ThinkingShift

In a recent post, I explored the loss of critical thinking skills. In this post, I want to extend my exploration by asking whether we have also lost curiosity. Once again, my thoughts are not fully formed and I’m asking more questions than answering them. And warning: VERY LONG post so if you’re not curious about curiosity, then read no further :)-

I have been bemoaning what no doubt many of us see as a hedonistic contemporary society that is stupefied by reality TV; a society that is complacent (paralysed?) in the face of poverty, increasing social unrest, terrorism, Affluenza, and the banality of Hollywood celebrity who appear to be more in, than out of, rehab.

We spend most of our time in the citadels aka corporations, where we are subtly (or not so subtly) taught not to ask questions; not to challenge the status quo; to accept that “this is the way things are around here”. As children, we explore, we discover, we probe, we sense, we ask “but why?”. Organisations do not seem to foster this natural inquisitiveness. Maybe a few words about innovation are muttered, but not curiosity. We don’t teach people trapped in the citadels the skill of curiosity.

So I was about to do a post that was basically a rant about how we are no longer curious; how we don’t have time to indulge in idle curiosity; how lowered educational standards have produced an educational system where students are spoon-fed in exchange for exhorbitant university or college fees.Then I decided to try and apply some critical thinking and so my initial thoughts somewhat changed.

But first…. my own curiosity was piqued when I read a blog post:

“Many people my age (20-something) have simply lost their curiosity. They’ve lost their desire to know what’s going on. To stay on top of the news. To be aware of the world extending beyond their general social circle. And that’s sad.

Have we gotten so used to the status quo that we are no longer interested in non-mediocrity? I thought this time of our lives was meant to be spent shaking things up, questioning authority, figuring out how messed up the world around us really was. Instead, I fear that we’ve folded up shop, accepted the reality-as-Bushworld-has-described-it and settled in for the long haul toward old age.

Do we still read newspapers for anything other than the daily crossword puzzle? Do we listen to the radio for anything other than the latest Maroon 5 single or football game? Do we surf the Internet for anything other than buying clothes, forming social networks, or watching Paris Hilton have sex? I’m starting to doubt it”

My first thoughts were: thank goodness it’s not just me getting older and muttering “younger people aren’t curious”. Here’s a 20-something individual observing the same thing – so what’s going on? Is the cat still alive but curiosity itself is dead and buried?

To find some answers, let’s take a quick trip back to ancient times. In the Garden of Eden, Eve disobeyed God, gobbled the apple and was unceremoniously kicked out of the luxuriant garden. In the panic of fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife turned to look back at the destroyed cities and was promptly turned into a pillar of salt. And Greek mythology tells us that Pandora couldn’t resist a peek, opened a box and released Evil, Sickness and Unhappiness. So in ancient times, curiosity was equated with a desire for knowledge that was beyond mere mortals and curiosity had a dangerous quality to it. Only God or the gods of Greek mythology could possess knowledge of curious and wondrous things.

By the time of Aristotle and Cicero, however, curiosity was no longer equated with seductive serpents hiding out in gardens or pillars of salt, and instead was linked to a passion or thirst for knowledge and learning. And over the last few hundred years, curiosity has become associated with scientific discovery; voyages of exploration across the seas and through the dark interior of Africa; cabinets of curiosity; the space race; technological advances.

Etymologically, “curiosity” shares its meaning with “cure” and ‘curiously wrought”, pointing to a general notion of care or careful attention. Obsolete English terms such as the ‘cure of souls” reflects the concept of caring for people.

And so our contemporary understanding of curiosity is linked with natural inquisitiveness; a sense of wonder; new experiences; experimenting; discerning a gap in knowledge; careful attention to people and things in the external landscape surrounding us. Our curiosity now even extends into the spiritual world as we seek to get in touch with those who have ‘crossed over’. But curiosity is surely tinged with anxiety, for to be curious means to explore and perhaps venture into the unknown.

Have you ever noticed how young kittens explore their world? They approach an unfamiliar object quietly, crouching and using their soft paws to probe the object. They spring back when anxious or frightened by the unfamiliar and yet continue to gingerly close in on the object in their determination to discover, conquer and reduce uncertainty. And yet, curiosity can be easily frightened again.

If we look at curiosity through the lens of the new sciences, curiosity is a space of tension between chaos and order – a zone of uncertainty where what is known and comfortable is temporarily suspended. In this zone, the curious person engages with new ways of seeing things; asking new or different questions; solving problems; recognising new connections; accepting disorder. It is a zone of temporary discomfort but one with enormous potential for creativity and knowledge generation. This is surely the same type of curiosity that astronauts and explorers experience as they venture into novel, unknown realms.

