Slime mould moving in petri-dish (Physarum)
Socratic Innovation. By Humberto Schwab, PhilosopherDirector, Club of Amsterdam Innovation is on the lips of all strategic leaders and all not-strategic leaders. If we look back at the figures worldwide about the increase of Internet connections and the increase of mobile phone connections, even in Africa or Latin America; we know innovation is not any longer something you can do or something you chose. If you do not innovate you will run out of business, unless you have good traditional craftsmanship products. One thing is four sure: in our hyper-fast information driven world, good traditional values are cornerstones of trust. For all the other stuff we must be continuously focused on the sustainability and effectiveness of our client approaches. It is not that products and services are changing rapidly, it is the fact that they can be reached in complete new ways, that they can be produced in complete new ways and that the information about these facts uses new ways.
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design. So, here's a Vision Of The Future that's popular right now. It's a lot of this sort of thing. As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video. My problem is the opposite, really — this vision, from an interaction perspective, is not visionary. This matters, because visions matter. This little rant isn't going to lay out any grand vision or anything. Before we think about how we should interact with our Tools Of The Future, let's consider what a tool is in the first place.
I like this definition: A tool addresses human needs by amplifying human capabilities. That is, a tool converts what we can do into what we want to do. That's right! And that's great!
More Questions Than Answers. This is the Address I gave for my mum today at the start of her funeral. We are here to remember and celebrate the life of Stella McDermott who died on Wednesday 30th October. Thank-you for letting me say a few words about my mother. There are other stories which also must be told. This is just one. Stella was born in 1936 to Margaret and Harry Donovan. She lost her father early in her life and the few memories I have of mother talking about him were tinged with sadness. A simple working class man who had been at Arnhem during the war. Margaret, Stella’s widowed mother was to be a humble and kind presence in all of her grand-children’s lives. She was just as devoted to Stella and committed to helping bringing up her grandchildren.
She told me a cherished memory of a former pupil approaching her in the street and saying she was now herself teaching and as a child had been overwhelmed by my Mum’s love for her subject. As I have said my mother was a great teacher. Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain. The Smart design of the Beijing 3D bus - FreedomLab Future Studies. Want to Become an Innovator? WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson. Ken Robinson.