Fun Dept.: The Playpump

A fully-formed idea is a beauty to behold. Find the kind that works in full strength on a number of levels, simultaneously fulfilling a range of needs, and you've got an effort worthy of putting full energy into.

Such is the Playpump -- as Maura Welch explains (in the Boston Globe Business Filter, from a post in PSFK), "This genius invention delivers clean drinking water to African villages -- and it's powered by a merry-go-round."

PSFK writes, "While children are playing on a merry-go-round, up to 1,400 liters of clean water can be pumped into a tank that stands seven meters above the ground. The tank’s walls are used to place ad billboards while two sides are reserved for educational messages. The revenue from ad-sales is put into the maintenance of each pump."

Here's a device which supplies a vital necessity, and is powered by children doing what they're supposed to do, and do best: play. Talk about "Serious Fun"! As Welch writes, "Simple things are powerful."

National Geographic's "Wild Chronicles" feature on the PlayPump Water System:

"Clean water equals less disease. It's low-cost solution to a whole host of complicated, expensive problems."

Of course, now that the kids don't need to carry water from dirty streams every day, the adults are glad they can spend more time in school. From the children's point of view, this might seem like a mixed blessing. But hey, they get a merry-go-round!

The 5 C's for a Team, from Nate McMillan (and 1)

Yes, another one of those lists... (one of the many ways that enumerate how relentlessly numbers-oriented our society is. Seems like everywhere you look, lists are being published of the Five This and the Ten That -- excuse me, that's the Top Five and the Top Ten.)

Still, this concise list of "the Five C's," five qualities for players on a winning team to focus on, rang all the right bells for me. I noticed this particular story, though, because these conceptual-vitamin C's come from a basketball coach I'm familiar with, whose team is overachievingly hot. And that mostly matters because all through his 12 years as a point guard on the Seattle Sonics, Nate McMillan really played the game "the right way."

McMillan has now been coaching the regional rival Portland Trailblazers (22-13) for two years, and his motto was voiced in a Portland Tribune story last month about their upstart success.

"Coach Nate McMillan cited an adherence to the 'five C’s' – calmness, clarity, consistency, connectedness and communication – as an example of the team’s progress. 'We started communicating better, and the result was, we raised our level of play and had a nice comeback,' McMillan said."


Calmness,

_Clarity,

__Consistency,

___Connectedness,

____Communication.

Beautiful. Touches all the bases -- excuse me, that should be, "moves the ball around to find the open man."

It's interesting to note that the first three really begin with the effort of the individual. Once those basic qualities are put in action by each of the team members, that's the point from where connection can start to come into play.

To that list, I'd only suggest adding Caring.

How do I justify that? Folks, I only need point to the other conference and historic Boston, where Exbibit A now reigns: Mr. Kevin Garnett is unquestionably the driving force behind the Celtics' current 29-4 record, not only league-leading but putting them as a team in some pretty rarified historical company. And it doesn't look like anybody could care more than he does.

The guy is so passionately motivated, and equally on each end of the floor, that his teammates just can't help getting inspired and energized by it, and, to put a technical hoops term on it, just play their butts off out there.

Yes, there are a couple other All-Stars on there, Pierce and Allen, and [blah blah team talk], but it is Garnett's evident passion and drive that's the difference between a good team and the great one they're playing as right now.

~ ~ ~
Putting up a few more shots:

Nate McMillan was always one of those quiet "hustle guys" for the Sonics, the kind that the casual fan might not notice, but who would always seem to be coming up with key defensive plays, rebounds, loose balls -- the effort plays -- getting the ball to the stars for dramatic scores, while dropping in a few three pointers at crucial moments.

The consummate team player, he was a repeat on the all-NBA Defensive 2nd team (i.e., one of the top ten defenders -- dammit, there it is again!), and the Sonics' franchise leader in assists and steals when he retired in 1998, having spent his entire pro playing career in Seattle. By then he was known as Mr. Sonic, and the next year they retired his number, only the team's fourth up to then.
~ ~ ~

There's nothing like a winning streak to support whatever philosophies the winners work by: as of today the Blazers just won nine of their last ten games; and this with a young, "rebuilding" team that no one expected to hear from this season. Especially when they got the #1 pick in the draft last year, but then the poor guy went down with an injury -- for the year).
~ ~ ~

Let me ask an important question that's been on my mind with this:
why isn't there ever a Top Eight or Eleven or Seventeen of anything?
If it's always Ten, don't you suspect that they either add or drop one or two to make it fit? And then where do those missing elements wind up?
(Omigod, it might be that one left-behind Reason #11 that's been the missing link all this time!)
~ ~ ~

Sports Illustrated article: "In his own words: Blazers coach Nate McMillan"

Related, here:
Dance vs. Hoops
(...for which I 've taken a lot of heat from dancers who, like, didn't get it. It's satire, people!)