But is curiosity an innate human instinct that we’ve lost touch with or is it a result of social conditioning? If the latter, then what it is about contemporary society that seems to have caused a malady in curiosity?

Psychologist, D.E.Berlyne (one of the few I have found who has made a scientific study of curiosity) believes that curiosity is externally stimulated and that the curiosity drive is aroused by external stimuli, specifically complexity, novelty, uncertainty and conflict. But there is a balancing act – if the level of stimulation is too low, then there is no motivation to explore or learn; if stimulation is too high or confusing, then anxiety and fear results. The right amount of external stimuli produces inquisitive, exploratory behaviour.

Perhaps this is a key: contemporary society is staggering under the weight of information overload; Affluenza; hedonism; too much choice. We are so busy being connected and switched on, that we struggle to find the Off switch. And so our natural curiosity is stifled as we attempt merely to survive in an uncertain and increasingly threatening world. Is there too much uncertainty, too much unfamiliarity, too much complexity?

To ponder this further, I thought about one of my favourite spaces – museums – for surely museums rely on stimulating curiosity to attract visitors. Just visiting a museum to see a few miserable stuffed animals is not an attractor. So what are the curiosity attractors museums employ?

As Aristotle taught us: curiosity is a precursor to learning and museums are informal learning environments where attendance is not mandatory. The art of juxtaposition is the strategy museums seem to focus on – placing objects next to each other that, at first glance, appear unrelated; exhibits that tempt you to touch or explore the unfamiliar; spaces for children to solve problems; exhibitions that encourage us to reflect on the values and lives of early societies in comparison to our own.

A museum must cater for all types: the visitor who is interested specifically in Ancient Egypt but passes through other exhibits on the way; the wanderer, who drops in and out of all exhibits casually observing, connecting and learning; the serendipitous visitor who is perhaps not interested in anything specific, but explores the entire museum for hours, stopping here and there to discover unknown facts.

This caused me to reflect on Google as a virtual museum. If you know what information you need, you probably have favourite websites and blogs to visit; if you have a vague idea of what you need, you start off with one site, explore the links suggested and get lost in an exploration that may take up hours; and if you have zippo idea of what you need or want, you type in a keyword or two and leave it to serendipity.

So curiosity is stimulated by externality but surely curiosity is an innate human instinct as well? If we look at Roget’s Thesaurus, it tells us that the absence of curiosity is boredom, ennui, satiety, taking no interest, uninquisitiveness. What do we do when we are bored? Don’t know about you but I read; I write; I explore the internet – aka learning, seeking out, discovering, reflecting, connecting. So we all must have an independent exploratory drive or On switch. Has it been turned to the Off position and we’ve ended up with a society that is complacent about global warming; only curious about the private lives of celebrities; overwhelmed by choice, choice and more choice?

Perhaps curiosity is aroused by incoming stimuli as Berlyne suggests but we compare incoming stimuli with our past experiences; the patterns we’ve noted before; our cognitive understandings etc and then we find we don’t understand or cannot accommodate the incoming stimuli. This cognitive gap I think is the space for curiosity. To close or narrow the gap, we seek new information to integrate and assimilate and this helps us build a new cognitive map and increase our knowledge base. Given the etymological roots of ‘curiosity’, maybe people who pay careful attention and sense a gap or discrepancy are curious people.

If Berlyne is right and curiosity is stirred by an external environment that contains juxtapositions; raises intriguing questions; and helps you gather and process new knowledge and experience novel sensations– then curiosity must be a precursor to critical thinking and the first step towards knowledge acquisition. I’ve argued that critical thinking is a skill and so this poses the question of whether curiosity is also a skill that can be acquired.

It seems the men (and women) of the Enlightenment worked hard to acquire the skill of being curious. A Cabinet of Curiosities or ‘Wunderkammern’ was a central feature of a learned gentleman’s social and intellectual life and was filled with physical rarities or anomolies that defied being placed into known categories or taxonomies.A cabinet was a wonder chamber that displayed a vast range of objects such as plants, fossils, zoological specimens, exotica from colonial cultures, unusually patterned shells or stones. And the arrangement of items in the Cabinet allowed people to see new ways of associating relationships or objects. And so knowledge was constructed through an associative process. This is similar to how modern museums allow us to explore and discover connections.

