iPhone arrives in South Africa – first impressions

The iPhone arrived in South Africa, well in Cape Town anyway and being the sucker I am, made the inevitable purchase. Inevitable, yes because it seemed like a step up in technology. At first i wasn’t convinced but I have to admit that its in another league from other cell phones and PDA’s. Actually its unfair to classify the iPhone as a cell phone. I think after using it for 2 days that its more like a laptop minimised !

What”s there to like about it? Well firstly it makes Twitter come alive. (See previous post.) Secondly its’ 3G connection to Gmail is awesome and thirdly it synchs with the iTunes program; no,not just music, but photos, podcasts,contacts,calendar,videos…. and more.

So you get an iPod, a phone,internet that is highly readable and oh yes… a host of apps (applications) that you can download and makes the engine purr. Like WordPress (lets you blog from the iphone with ease), Twittelator (lets you manage Twitter), and an emulation of the 12C HP calculator. Thats all I have had time for so far. But it made me wonder about the philosophy of Apple, who have for so many years have demonstrated not only creativity, but its’ application – innovation - in their range of products. I think in further posts it may be worth exploring the mind of Steve Jobs. Stay tuned…

Thinking like a student – creatively

A bed frame of stacked honeycomb cardboard, by Galen Wolfe-Pauly

CONSIDER, in these economically difficult times, that inspiring model of creative home design, the college student.

Yes, we understand that you already know how to throw all your clothes in a pile on the floor.

But there is still much that can be learned from students who’ve managed to put together great looking places on what a grown-up might pay for a one-way ticket to Paris.

First and foremost is fearlessness. You’d be embarrassed if your friends knew you’d gotten a piece of furniture off the street. College kids call up their friends to get their help carrying furniture home from the street, and brag about it. Many are genuinely concerned about recycling and the environment, and delighted when they can turn construction cast-offs into the trappings of home.

Where others see garbage, students see potential: a wooden futon frame, less the futon, becomes a towel rack. An old-fashioned school desk and bench that might well have come out of a one-room schoolhouse upstate? Use it as a bedside table.

Nor do they have a fear of strong color or pattern: They’ll paint a dorm room a dark green, or stencil blue and white polka dots on the wall beside a 19th-century fireplace. They’ll find somebody’s tired old bedside stand that faintly recalls Versailles, paint it a pale robin’s-egg blue, shellac it, top it with a bare branch in a found glass vase, and put it in the living room, where it will look smart and playful.

Sure, you can argue, it’s easy for them to paint a bedroom green; they don’t own the place.

But that’s not giving their creativity its due. Their thinking can be so far outside the box that the box is forgotten. Kayt Brumder, a fifth-year architecture student at the Cooper Union, was strolling along New York’s Bowery four years ago with her boyfriend, Jorge Pereira, then an architecture student at Columbia and now an architect, when they saw a stack of dresser drawers on the sidewalk. It was not a perfect find; the dresser itself was missing. But that made it kind of interesting. The couple threw the drawers into a taxi, took them up to their apartment in East Harlem and turned them into wall-mounted storage.

Craigslist is a basic resource for students, as are the low-cost, big box stores. But these sources are often merely starting points. Tyler Velten, a student at the Yale School of Architecture, transformed his $35 Billy bookcases from Ikea into artful cabinets with the addition of plywood doors he made and a few $3 hinges.

You don’t have a woodworking studio? Do as Mr. Velten did: Set up the equipment on the street and plug it into a 50-foot extension cord tossed out the window. And when you find a knot in the plywood, don’t panic; make it part of the design.

Phil Mansfield for The New York Times

By JOYCE WADLER

A computer chip to match the brain’s creativity?

A tower design competition was held for the 1889 Paris World Exhibition. The winner was Alexandre Gustave Eiffel. No less than 68 designs were submitted. The designs all bore some similarity to the Eiffel Tower but were still different, since every designer has a unique design style.

This leads me to the subject of creativity. Creativity can lead to a diversity of solutions for a narrowly defined problem.

Understand the ‘how’
In thermodynamics, when a person creates something that wasn’t there before, it is called “noise”; there is an “output signal” that we cannot infer from the input.

This is a playful comparison that does not do justice to creative people, but it means that if we want computers to be creative, they must have a method to be creative.

They need a smart program for smart, non-trivial solutions. For that to happen, people must understand the “how” of their own creativity.

One of the first “computers” was an 18th century weaving machine that was programmed by punched holes in a card. This punched-card idea was adapted by IBM founder Herman Hollerith for the 1890 U.S. census. The rest is history.

Racing the brain
The brain has some 100 billion neurons. That leads to a number of possible interconnection patterns. Assuming each neuron can fire 10 to 20 times a second, the brain’s information processing capacity is in the order of 10²³bit/s.

When can we make a chip with that capacity?

Applying Moore’s Law and assuming a continued increase in processing capacity by a factor of 10 every five years or so, we cannot expect to have the required capacity before 2070.

Be pragmatic
The creative computer may not become a reality anytime soon. But the principles of creative behavior and learning are already being applied in clever ways in our browsers, our communications, our planning tools and our user interfaces.

Being creative requires us to be pragmatic at the same time: While we strive for perfection, let’s not try to reach it immediately.

