Ideas database
Posted on October 23, 2007
Filed Under What's New |
I find novel ideas are addictive - the same addiction that keeps us googling when we should be reading books or doing something conventional.
At the pace of a snail I’m putting together examples of creative invention as the case studies for the book and in this month’s Innovation magazine I got the chance to write about TED. Interesting point - TED is sponsored by BMW who have cropped up a couple of times in my articles recently as a company doing unusual things with ideas, creativity and the web.
Here though is the brief article:
Artist and anthropologist Jonathan Harris builds tools that allow people to see their similarities – troubled by the various gaps that we use to define ourselves – education gaps, religious gaps, a gender gap, Harris has created a software visualization system to show us our similarities. The deliberately counterintuitive aspect of Harris’ work is typical of TED, a website that collects and distributes ideas that stem from technology, entertainment and design work and which carries a video of Harris film We Feel Fine.
The result in the case of human emotions, as mapped and visualized by Harris, is an entertaining insight into how the world feels. The result of the TED database is an unusual resource of innovation-related videos as well as easy access to innovative minds across the world.
According to Harris one thing we have in common,is a need to express ourselves though we also have few people willing to listen – unless you happen to be a writer. As more and more people write down their thoughts om the Internet we now have access, theoretically, to a wealth of human emotion. Harris scans the blogosphere for the phrases “I feel” or “I am feeling”, grabs the sentence around those phrases, and accumulates 20,000 feelings a day.
To visualize 20,000 feelings Harris sees brights colours for happy positive feelings are brightly coloured dark colours for less happy. The result is a constantly moving account of people’s feelings each day. Incidentally, people in their 20s are the most emotionally expressive on the web.
Though an apparently trivial application of web-data visualization it is indicative of the innovative strands of thought emerging from the cross-fertilisation of technology, media and design.
If you are looking for insights in to what that crossroads means for business, you can wander across the virtual earth with Microsoft’s Stephen Lawler who talks about the significance of the 3D Internet (it creates opportunities for new ways to search based on physical movement – you go and find things rather than dipping into a database for information).
Biologist Janine Benyus’ illustration of how humans mimic nature in many of their designs opens up the possibility of a more conscious approach to design – biomimicry – which is already informing architects and industrial designers. Biologists have begun mimicking the Peacock to create adaptable materials that use movement and reflection rather than pigments to establish and change their colour and are now using plants as a model for converting Co2 into biodegradable plastics .
Or tune into Thomas Barnett if your concern is society. An advisor to the Pentagon Barnett uses the phrase “catastrophic success” to describe US military dominance. Barnett is developing new scenarios for the US military focused on peace.
The TED philosophy is striking: An idea can be created out of nothing except an inspired imagination, an idea weighs nothing, can be transferred across the world at the speed of light for virtually zero cost, and yet an idea, when received by a prepared mind, can have extraordinary impact. TED is owned by the California based Sapling Foundation which also promotes new ideas in health management and cooperates in development projects with the Clinton Global Initiative. Prepare your mind for TED and go to www.ted.com.
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