Learned discussions and exchanges would take place between gentlemen in the coffeehouses and tearooms of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Human objects of curiosity were exhibited in travelling ‘freak shows” and people gazed at displays of preserved and sometimes grotesque body parts.

Objects of curiosity were often collected during the Grand Tour – the leisurely traverse of the Continent that a young gentleman undertook as a rite of passage. Often taking years, the Grand Tour was an active curiosity seeking adventure. Because of the tyranny of distance, the Age of Discovery was populated by thrill seekers eager to discover new lands; physical explorations of classical architecture on the Continent; private displays of Cabinets of Curiosity; people gathering in coffee houses to digest the latest curious and wondrous thing. It was clearly an Age of Curiosity.

What is the 21st Century version of the Grand Tour or the Cabinet of Curiosity? Is curiosity an active seeking of something? If so, then because our world is stuffed full of digital information and abundance, perhaps we are now merely passive seekers. Everything is at our fingertips via the PC and the Internet; we can meet other humans on MySpace or Facebook; we can take any voyage of discovery we like just by sitting and clicking.

And so it is a new reality we face. Maybe we are still curious but it’s a different type of curiosity. It is no longer fuelled by discovering new lands or scientific curios; it is fuelled by a thirst to know our identity in a postmodern world. Maybe curiosity has returned to a need to reconnect ourselves with nature and the environment. So it’s an internal process rather than a public one of displaying curiosity.

The Age of Discovery was a public space of curiosity: explorers physically walking, sailing and mapping the world; Newton dropping apples to learn about gravity; Galileo staring into the night sky observing planets and their satellites. Perhaps our so-called Modern Age is too smug with its reliance on science and we no longer feel the need to engage in the public space of curiosity. And so we have turned inward and discovered the New Age, the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Me and My PC. The accumulated knowledge of society is available at our fingertips on the internet to be called up Just in Time. We are no longer compelled to be curious as in the past. But we seem to be compelled to be curious about conquering of the self for beauty, health and spiritual well-being. Curiosity now equates with curiosity about me, the individual – self-knowledge.

Mmmmm…okay not sure where I am at this point in my rant. I’ve only just started thinking about all this. In the meantime, I’ve put together the thinkingshift-guide-to-being-curious.doc, which encompasses ideas and tips on how to foster curiosity in ourselves.

I’ll finish this post with a couple of things. Michel Foucault in the Masked Philosopher spoke eloquently about curiosity. He said:

“The word (curiosity) pleases me. To me it suggests something altogether different: it evokes “concern”; it evokes the care one takes for what exists and could exist; a readiness to find strange and singular what surrounds us; a certain relentlessness to break up our familiarities and to regard otherwise the same things; a fervor to grasp what is happening and what passes; a casualness in regard to the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.”

And here’s an excerpt from an excellent poem on curiosity by Alistair Reid.

Curiosity
may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die–
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Regular readers will have sensed my interest in the environment and endangered species. So I’ve decided to introduce a regular feature - the ThinkingShift species watch, which will illuminate species on the verge of extinction or, conversely, species that are being saved or protected. Like me, I’m sure you might find this a tad depressing but Earth and its many exquisite species are our responsibility and so we should be armed with the knowledge of their welfare so we can protect those who cannot protect themselves.

The Amur Leopard is the world’s rarest big cat. About 34 of these beautiful creatures still exist in the wild, yes that’s right only 34 or so. Only 7 are female. And this is 66 fewer amur leopards than needed for the species to survive. So I guess we put this cat on Earth’s doomed list. It will come as no surprise to learn that the human propensity to take over the planet aka development and deforestation, is the immediate cause of this leopard’s demise. Oh, and throw in hunting too.

The Amur Leopard’s natural habitat is along the Korean Peninsula, in the Russian Far East, and in northeastern China. It loves deep snow and the harsh cold of Siberian winters. Recently, four leopard litters were located, which could be a sign the population has some hope for regeneration. But conservationists say at least 100 are needed to ensure the cat’s survival.

There is some good news: the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources is looking to unify three protected areas where the leopard now lives and the Russian government is changing a planned oil pipeline route to avoid Amur territories. But there’s also some bad news: China is considering lifting its ban on the domestic trade in tiger parts used in traditional medicine. And leopards are often used as substitutes for tigers in Chinese remedies.

Also sliding towards extinction are amphibians and reptiles in a protected rainforest in Costa Rica - the dedicated reserve meant to save them not kill them off. Species of frogs, toads, lizards, snakes and salamanders have plummeted on average 75% in the past 35 years. Researchers suspect climate change has brought warmer, wetter weather to the refuge, with the knock-on effect of reducing the amount of leaf litter on the forest floor, which the various species rely on for shelter and tasty insects. Amongst those in dire straits: two species of salamander; the mimicking rain frog; the common tink frog; and the strawberry poison frog.

