Where good ideas come from

Where Good Ideas Come From
Observations from Steven Johnson’s
Bchimento
NJCU
4004EDTC625 Using IntgrSftwr Across Curr
Dr. Shamburg
Johnson, S. (2010). Where Good Ideas Come From. New York: Riverhead (Penguin).

Darwin’s Paradox
Darwin’s Paradox – so many different life forms, occupying such a vast array of ecological niches, inhabiting waters that are otherwise remarkably nutrient-poor.
http://www.coralreefinfo.com/

Klieber’s law
As life gets bigger – it slows down
“Negative-quarter-power scaling”
Mass vs. metabolism
Equal number of heartbeats – just takes bigger animal longer to use theirs up

Energy and transportation growth follow Kleiber’s laws, BUT
As cities get bigger, they generate ideas at an even faster clip.
Ideas increase with population,
Ideas per capita increase.
Geoffrey West - but innovation and creativity is 17 times bigger in city 10 times bigger.
Man-made environments

10/10 Rule
1920 – first AM radio station
Late 1920’s – AM radios in American homes
1950’s-first color broadcast (NBC Tournament of Roses Parade)
1960’s- color broadcast become the norm
1969 – Sony creates VCR
Early 1980’s – VCR become staples in homes
DVD, cell phones, personal computers, GPS – all basically follow the 10/10 rule.

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/
Within 16 months of the company’s founding, YouTube was streaming over 30 million videos a day
Why did it grow so fast?

Adjacent Possible
http://emergentfool.com/2010/03/11/the-adjacent-possible/
Just at the reach of making a discovery
Some bit of information or idea or learning is missing
Other pieces need to fall into place first

Zone of Proximal Development
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/constructivism.htm

The path of evolution is a continual exploration of the adjacent possible.
Single carbon atom
Compounds
Cells
Tissue
Organisms
Plant/Animal/Mineral
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2010.web.dir/andy_chamberlain/firstpage.html

Evolution of Good ideas
Good ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts, the composition of which expands (and, occasionally, contracts) over time

How to develop good ideas
Liquid Network
Serendipity
Slow hunches
Error
Noise
Exaptations
Platforms

Liquid Network
Not so rigid that ideas can’t grow and develop
Not so much space where ideas can’t reach each other.
Free flow of ideas allows ideas to connect, grow, reconnect with others.
Liquid networks complete ideas.

Serendipity
You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose you bearings serendipitously.
Go for a walk, take a shower/bath - remove yourself from the problem; get into an associative state.
According to NYTimes, web has pushed culture toward more serendipitous encounters.

Slow Hunch
Hunch that developed over time is more common than sudden flash of inspiration
Have to keep hunch alive
Keep a journal or commonplace book and review it to refresh your hunch
Sleeping on the problem actually helps

Error
Spark gap telegraph led to the invention of vacuum tubes, which in turn led to computers, television, etc.
Fleming discovered penicillin by bacteria accidentally entering his lab
Error in reaching for a resistor led from an oscillator that recorded heartbeats to the pacemaker that regulates them

Noise
Albert Einstein has been considered the patron saint of useful messiness, and once stated “The cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind; what does an empty desk sign?
http://unclutterer.com/2008/06/11/in-praise-of-a-little-mess-be-a-little-scruffy/

Exaptation
Defined as using a feature or structure for something other than its original intended purpose.
Ex. In Indonesia, Timothy Prestero redesigned neonatal incubators out of automobile parts because the locals had access to and knowledge of automobile engines.

Platforms
Tim Berners-Lee
Side project at CERN
Academic use
Military (ARPANET)
HTML
WorldWideWeb
In an open platform, good ideas can come from anywhere.

Good ideas as developed in House,M.D.
http://www.housemd-guide.com/season3/316secret.php
http://www.housemd-guide.com/season7/716out-chute.php

Build a tangled web
An idea does not pass from a single neuron to another single neuron in the brain. Instead it is jumps across the liquid network and connects and reconnects with multiple neurons.
http://plantinglines.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html

Where good ideas come from

by bchimento on May 02, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 51

Statistics

Where good ideas come from — Presentation Transcript