"View from a Creative Mind"

(Brief of a post of mine in The Heart Of Innovation, 1/3/08, starting with news of,)

"... a nearby exhibition, titled 'Illuminations,' of the work of Saul Steinberg, the artist most famously known for his frequent appearances over six decades in The New Yorker magazine. He was the clever fellow who gave us the much-imitated 1976 cover illustration of how New Yorkers see the world, 'The View from 9th Avenue,' where a couple of blocks of the city dominate, and the rest of the country occupies a small square of land in the distance.

"So much of his work displayed such a fresh, wonderfully creative mind that, for me, it 'illustrates' an essential attitude that successful innovators have. This is the habit of looking to see things newly, as opposed to how we usually see, which is through a haze of existing thought patterns; and, freely associating, to find useful connections between things that were hidden until then.

"In the words of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's page on his life and work, 'fingerprints become mug shots or landscapes; graph or ledger paper doubles as the facade of an office building; words, numbers, and punctuation marks come to life as messengers of doubt, fear, or exuberance.. ."

"Saul Steinberg: Illuminations" on view through February 24 '08 at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 124 Raymond Avenue, Poughkeepsie NY. (845) 437-5632.

(First spotted in Chronogram magazine, by Beth Wilson, 12/07.)

(Image courtesy of the Saul Steinberg Foundation's Gallery)

"Christmas Time Is Here" - the sweetly sad blues version

'Tis the season…

Every year at this time I make sure to dig out my all-time favorite Christmas album (okay, I'll admit it, along with Bing's), and it's mostly because of this one irreplaceable song.

If there's such a thing as a plaintive, yearning Christmas blues, this would be it: one that, while fully acknowledging the joyful, sweet, soulful nature of the real Christmas, and not what it's become (you retailers will have to excuse the rest of us for wishing it could be another way), sadly asks, why isn't it that way all year?

It's the late pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," performed by him and his trio for the original animated special from 1965. Here are the lyrics; and even better, the entire album (including the equally poignant instrumental version of the song,) can be heard as free streams on Download.com Music, courtesy of the publisher, Concord Music Group.

"Christmas Time Is Here"
(Written by Vince Guaraldi and Lee Mendelson)

Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call, their favorite time of year

Snowflakes in the air, carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes, of love and dreams to share

Sleigh bells in the air, beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside, and joyful memories there

Christmas time is here, we'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see, such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see, such spirit through the year...

(The story behind "A Charlie Brown Christmas," on Wikipedia.)

~ ~ ~

As a musician friend recently pointed out, there was so much more to Vince Guaraldi than just his inspired Peanuts soundtracks. He had a touch for the almost painfully beautiful, as with his instrumental, "Cast Your Fate to the Wind," the 1963 Grammy winner of Best Instrumental Jazz Composition. That was from the album "Jazz Impression of Black Orpheus," Guaraldi's version of Antonio Carlos Jobim's haunting soundtrack score.

~ ~ ~

On a lighter note, and speaking of Bing's classic (sort of), an old friend just sent this tune along...

Predators In The Televised Bushes (Tracing Back To Root Causes)

We tend to think of ourselves as "highly evolved," but while our mental world and all the technology we cook up with it has certainly evolved very speedily over the last, say, 100 to 150 years, our body and the back of our brain is still far behind. I think this fact goes a long way towards explaining how confused we are as a species, mostly clumsily crashing our way through life on this planet...

One day, watching some poor band of musicians trying in vain to compete with a couple of television screens just off to the side, I was once again troubled by the fact that I seemed unable to ignore the (stoopit) TVs. My gaze repeatedly switched to the screens, and away from the performance of the real, living, breathing bioforms that I was trying to watch.

Finally, it occurred to me that the reason we are virtually unable to ignore a flickering television, our eyes drawn to it unwillingly again and again, is due to the part of our brain, still very much active, that is always on the alert for any activity in our peripheral vision -- because it might be a wild animal in the brush, measuring us up for a snack.

So I was mightily interested when I came across the same thought applied to a different sense, in, ironically, a blog on a subject that almost could not be more contemporary or "highly evolved," that of digital musicmaking.

The post in Create Digital Music is titled, "Windows Sound Glitches Explained, Plus Glitches and the Fight-or-Flight Response" (11/2/07, by Peter Kirn).

"Your ears and mind are incredibly sensitive to tiny details of sound. Result: if your operating system can’t keep up with sound output for any reason, you’ll get a noticeable “glitch” in the sound — and that’s a big deal. "Microsoft has a great post on their Vista Team Blog today from Steve Ball --

'My colleague on the Windows Sound team, Larry Osterman, also pointed out to me recently that humans are actually “hard-wired” to be disturbed by audio glitches. In an exchange about this topic, Larry observed that audio glitches are more obvious than video glitches because the ear’s tuned to notice high frequency transients — his visceral example of this idea is an image of a stick snapping in the woods behind you as an audio event that wakes you up before a bear wanders into your path.'"