Amphibians are considered delicate sentinels of environmental change. Sudden population collapses were first noticed during the 1980s, during which more than 120 species are thought to have become extinct. The collapse of amphibian populations is happening in other ecosystems. Declined at least 75% in the past 35 years, even in protected areas: common salamander; strawberry poison frog; Bransford’s litter frog; broad-headed rain frog; Noble’s rain frog; mimicking rain frog; common tink frog; Warszewitsch’s frog; orange-tailed gecko; leaf litter lizard; striped litter skink.

At least there’s a good news story: Uganda’s mountain gorillas are increasing in number. There are only two places in the world where these rare gorillas live - Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is one of them and a recent census has found that the population has increased by 6% since the last census in 2002. Bwindi’s gorilla population now numbers 340 individual gorillas, up from 320 in 2002 and 300 in 1997. The overall population shows a healthy distribution of adults, infants and juveniles.

Bwindi is a thriving gorilla ecotourism spot and four of the 30 family groups are habituated for tourism or conditioned to tolerate the presence of humans for short durations. This brings in much needed revenue for the ongoing maintenance of Bwindi.

The current total population of mountain gorillas at Bwindi and the Virunga Volcanoes on the borders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (the second gorilla site), brings the worldwide tally to approximately 720 individual gorillas.

Let’s hope that whilst we’re busy angsting over global warming, we also remember to angst over Earth’s declining species diversity.

It’s a dream I’ve had since I was 12 years old - to saunter into a bookstore and see my name, as author, on the spine of a book. Back then, I was heavily influenced by Carson McCuller’s work, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, way before Oprah listed it as a Book Club must-read. I churned out a novel when I was 13 years old - can’t recall too much about it other than it consisted of a foggy night; a mysterious man, wearing a cheap fedora, was leaning against a lamp post, lighting an equally cheap cigarette; soft yellow shards of light from the lamp post bathed the water-washed road…. A young girl was silently watching the man from her window….. Can’t recall any more of the plot but I do remember having visions of Humphrey Bogart starring in the film version (I was too young to realise he had died in the 1950s).

Following school, I became caught up in the maelstrom of corporate life but the dream of writing a novel remains. We all have friends and family who have written a novel in their spare time; quit their jobs to write; or constantly talk about penning the ultimate Great (insert name of country) Novel. Few have done so, yet we continue to hear the almost mythological stories: a JK Rowling scribbling away in Scottish cafes with her young daughter, both seeking protection from the icy cold weather, and going on to create publishing history; or a Matthew Reilly, whose first novel, Contest, was rejected by publishers for being unoriginal and cliched. Reilly self-published 1,000 copies of Contest and placed them in a local bookstore in Sydney. By fantastic coincidence, I was in that bookstore at the time, saw a copy of Contest and bought it - one of my smarter moves!

And no doubt we’ve heard how torturous the writing process can be - Virginia Wolf had a mental breakdown after writing her final novel, The Years; and Douglas Adams’ last manuscript was 15 years overdue. I angst and fuss over every word I write.

So what is it about the bright lights of authorship? A friend recently said to me that blogging is for failed writers and that blogs lack the credibility of a published piece of work. That bloggers are self-referential and full of their own self-importance and aggrandisement. Maybe….

But despite the odds against getting published, many of us still hanker after seeing our name on the spine of a book sitting proudly in a bookstore. Considering the explosion of blogs, have they fulfilled our publication dreams? The writing process is a hard slog, whether for blogs, fiction or non-fiction. Many blogs have been abandoned. I admit to finding the blogging process incredibly difficult and often wonder “why bother” (not sure I know yet!).

Our contemporary society is one of instant gratification, celebrity and 15 minutes of fame before sinking into obsurity again. Is this the allure of blogs? that it will give us our 15 minutes of glittering fame? or do we have two worlds co-existing - the vibrant world of bloggers having jumbled conversations in which you can tune in or drop out at anytime; and the traditional publishing world, a closed system of literary agents and publishers whose opinion of your writing holds sway? yet, we want to break into this elite world and be an insider, not an outsider. We have MySpace and Facebook that allow us to see our name “up in lights”, yet many of us still consider the traditional publishing route more ‘respectable’.

