innovation

Innovation vs. Specialization

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ Leave a comment

Solutions KeyPeople look at things through their perception and what their experience have taught them.

We live in an era of specialization, where people are expected to continuously refine their skills in a smaller and smaller area of expertise. We sacrifice width for depth, thinking that more specialized knowledge will somehow allow us to innovate ourselves out of dilemmas.

Innovation typically doesn’t come from people who specialize in only one thing. For instance, the Theory of Evolution is known to have been introduced by Charles Darwin – but very few people know that without the help of James Gould, Darwin would not have found out the 13 species of bird obtained in the Galapagos Islands were related. Gould was an expert, Darwin not so much.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity upturned physics and the world not because he had studied Physics, but because he went beyond what was taught and came up with his own theory.

When you look at any true innovation, you’ll likely find that someone with enough knowledge of different fields came up with ideas that solved problems, be they world views in science to implementations of technology.

Unfortunately, there is no direct reward for that.

Recoloring Society

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment
Snowy Mountains
‘Snowy Mountain’, by Wasfi Ekab, 1992.

People do amazing things with simple items. Take crayons, for example.

The image at top was done with what we consider children’s tools. We send them off to color between the lines in the hope that they’ll be quiet. Maybe hoping that their hand-eye coordination improves as they grow older so that they can stay within the lines – and society likes things that stay in lines. That follows something someone else drew. Whose vision is limited to what is possible within those lines.

Crayon ProgressionIt keeps things safe. Predictable. Unambiguous.

Yet we celebrate those who can do things without lines that we can identify with – we like art we can identify with. With lines. With a framework. A framework we can identify.

Stray too far, and it makes people uncomfortable. Few people like uncomfortable.

People want order. Nice lines of what can be expected.

Everything in it’s place.

Everything explained, even if by a theory incomplete.

The trouble is that we just get the same things when we do the same things. There might be some variance, but it’s the accepted range of things.

Shots from Hottie's Coffee ShopThe only real moves forward humans have made have been when people color outside the lines.

When the crayons are outside of the box, the framework.

When they’re disorganized.

Mixed up.

When the canvas is clear of lines we thought we needed.

A mess of crayons and a blank page is how we let children play.

When did we lose that?

Or do we still have it?

The Framework Escape

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 3 Comments

Escape to nowhereWhen we read, we enter a world that someone has created and make it our own. It’s not our world. No matter how hard people will themselves into these worlds, no matter how well they think they fit them like gloves, they are not their worlds – they are the worlds of the writer, the one who dared architect a framework of thought that can guide a willing mind into creating images of a world not their own… that may, sometimes, look almost like the world the writer envisioned.

Textbooks are much the same of course, and texts of a more spiritual nature… they are all frameworks. To create a new framework is a daunting task – to try to be original is almost impossible in a world that constantly regurgitates ideas that sell.

Writers, it is rumored, like to eat, and appreciate a roof over their head. Some even say that they appreciate wearing clothing, though no one can seem to agree on what writers should wear – particularly writers. All of these things cost in the framework we all live in, and so there are two main types of writers: Those who are read, and those who aren’t.

To highlight this, please name only one author you do not know.

I rest my case.

And so, to be popular, it’s not unexpected that a writer would copy a framework – and then, it’s not even their framework. In the mind of a software engineer, it’s object re-use – different attributes, but the same object. This is fair game.

Book stores are filled with unoriginal ideas; trust me: I have become more and more disappointed over the years in bookstores as I look for original minds expressing themselves. Of course, I have read tens of thousands of books by now – willingly! – and so it’s harder to read something ‘new’. Once you see that object with all the different attributes, you know underneath it’s the same object.

It gets harder to stretch the mind with new ideas when the same old ones simply change their clothing now and then. Some even change gender – and these days, without intending to offend anyone – there are so many genders. When I grew up there were only 3 around me (most people only recognized 2).

Technology, business… pretty much the same object re-use concept. It’s boring. Everyone is out there building better mousetraps, and yet no one seems to know what to do with all the mice.

In my lifetime, the global population has doubled. This means that the diversity of the planet as far as humans go has risen exponentially. And yet, everyone reads the same books (if they bother), watches the same movies and television shows, listens to the same music…

And in a world of such wealth in diversity, it’s so hard to find originality. It’s out there, of course, but it’s certainly hard to break out of the algorithmic frameworks social media has been building oh so quietly for such a short period of time.

The Gentle Art of Self-Deception

~ taran.a.rampersad@gmail.com ~ 1 Comment

Riverside Park HDRsWhen we write our memories to our brains we write them twice. Yet we remember as we see the event, and how we see that event is subject to all sorts of biases.

First, we lie to ourselves – and we do it for a variety of reasons, most notably self-enhancement. And then we are lied to by our biases and how we receive information, and our biases are based on like-mindedness, on whether we as individuals are in the in-group or the out-group – even when we perceive ourselves to always be in the in-group.

Critical thought is supposed to be a part of all of this, guarding us from biased inputs or at least letting us stamp them as being potentially biased. In the broad strokes it doesn’t seem to, in the broad strokes it seems to fail even when individuals and groups experience cognitive dissonance. In individuals it’s part of life, but in groups it can be downright frightful.

We not only lie to ourselves, we allow ourselves to be lied to. We even encourage it, seeking out things that prop up our biases. This is why many reformed addicts talk about ‘hitting rock bottom’ – where they reach a point that self-deception can no longer be done, when facts rip away the armor of self-deception. Some trade one self-deception with another so that they don’t feel alone.

This is the foundation upon which we build our institutions. Democracy, as great as it is in theory, fails here (as do all other ideologies) not because of some sinister agenda of a group but because of self-deception. Where there could be dissenting opinion from dissenting perspective, we label the ‘other side’ as wrong and paint them with a broad brush. This is why committees rarely come up with anything innovative and are great ways to waste time – because of the commonality required to be a part of the group.

And this is why we fail to live up to the standards we give ourselves. We’re crappy witnesses to our own deeds.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf8e3gpgmr0]