- Cees Jan Koomen
Entrepreneur and Founder, Point-One Innovation Fund

Designing the Creative Computer

Out of the blue – $500,000 – No strings for creativity

CHICAGO, Sept. 23

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2008. This past week, the recipients learned in a single phone call from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

“The MacArthur Fellows Program celebrates extraordinarily creative individuals who inspire new heights in human achievement,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. “With their boldness, courage and uncommon energy, this new group of Fellows — men and women of all ages in diverse fields — exemplifies the boundless nature of the human mind and spirit.”  Recipients this year include: — an astronomer designing experiments and devices to advance understanding of the geometry of the universe and the story of both its beginning and its end (Adam Riess); — a neuroscientist tracing the natural interactions of differentiating neurons, bringing us closer to developing effective methods for treating central nervous system damage (Sally Temple); — a novelist inspired by events in her native Nigeria, exploring the circumstances that lead to ethnic conflict (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie); — an inventor of new musical instruments that transform and transcend the musical experience and navigate the boundaries between live and recorded sound (Walter Kitundu); — an urban farmer bringing low-cost technology to the cultivation, production and delivery of healthy foods to underserved urban populations here and abroad (Will Allen); — a geriatrician transforming treatment for millions suffering from painful life-threatening and end-of-life illness into more humane and effective care (Diane Meier); — an optical physicist demonstrating that power can be transmitted wirelessly, opening the door to the possibility of a range of devices operating free of traditional power sources (Marin Soljacic); — a saxophonist drawing from a variety of jazz idioms and the music of his native Puerto Rico to create complex, accessible sounds overflowing with passion (Miguel Zenon); — a critical care physician devising life-saving, clinical practices to improve patient safety in hospitals and to spare countless lives from deadly human error (Peter Pronovost); — a structural engineer restoring cathedrals and castles of the distant past and identifying ancient technologies for use in contemporary construction (John Ochsendorf); — a stage lighting designer pushing the visible boundaries of her art form with painterly lighting evoking mood and sculpting movement in dance, drama and opera (Jennifer Tipton); — an anthropologist illuminating the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican peoples through insightful interpretations of hieroglyphic inscriptions and figural art (Stephen Houston).

Einstein on creativity…… on Sunday

One of the most famous quotes of Einstein is when he said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein was putting value on creativity here. His theories and ideas were all about creativity. When he made a working boxcar for his son out of shoestring and some boxes, that was creativity. When he was down and out and needed money and posted an ad for tutoring lessons; that was creativity in making money.

Since Einstein accomplished some of the greatest thoughts of our time, an argument could be made that he was one of the most creative people of all time. You can know more about your product than anyone and have more degrees than anyone you know, but if you don’t have a little bit of creativity to take advantage of what you have, then it is useless.

Credentials and knowledge will do you little good if you lack the creativity to take advantage of them. Einstein once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” I think he was being a little humble and a lot humorous here, but he was once again acknowledging the importance of being creative!

So you may ask yourself, “What is creativity?”

That is an excellent question — let’s go straight to the source to answer it. Einstein said, “CREATIVITY is seeing what other see and THINKING what no one else has thought.”

What is creativity?

Tate Linden

(Click on the title of the blog to get the video correctly sized)

Benjamin Zander – music creativity transformation & leadership

Yesterday my daughter and i joined a packed Artscape to hear Benjamin Zander talk about the Art of Possibility Not only does he know about the of performance, he showed in his dynamic presentation the difference between motivational speaking and the ability to evoke a transformation into the almost fourteen hundred strong audience.

Zander is best known as the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic orchestra but with extroadinary energy he is also in much demand around the world as a speaker on leadership, music and creativity. For around 2 and a half hours and at almost 70 years of age he delivered an experience I would not liked to have missed. Here’s a brief summary.

You have to take a risk

People think making a mistake is the worst thing you can do.  However, only through mistakes can we see where we’re lacking, where we need to work. But we hate mistakes so we play it safe. Yet long term nothing could be more dangerous if our goal is to be insanely great at what we do. Zander suggests that instead of getting so dejected by mistakes, we instead exclaim loudly (or to ourselves) “How fascinating!”every time we make a mistake. Think about that. Another mistake? How fascinating! Another opportunity to learn something just presented itself. Another unlucky break? No worries! Move forward.

Give someone an A

Zander suggests awarding the A symbol at the outset of an assignment aligning teacher with student, manager with staff etc and in this way bring people together under a common purpose. The awarding of the A kindles a respect, a joy and a sense of positive application in family, workplace and the community.

It’s not (always) about success/failure, it’s about contribution

Rather than asking questions such as “Will I be appreciated?” or “Will I win them over?” and so on, ask “How can I make a contribution?”

“We are about contribution, that’s what our job is … everyone was clear you contributed passion to the people in this room. Did you do it better than the next violinist, or did he do better than a pianist? I don’t care, because in contribution, there is no better!”

The real power is in making others powerful

Zanders decisive moment came when after 20 years of conducting he cam to the realisation that as a leader and conductor, he didn’t make a sound, and that his job was to make the members of his orchestra powerful. the same applies to all leadership and replaces the autocratic style of long ago.

Don’t take yourself so seriously! (Rule No 6)

“Lighten up,” Says Zander, “and you lighten up those around you.” This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t take your work seriously (you should), or even that you shouldn’t take yourself seriously (that may depend on time and place), but for absolute certainty we must all get over ourselves. There is perhaps no better way to “get over ourselves” than the use of humour.

One buttock playing

When musicians truly get into the music and play it with such heart and emotion that audiences are moved beyond words, Zander noticed that the music was flowing through the musicians, taking control of their bodies as they swayed from side to side. Zander, then, urges musicians to become “one-buttock players,” that is to let the music flow through their bodies, causing them to lean and to move from one buttock to the other. If you’re a musician, or making a performance of virtually any kind, and you are totally in the moment and connecting with the language of the music and the audience, there is no way you can be a “two-buttock player.” You’ve got to move, you’ve got to connect, and you must not hold back your passion but instead let the audience have a taste of the commitment, energy, and passion you have for the music (or the topic, the ideas, etc.).

Benjamin Zander – Landmark