If blogging satisfies our inner writer, then why do we so often abandon them? what do blogs deliver in our contemporary society that published books don’t (leaving aside how hard they are to get published)? is it about finding our voice, sense of control and individuality in a world that every day is less predictable, more frightening, and “brand obsessed”? why do so many of us think we have something important to say? and equally, why do we think that other people want to read our stream of consciousness blogs? do blogs give us access to expert opinion that may otherwise be denied by mainstream publishing?

I ultimately went on to publish Rethinking Knowledge (well, edit and co-author a chapter) - a book focusing on (you guessed it) Knowledge Management. But this has not quenched the thirst for writing that debut novel. I have a special book in which I write down phrases; half-baked plots; half-formed characters; intriguing or colourful words. One day….a novel….meanwhile….a blog.

An earlier post talked about the 1854 cholera outbreak in the Soho district of London and Dr John Snow’s efforts to identify the source of the outbreak. Spotting patterns in the clusters of death and sickness, Snow produced perhaps one of the first epidemiological maps. In a nice twist of fate, Who is Sick? is a modern day version of Snow’s work and a Google Maps mashup. The Who is Sick? blog says that the purpose of this new service is to “create a community contributed resource that (is) helpful to the public. We are on a mission to provide people shared information that can mutually help the community. Open Source, User Generated Content, Power to the People. Wisdom of Crowds.“

User-generated maps of sickness can be filtered by symptoms like runny noses; coughs; chicken pox etc. I decided to check out my fellow Sydneyites and see how many of us have gone down with flu. Here’s the Who is Sick? map for Sydney Australia. So far, 21 people have reported coughs (24%) and runny noses (24%). Users can post details of sicknesses including how many days they’ve had particular symptoms; there’s a discussion forum; and users can also receive alerts of outbreaks in their area.

Hot on the heels of a recent post, where I outlined future trends and the possibility that private health insurers may ultimately control our personal information, I wonder how Who is Sick? will evolve down the track. Seems like a great concept because normally to find out information about outbreaks of flu etc in your area, you watch TV (possibly in vain); you hear news of colleagues sniffling away at home; and you hope you don’t catch the latest bug. So Who is Sick? is potentially a great way for the citizenry to take control of health intelligence and it might even contribute to tracking down the source of an outbreak (although at the moment the service seems to be concentrating on colds and flu). But if you’re sniffling away tucked up in bed, you might not think to post details of your symptoms on the site. So its success will ultimately depend on whether people think it’s a useful service.

But is this Web 2.0 for the hypochondriacs amongst us?

Came across an interesting article in Business Week. It’s the story of a Japanese business that has sustained itself over 14 centuries (since the year 578 to be exact). Kongo Gumi was in the business of constructing Buddhist temples but closed down in 2006 due to a debt crisis and an unfavourable business climate.

Now, surely there are some good business lessons here! Despite Kongo Gumi’s demise, what kept the family run business going for 1,428 years? seems some sage advice is:

• Try to pick a stable industry - easier said than done - but Kongo Gumi operated in a pretty stable business environment, Buddhism, which has existed for thousands of years. Temple construction contributed 80% of Kongo Gumi’s $67.6 million revenue in 2004. Yet, the company showed adaptability during WWII and switched to coffin manufacturing. So a core business that is flexibile during hard times potentially leads to a sustainable business.
• A long-line of family held ownership including its last president, Masakazu Kongo, being the 40th member of the family to lead the company. The role of company president was not always inherited by the eldest son, rather it went to the son or son-in-law (who adopted the Kongo name) who exhibited the best leadership skills. Women also got a look-in, with the 38th Kongo leading the company being Masakazu’s grandmother. So presumably there was some form of consistency in message and ‘family unity’ around Kongo Gumi’s mission and vision as well as a mix of conservatism and flexibility when it came to succession planning.
• Don’t lose your head when it comes to investments. During the 1980s ‘greed is good’ era, Kongo Gumi borrowed and invested heavily in real estate that ultimately shrank in value. By 2006, the company’s borrowings were a massive $343 million, which it could no longer service. So the temporary glitter of real estate profits may have blinded the company to the need for maintaining financial stability.
• Keep an eye on social trends - social changes in Japan resulted in a sharp decline in contributions to temples. Demand for Kongo Gumi’s temple construction skills plummeted accordingly.

I think the title of the world’s oldest family business now goes to Hoshi Ryokan, a hotel in Komatsu, Japan, which was founded in 717. Leave a comment if you know of one that is older.

