Category: Four pillars

Many of you know that I am a bibliophile. I don’t just read books, I collect them. And, once I’ve built my school, I intend to add book-restorer and bookbinder to my hobby list. I find them fascinating.

One of the genres I collect is Science and Technology. And, wherever and whenever possible, I try and get first editions, signed to me, by the author, usually when I am standing in front of them. Where this is not possible, I look for autographed signed first editions, preferably association copies.

So you can imagine my delight when I came across a pristine copy of Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman, with an inlaid autograph of the great man. And what an autograph.

The card said:

I don’t understand why people collect autographs. Could you please write and explain it to me?

Yours, Richard P Feynman.

No wonder the sequel to that book was called What Do You Care What Other People Think?

This unending curiosity, this single-minded passion to question things that they don’t understand, this is what sets apart great teachers from all others. Maybe it sets apart real teachers from all others. I have had the privilege of knowing many such people, and for this I am extremely grateful.

In Business As Unusual, Hugh De Pree says of Einstein “We may take heart in knowing that a part of the genius of Albert Einstein was his inability to understand the obvious”.

And I think this is where blogs are fantastic. They demolish the barriers to entry that are often present in society, barriers that affect curious people. Barriers that are primarily social in nature. Barriers like “I don’t want to appear stupid, but….”.

You see, people like Feynman and Einstein had the single-minded focus and energy to get over the social barriers and keep asking the stupid question. But most of us aren’t Feynmans or Einsteins. With social software and particularly with blogs and wikis, we can all ask stupid questions without feeling stupid about doing the asking. Many times, when I check something out via Google or via Wikipedia, I’m asking a stupid question. I couldn’t do that very easily at school. Actually that’s not quite true, but that’s a different matter.

Blogs are often written by people who are passionate about something, something specific. What Christopher Locke used to call Organic Gardening. Whatever gets your fancy.

Blogs are often written by people who want others to read what they say in order to receive criticism. Constructive criticism.

Blogs, like real learning, represent a two-way process. The teacher learns and the learner teaches.

I’ve said it before. Wisdom of crowds is not a mode thing. It’s a mean thing. Every person is different. And it is in that difference that we learn.

This is not an A-List blog. It never will be. Yet it’s all I want; I get maybe 300 regular readers, all with similar interests, but with different points of view. All prepared to spend time reading stuff, writing stuff, talking about stuff. Which reminds me. Last week I was at the Internet Identity Workshop, wonderfully put together by Phil Windley and Kaliya Hamlin. And sometime during the first evening, a number of us found ourselves in a Starbucks across from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Chris and Tara were there, as was Doc, and Kevin. All bloggers. All readers of each other’s blogs. All commenters on each other’s blogs. Mutual admiration society? Not really. Common interests, not always common views. And an openness and honesty that is the antithesis of the mutual whatchamacallit. And later that night we were joined by John Hagel, who was his usual enlightening and entertaining self.

Blogs are conversations. Two-way. Which is why they are great ways for us to learn.

Some of you have written in or texted me to check that all was well, given my extended period off air. I was tired. Trying to do too much, and needing some time to think a few things over. That’s all. Thank you for asking.

I’ve been reading Global Remix by Richard Scase over the last week or so; it’s one of those books where you can visualise the author speaking out the words. If you’ve met Richard, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a larger-than-life high-speed book concentrated on his vision of the future.

In a chapter headed Global Remix: the new corporate playlist, Richard makes some interesting comments on Generation M:

More young people attend universities and institutions of higher education than ever before. If ever there were a link between talent and qualification, this has been made tenuous by governments’ commitment to expand higher education opportunities. No longer can companies assume that university graduates have employable skills. High-performing companies demand additional qualities. They want potential employees with imagination and ideas that will make up the talent pools for future innovation and growth. Do universities encourage these qualities? Some do, but on the whole it is left to a minority of elite institutions to perform this task. But there is also the bedroom.