So, it's not that we are so dreadfully unfocused and ADD -- although we most certainly are -- it's more because the base of our brain is still executing a seldom-needed Primary Directive. Unless you live in a big, dirty city, in which case it's just doin' its equally contemporary job.

(Photo on Flickr by Edgar Thissen)

Where Do Great Ideas Come From?

(Extracts of a couple of my recent posts in The Heart of Innovation, the weblog I manage for Idea Champions, the "culture of innovation" training/consultancy.)

"In Your Dreams"

Well, there it is again.

I've discovered an amazing, arts-centered television channel, Ovation TV. They screen an impressive array of high quality programming on music, film, dance, painting, etc., the artists and their processes (quite a lot of it being BBC productions from the late 90's, interestingly enough).

It was specifically a trio of programs on music hosted by the legendary producer of the Beatles, George Martin, that gave me the jolt to write this. Together they're titled, "The Rhythm of Life," one lengthy show each on Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony. For those who love music, these programs are an unparalleled feast, with Martin listening to friends from Stevie Wonder to Michael Tilson Thomas playing and talking about the marvels and mystery of music.

In the one on melody, he talks with Paul McCartney about "Yesterday," Paul's greatest hit... Martin asked his old partner McCartney how he came up with that famous melody; and Paul simply said, "I dreamt it." He explained that he woke up from a dream, with that melody playing itself in his imagination.

One of the projects I've been working on here this year, and among the most inspiring and energizing, has been editing the updated version of the workbook for one of Idea Champions' most fundamental courses, the Creative Thinking Training, "Banking on Innovation" (in the process of rebirth as "Freeing The Genie").

One segment (adapted into this article, "AHA! Great Moments in Creativity,") dealt all of the breakthroughs in art, science and technology that came as unexpected gifts to the practitioner, who would later be credited with their discovery. It turns out that the ideas for many great inventions came to the "inventors" in their dreams.

[more]
===

"Where do Great Ideas come from?"

Ever notice how many times the biggest, most successful ideas come from closely imitating some principle at work in nature?

I've kept one particular book around for years both because it contained a statement that really rang my chimes, and it's full of beautiful, striking imagery. The book is, "Bridges, a history of the world's most famous and important spans," by Judith Dupre (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1997).


And its memorable, "Whoomp, (ta-ta, ta,) there it is," declaration:

"Bridges are based on one or more of three basic structures that are derived from forms found in nature: the beam, from a log fallen across a stream; the arch, from natural rock formations, and the suspension, from a hanging vine."

So there it is, again: a human "invention" that turns out to be fundamentally "derived from forms found in nature."

[more - with a later comment from the author of the book ]

"High Tech/High Touch"- Naisbitt Nailed IT Long Ago

The Boston Globe's Maura Welch mentions an unexpectedly earthy item by Nicholas Carr (a former editor of Harvard Business Review, who naturally has also been published all over the place), "about a new study that says Americans are having less sex and spending less time with friends in order to stay online longer. … He predicts a counter-movement is on the way and advises marketers to look for 'the digitivity dropouts,' who make disconnectivity the next big thing."

Commenters in his blog were all over Carr for this scandalous claim; a sample remark was, "I don't buy it. There's too much utility in the Net for people to drop off."

But for me it quickly brought to mind the prescient expression of the famed "futurist" John Naisbitt, who first floated the idea of "high tech/high touch" in his 1982 book, MegaTrends, and found that it gained enough traction over the years to turn into a full volume of its own in '99.

So I couldn't resist dropping a comment on the subject in Carr's far-ranging blog. In the cause of saving myself some keystrokes so I can get outside while it's still nice, I wrote that it reminded me of Naisbitt's phrase, which is proving to be one of those rare examples of a "futurist" who actually got it right.

It's an important reminder that the more wired and gadgetized our world becomes, the more effort we need to make to plant our feet in the physical "real world." (The real Real World, that is, not one of the pretend "reality show" worlds.)

Naisbitt wrote,

“In a High Tech world with an increasing search for balance, High Touch will be the key…"

(He refers to) "a mountain of evidence implicating technology in relentlessly accelerating our lives, and stirring profound yearnings for a more emotionally satisfying existence."

Now, do any of us really require "a mountain of evidence" anymore to prove that being wired 24/7 is simply a very unnerving experience? I think we've all got one of those nervous mountains in our own back yard -- those of us who are lucky enough to have a back yard of our own. (City dwellers, please substitute whichever room your computer and/or "media center" sits in.)

Related, here:
Interface or Face To Face?
Posts referencing the Globe's Business Filter