Came across a fantastic resource: 21st Century Information Literacy Project (21CIF) from the Illinois Maths and Science Academy (IMSA) and funded by the US Department of Education. 21CIF is designed for educators and learners who wish to know more about the essential steps of locating, evaluating and ethically using digital resources. Free online modules and webinars explore the full range of information literacy skills needed in a digital world.

Online tutorials provide hands-on practice with Digital Information Fluency Concepts and are 10-15mins in length, often with supporting video or audio. Topics covered include: copyright; how to search the invisible or deep web; using search engines; using keywords effectively. The Search Challenges are internet research problems you can solve by testing your search strategies and tactics.

Over in the Resources area, you can find the Digital Information Fluency core competencies model; top tips to empower your information skills in searching, evaluation and ethical use; and teacher lesson plans. The IMSA Full Circle Resource kit provides further resources to sharpen digital information fluency. And there’s also a blog.

Although designed primarily for secondary students, the digital information fluency skills covered in 21CIF could be tailored to the corporate training environment.

I’m always on the hunt for useful resources to use in my work or University teaching and I’ve recently come across quite a bit of great stuff. First up, is an Educause ebook entitled Educating the Net Generation. Educause is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The Net Generation has grown up with the Internet being a natural background of their lives and their learning style revolves around collaborative social and learning spaces, which allow them to learn by doing. Download the ebook here. Educause also has a great resource centre for Libraries and Technology.

Next up, I found Shambles, a site that is designed to support international school communities in 17 countries in South East Asia. The Web 2.0 area is a great central spot categorised into resources and links on social bookmarking and social networks, as well as stuff on mind and concept mapping and virtual learning environments. There’s also links to blogs in Asia; blogs by librarians; Web 2.0 Weird Stuff (ie fun links); and an online validator where you can find out if a site is really Web 2.0.

Over at Seed Wiki, I came across Teaching with Blogs. Really great to see the uptake of blogs in education by students and teachers. Check out the The Fischbowl, which is a blog for high school teachers focusing on 21st Century learning strategies; and here’s an example of a blog for high school journalism students.

Back in the Jurassic Park days of my career (1980s), I was a high school teacher - so seeing how social software is contributing to building networks of teachers and students makes me wish I was back teaching in high school!

Then I stumbled onto Worldprocessor, a multi-coloured microcosmos created by Ingo Gunther. Worldprocessor is a gallery of globes that depict our Earth visually in a socio and geo-political sense starting from 1988. Go here to check out some of the many visually stunning globes that depict current problems or invisible processes like refugee flows. Have a look at the globe showing the dark spread of pollution over our planet; the globe in the 17th Century; or where nuclear explosions have taken place since 1945 (scary). These visual globes are hauntingly beautiful, yet remind us that we occupy multiple worlds that constantly shift and change.

And finally, I came across the Global Ideas Bank, which aims to promote and disseminate good creative ideas to improve society and it encourages the public to generate these ideas and to participate in the problem-solving process. The Bank refers to ideas as social inventions: non-technological, non-product, non-gadget ideas for social change. So basically it’s an ideas network and democratic think-tank. And here’s an interesting idea: the problem is accessiblity of environmental businesses and information; and the social invention is the UK’s Green Search, but the rest of the world require green search engines. There’s also a Global Ideas blog.

Lots of great ideas and resources to keep us all going for awhile :)-

Four stories intrigued me this week - things are looking up! First, we found out that the fearsome predator, Tyrannosaurus rex or T-Rex as he’s more affectionately known is nothing more than a….. chicken. Maybe not such good news for T-Rex :)- I always thought those small arms were a bit suspicious and if you’ve ever wondered how T-Rex managed to get up off the ground and raise himself to such heights given those tiny arms, wonder no more. Here’s the answer (sort of).

Our second story is a heart-warming one. It’s about a long, long taxi ride, all for the sake of a couple of beloved felines, Pretty Face and Cleopatra. Anyone who has pets they adore will instantly understand this good news story. Bob and Betty Matas of New York were making the move to Sedona, Arizona - 4,000km away. They were looking forward to retirement but didn’t want their furry friends to schlepp all the way to Arizona in the cargo hold of a plane. So Bob, Betty, Pretty Face and Cleopatra got into a yellow New York cab and enjoyed a very long $US3,000 scenic ride to Arizona. They became quite the celebrities along the way. As the distinctive yellow cab entered each State, people would ask “are you the ones from New York?” and the mayor of Sedona welcomed them with an official ceremony. Way to go Pretty Face and Cleopatra!