Many parents have teenage and younger children who spend quite a lot of time in their bedrooms. They respond to parental commands through text messaging, e-mails and, occasionally, grunts. Parents with children of this kind should be congratulated for bringing up normal, well-adjusted youngsters. But they fear for their children’s futures. Will they ever be employable? But — what is going on in the bedroom?

More often than not, the unleashing of talents far greater than those of their parents when they were of a similar age. Some of them are producing their own music CDs; not simply downloading them but actually creating them. Others are doing the same with DVDs, while even others are playing games on the internet, assembled in global-based virtual teams.

[….]

What this means this that companies will have to change. As discussed earlier, they will need to be cafe corporations. But, more than that, they will have to tolerate non-conformity and individuality in terms of attitudes, behaviour, dress codes and lifestyles. Small businesses are more likely to allow for these personal differences than large companies. That’s why the iPod generation is more attracted to working in small firms; they are given more space and personal autonomy.

I think Richard’s on to something when he talks about what’s going on in the bedroom. Sure, you’ve heard a lot of it before, but I think there’s a subtler point.

In the previous generation of entrepreneurship, all the creativity and talent was in the garage. That’s where the elephant organisations of today were conceived and birthed. In the garage. With all its attendant tools and toolsets and minds and mindsets, never straying far from their DNA of Taylor and Coase and McLuhan.

It’s different for Generation M. This time the creativity and talent has been in the bedroom, not the garage. The DNA is different. Today’s entrepreneurs have no idea who Taylor was, don’t care who Coase was, and don’t like what McLuhan stood for.

And much as I’d like them to, they don’t know who Jerry Garcia was, haven’t heard of Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond or even Linus Torvalds, but they know Linux. They know Skype. They know Open. They know Convenient. They know Simple. And they know Stupid.

They know.

Barry Schwartz understands our generation and why we feel imprisoned by choice. And he articulates, very well, why we feel that way. Now, slowly, I’m beginning to understand why Generation M is different. They’re impervious to McLuhan, so they don’t have the same post-marketing expectations. They’re immune to information overload, so they don’t get stressed out by megachoice. They know what they like and what they don’t like.

So I’m going to continue to study them, continue to help them conquer the challenges I know, and hope they can help me conquer the challenges  they know.

Ricky Gervais was recently quoted as saying:
“You can’t knock up an episode of The Sopranos or 24 on a little handheld digital camera. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to sidestep TV or DVD. But TV companies will embrace it.”

I’m not sure that TV companies will ever be able to embrace things like YouTube that easily, not unless they give up on the Hit Culture Needs Heavy Investment Lie. Even the CBS approach is to use YouTube as a delivery mechanism, a “channel”, for their “hit content”.

I think this is a variant of the infrastructure lie that seeks to suppress social software. Why do people think that good robust production of digital things needs heavy infrastructure investment? Maybe it’s because nobody got fired for buying .

I need to think about it. There is something disturbing about that lie. In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy YouTube, as long as they let me see clips like this one and this one and this one.

No.

It appears, though, that toast may be patentable, especially if what is toasted is a sandwich.

McDonald’s have filed a patent in the US and Europe for “simultaneous toasting of a bread component“. I thought I would have better things to do than to read the whole 55-page document, but I may be tempted. How else would I come across terms like “bread component” and “sandwich delivery tool“?

How else would I learn that “Often the sandwich filling is the source of the name of the sandwich; for example, ham sandwich?” Wow. I shall wait eagerly for the powers-that-be to apply that logic to a hamburger.

Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be striving to get the IPR and DRM processes radically changed. Maybe there’s a better way.

Maybe I should come up with a new business plan. Buy up all the rights to the publishing of patents. And start a new journal, publishing them.

In the humour section.

Now if we could convince Hugh Macleod to do the artwork, we could have a 21st century Heath Robinson, with all the raw material coming from the patent filings. Hugh? Anyone else? Borat Sagdiyev maybe?

Thanks to Cory for the tip-off.