The Long View

Left brain, right brain, and complexity

Image found on mootblog.

At the heart of this post lies a simple idea. 

The idea that the complexity that envelops our lives today is an asset, and not a liability. And that it is up to us to seize the day, as it were, and use the extraordinary resources of the 21st century that go way beyond anything that was dreamed possible even 25 years ago to create a richer and the richer, more diverse, and, quite conceivably, a more just world.

For this to happen, though, a few collective paradigm shifts must take place.

1. Stop viewing complexity as complication. This is a relatively easy one, at least to talk about. Complication has to do with how we experience complexity when we are afraid of it and worried that we can't see the end of the tunnel. Complexity is, like the sun, the sky and the clouds. Complication is the added layer of our emotional experience of complexity and our instinctive recoil from the additional thinking strain complexity puts on us. The thinking strain comes in part from the fact that indeed, we cannot cope with complexity if we don't use the right tool. And so far, since the dawn of the industrial age when we strated making the world more complex, we have mostly handled complexity with the wrong tool, i.e the left brain. But now, the world's complexity has outfoxed our left brains. We need to start thinking different, to quote no one in particular.
2. Accept that we can build on complexity with right brain activities. Left brain activities will try to dissect it and it will exhaust itself at the task and surrender in frustration: complexity becomes complication. While sounds suspiciously like the previous paragraph, there is one big difference: the vantage point and the value judgment that comes with that vantage point. For many people until today, right brain stuff is for arty people, not real men. Our schools teach us mathematics, reasoning, science, chemistry, even history in analytical, linear and sequential terms. However, as the world is increasingly telling us itself, it is non linear, patterned and parallel and requires synthetic, creative and big picture approaches from the next generation.
3. Create an educational system that is up to dealing with the challenges of the 21st century (and the points mentioned above). They are huge, diverse, and complex and therefore require huge, diverse and simple approaches to solve them. The way our Western type educational systems are set up tend to create dysfunctional people unable to master the skills required for the new age. 
4. Understand that we are inextricably a technological society, and that, as such, we must embrace technological evolution and not fight it. There is much to dislike about the technification of the world. But there was much to dislike about the agricultural world order with its short life spans, hard labour and poor living conditions and there was much to dislike about the industrial age with its labour exploitation, ruthless taylorism (Ford example) and smog pollution. So on the whole, I believe, we are much better off this century than at any other time in history.

Therefore, right brain thinking, a new type of education and creative use of available technologies will produce a radically different world that what we have known. 

And here again, the process is not linear. Like in any major societal endeavour there will be (and there are already) many dissenting voices, many (legitimate) concerns and a few luddite resistors. In the societal evolution process of the coming 25 years, many will feel left out, many will be left out for fact and many will fight.

I don't think that it will hugely impact the change process that we are experiencing. Because of its inherent diversity and non linear evolutionary process, the upcoming century will be hugely more resilient than any preceding age. It can include the resistors, the nay-sayers (as well as the overzealous) and will take on a life of its own. 

Once again, the collective will be bigger than the individual. Individualism comes from left brain thinking. The sense of belonging, of being part of a bigger something that underpins and guides our existence is, in my mind, right brain stuff. 

However, I would not like to create the impression of a new dichotomy where left is bad and right is good (although all our Western languages do already convey that impression…). I also do not want to glorify the right brain over the left brain or to castigate the history of the past 250 years since the beginning of the enlightenment (the rise of the left brain).

I see more of the third phase of a dialectic movement whereby the 21st century will use the whole mind - both left and right brain functions equally well and as mutually completing and complementary (if not complimentary) tools. In order to achieve that, we need to resolutely refocus the left-brainers of this world towards the opportunities that the more powerful usage of our intellectual resources can contribute to our understanding of the world (left), the creation of the next generation world (right) and the powerful integration of the new concepts and realities (left and right).    

Now let's think about that creatively, in a more complex way.

Life redefined

Although not everyone might agree, we live in exciting times at the tip of an exponential technology development curve. And we also live in the Middle Ages.

Never in the human history has change happened so fast, so relentlessly and so creatively. To the casual observer, not much seems to change other than the shape of cars, the increased use of mobile phones, computers and other media toys. We still live in houses built a century or two ago, eat and drink and sleep and suffer human stuff, go to work and go to bed.

But look closer, and you will notice that under the surface a new civilisation, and, potentially, a new conception of life, is being groomed. The new era is defined by complexity, data management, dematerialisation and redefinition of points  of reference and barriers previously considered as absolute.

The essence of life in itself is being redefined in three important areas:

The advent of synthetic life: This week the papers were full (and rightly so) with the announcement of the creation of the first artificial living cell. This redefines the frontiers of life, of civilisation and of what it means to be human, in a not dissimilar fashion to how the atomic bomb consolidated humanity's capacity of destroying itself – just at the other end of the spectrum, and in much more complex ramifications. The Bomb was achieved by physicians, which places it squarely in the paradigm of the past century. The synthetic cell is designed by biologists - the complexity bearers of our century.