Next up is a story that makes you wonder - what’s in a title? The Oddest Book Title of the Year award was received by Julian Montague, who went on a 6 year odyssey roaming the streets of the USA photographing an item that personally I would like to see kicked off the planet - the supermarket trolley. Montague’s book is entitled The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification. Now, I suppose if I bought this book it would help me identify the “loose cannon trolley”; the “screeching wheels that drive you insane trolley”; and the “sharp edges that are bound to hurt you trolley”. As the publicity blurb surrounding the award said: “For everyone who has ever seen an abandoned supermarket trolley and wondered how it got there, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America is an indispensible guide“. Funny thing, I was only the other day gazing at a shopping trolley pondering its abandonment :)-

Montague’s book beat off Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan (what the?). Previous winning titles have been: Living with Crazy Buttocks (2002); The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories (2003); Bombproof Your Horse (2004); and, I save the best for last - People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It (2005).

Clearly, there’s a theme going on with horses. So… I must rethink the title of my next book! Perhaps a Horse’s Companion Guide to Knowledge Management?

Finally, we have NASA who are usually associated with space exploration. But this story is about Aries, a very cute golden retriever pup - check out her photo here. Aries is a NASA employee and shows up for work everyday at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia as part of the “Leader Dogs for the Blind” program. Her mentor is structural engineer Evan J. Horowitz and NASA allows puppies like Aries to experience the work environment and become a well-socialised dog. Top dog stuff NASA!

Now, Jim Webber is a man I’d like to meet. Not only is he an inspiration to anyone who is complaining about working too hard, I suspect he possesses immense knowledge of lost practices. So who is Jim? he’s 104 years young; is a gardener in Dorset UK; and has just downed his gardening tools after 93 years (yes, you read correctly) on the job. Arthritis has finally caught up with him but he’s not giving up just yet. Jim and his 68 year old daughter will be tending their own garden from now on and selling the produce.

Jim used to work with his brother, Jack, until Jack died in 2006 at the ripe old age of 95 (mmm..I’d better ditch the treadmill and take up gardening!). Jim has never taken a holiday and doesn’t wish to. He prefers to rise at 4.00am every day and dig, plant and prune. He refuses to charge more than £3 per hour.

Can you imagine the expert knowledge of gardening that Jim has? I’m no green thumb, but things like knowledge of the soil; the right plants for the climate; when to plant; when not to plant; companion planting; how to nurse sick or dying plants; natural ways of dealing with pests instead of spraying tonnes of pesticides and so on. Jim may even practise moon or lunar planting, a method of gardening as old as agriculture itself and a mix of folklore and superstition. Lunar planting centres on the moon’s gravitational effect on the flow of moisture in soil and plants and also the effect of moonlight on seed germination. So the best time to turn over a garden, for instance, is during the last quarter of the moon when the water table has dropped to its lowest point.

Let’s hope that a publisher or oral historian rushes to collect Jim’s know-how!

Well: back to one of my pet themes - future trends and predictions. The other night, I watched a very interesting TV programme on SBS (multicultural Australian channel) called Future Focus 2057. Recent stuff I’ve been reading and posting seems to point to a darker future - one of social unrest, squatter cities, stuffed climate - you get the picture.

So it was refreshing to see theoretical physicist, Dr Michio Kaku, comment positively on some of the medical and scientific advances that will take place over the next 50 years. Dr Kaku is one of my favourite authors - have a read of Parallel Worlds if you want to travel down a worm hole or two and come out the other end into an alternate quantum reality! When you watch a programme like this, it makes you think it might not be so bad to hang around on this planet for another 40 or 50 years. However……there was a dark side (naturally!) pointing to a future of increased societal and personal control.

Here’s a run down of what we can look forward to over the next 50 years:

• intelligent clothing: jackets and other apparel people will wear that have inbuilt computer chips and sensors woven into the fabric. The intelligent clothing will be powered by body heat and function as your very own private nurse, uploading data about heart rates, blood pressure etc to a private health insurer. This private nurse will be able to check for disturbing symptoms, blocked arteries and any other bodily function or problem. A complete medical history will be captured and available centrally with the aim being to avoid health care costs through preventative care. Conspiracy theorists amongst us might start to utter this is pretty intrusive stuff - designed by private health insurers to gain control over our bodies. Smart clothing is known as pervasive computing, although some might say invasive would be a better adjective. Apparently, intelligent houses will also have computer chips and sensors that can detect if, for example, you’ve been drinking. Should you have an accident the next day, the insurer will be in a position to immediately cancel your health care because you contributed to the accident through your own negligence.
• Running around decked out in clothing that monitors your every move is not that far fetched. Smart fabrics that function as information providers are here already. Over at the Georgia Institute of Technology, scientists have been testing fabric with inbuilt computer chips that carry gigabytes of information; prototype handbags tell you if you have forgotten your wallet (now that sounds handy!); and there are prototype wall hangings that will glow should someone dare to try and access your wireless internet connection. A smart shirt is here already: Professor Sundaresan Jayaraman and his team (Georgia Institute of Technology) have developed the Wearable Motherboard or smart shirt, which is said to be a flexible, wearable and comfortable garment with embedded sensors for “unobtrusively” monitoring a variety of medical vital signs. Check out the Professor wearing his smart shirt here. Mmmm….might need to be redesigned by a top fashion designer :)-
• Superhighway in the sky: having seen innumerable reruns of The Jetsons, I’ve always wanted a sleek flying car. Would sure beat travelling 4 hours per day by train! Seems Dr Paul Moller of Moller International may be about to make my dream become a reality. His skycar prototype is already here: a very stylish red Batmobile looking thing. You can see a picture of it here complete with sound. And go here to watch a skycar hover test. Known as the XM-2, it weighs 700kg and is capable of 600 km/hr after vertical take-off and can carry 4 passengers. Dr Moller built his first prototype 40 years ago - I haven’t been able to find video of the flight of the first prototype, so leave a comment if you have a link. The Israelis are developing the X-Hawk, which you can see on YouTube. For readers who like detail, a skycar is known as a “volantor” and should you have a spare $US 1 million or so, you can already order a Skycar. Mmmmm…hope the Skycar will come in cheetah pattern :)-
• half of the auto journeys in 50 years will be made in the air. Presumably, you can just sit back, relax or read because NASA is working on a Highway in the Sky management system that will ensure Skycars are steered by satellite systems to avoid nasty collisions or traffic jams.
• Reversible death (aka suspended animation): should you be unlucky enough in the future to be involved in a very serious accident, doctors will be able to suspend your brain and heart function by replacing the blood with an ice-cold saline solution. Watch Dr Kaku talk about it here (be patient: there’s a 15 second ad that precedes it). Totally fascinating to watch how future operations might be conducted. Of course, philosophical questions pop up: during “suspended animation” does the person cease to be? Do they pass out of existence, only to return once blood flow is restored? and is the “new person” the same as the “old person”?
• apparently, health care will not be cheap - it will take half your income to pay for care in the “First Class” section of a medical facility.
• Human body shop: the medical problem of lacking human organs for transplants will be resolved by tissue engineering. Living tissue can be created by an ink-jet printer (no joke). 3D structures of living tissue are “printed” by washing out the ink-jet cartridges and filling them with suspensions of cells. Bits of tissue placed next to each other can fuse, so it’s simply a matter of providing a template so the cells can print say an entire heart. Gutenberg would sure want to be around to see this!
• No more weight problems: well, we all know about the rise of obesity, especially in children, thanks to super-size us foods. The question is why are some people naturally slim? researching into this, scientists are developing bioengineered foods that will fool our tongues into thinking we’re eating creamy, fat-laden food (which our bodies seem to like the taste of) but no fat will be in these foods. So 50 years from now, people will be slim and there will be no need for the latest money-spinning celeb diet.
• Human clones: Dr Kaku predicts we could see human cloning in 10 years’ time. I could devote a very long post to the ethical issues on this one! for example, should we allow parents to choose the genetic traits of a future cloned child (genetic determinism and designer babies)? is the cloned person merely a copy of someone else and is therefore robbed of uniqueness; or is the cloned person merely a delayed identical twin?? and since identical twins are two separate people, then the cloned person is also a separate and unique individual?? could clones be created without consent ie a black market in cloning? I’ll restrain myself from going on. But let’s not forget that Dolly the Sheep had to be put down in 2003 at the age of 6.5 years because she had developed progressive lung disease (usually found in older sheep) and developed arthritis. And let’s also recall Eugenics aka murder and sterilisation undertaken in the name of ‘race hygiene’ or creating a ‘master race’.
• Surgical robots: we’ve heard a lot about this - robot arms that will be able to perform operations that are too fine for human hands. And now we have Domo, a humanoid robot (cute looking fellow!) developed by MIT, that is designed to help the elderly or people with disabilities.

Dr Kaku closed the programme by commenting that the next 50 years will be a “wild ride”. Yes…well…maybe.. but I detected a common underlying theme - the control of private health insurers and invasive technologies reporting intelligence to the insurers. 1984 anyone? The Ministry of the Health Provider?