The gradual convergence of life and machine: Ray Kurzweil defines the Singularity as the melting of the boundaries between man and machine and he predicts the sigularity for about 2040. The exponential evolution of computing power will certainly contribute to reshaping the world in a way that is still not fully understood. The synthetic cell mentioned above was made possible by computers, and computers will regulate every single other aspect of human life for each individual from the cradle to the grave to the extent that they will turn into indispensable life enhancers and brain extensions. in case you are smiling (or crying) at the prospect: we should never forget that computers have been around for less than 50 years - and in evolutionary terms they are in their infancy, really. 

The Water challenge: No life without water - I have mentioned it before - and this week the Economist carries a long report on water management. While water was no real issue until 30 or 40 years ago, the recent doubling of the world's population, along with the economic development of the middle classes in emerging (and populous) economies are quickly turning water into one of the hot topics of the century. The need for safe drinking water for 9 billion people (2050), and even more the related industry and agriculture will turn this commodity into the most coveted resource of the coming generations. Not least because there is a finite amount that is readily available (about 97% of the earth's water is sea water, not easily usable - and desalination remains a technological challenge). In particular India and China are heading for a water disaster and we are just beginning to understand some of the geopolitical implications. Water management is likely to emerge as one of the major skills for the next twenty years. The pressure to provide sufficient and safe drinking water to their populations will reshape politics and recast power balances across the globe.

The management of synthetic life (with its opportunities and risks), the unpredictable outcomes of the ongoing information revolution and the relentless need to sustain life in its most basic form is transforming how we see and describe ourselves at breathtaking speed.

Our grandchildren may well deem us as archaic as we consider the Middle Ages.

Whole Earth Discipline

Stuart Brand has written a remarkabe book. 

Whole Earth Discipline, An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Footnotes and excerpts on a special website.

It flies in the face of much conventional wisdom and deserves to be talked about at length.even better, read it, thnik about it, then read it again.

Here the main thrust:

Cities are green. By 2050, 80% of the world's population will live in cities. That is good news because cities typically carry a lower carbon footprint per inhabitant than rural areas. Also, rural space will be freed up for nature restoration projects.

Nuclear energy is green. Alternative energies will be incapable of ensuring the baseload energy requirements of the coming decades. And even if they did, it would come at a huge cost. Clean coal is anything but reality. Nuclear has the power to generate enough electricity for the electric transport society. Nuclear is safe. There has not been a single nuclear accident nearly 25 years (also compare to Chinese coal mines).

GM (or GE) food is green. Agriculture has been about genetic modification since Day One. GM crops simply increase the speed of evolution and are more selective and exceedingly precise about which traits of the crop are modified. GM crops allow to reduce the use of pesticides and other harmful agricultural methods.

Geoengineering may well become a major civilisation shaper of the coming years and, who knows, its potential saviour.

You may not agree. Initially, I was skeptical about the nuclear bit. It now looks a lot more enticing and I will do some research around this. 

Increasingly, though, it looks like the old Green Movement is fighting a bit of a rear guard battle in the face of climate change and our other little challenges.

Stuart Brand has written a remarkable book. I will read it again.

What is real?

Screenshot from the Second Life homepage 

"One of the things that our grand-children will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real… in the future that will become literally impossible." (William Gibson, writer)

That is the size of the revolution we are going through. We may not even have begun to grasp the significance of the current transition. 

Yesterday I watched an online talk at the Long Now Foundation by Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, an online digital world that has become a proper place over the past few years. (On Second Life, real life countries have real embassies; real life companies have real presence; real life schools have real courses). He said that in the digital realm, we might find it much easier to fulfil some of our aspirations, fantasies, dreams and relationships. In some ways.

Right or wrong, that's not the question at this point.

What matters, however, is that the digital realm will become part and parcel of our every day lives, way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine today. 

Really, if you can forgive the pun, in a world where we can create movies whose special effects are so special that we cannot distinguish them from a naturally filmed scene, we have potentially just cloned the world. And much more than that- we can extrapolate our existence into the digital dimension way beyond our physical world and, - without harming it.

Just think of this banal greeting exchange of the future: 

"How are you today?"

"Really I am fine, but digitally I just got dumped."

We are mutants. We are merging with our avatars. 

Get ready.

Mars Exploration - a bumpy ride

Since 1950 there have been about 40 national an international space missions to Mars. This graphic gives a graphical interpretation, complete with success and failure states. 

We just have to keep trying some more.

Found on Flowing data. Origin of the image currently unknown. Update 100115: Mike Solita writes: "This originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of IEEE Spectrum. I worked on this graphic with Mark Montgomery and Joe Lertola at Bryan Christie Design."

Thanks Mike for letting me know! It's well worth checking out some of the other designs on Bryan Christie Design.

11 brief tips for keeping your brain young

Change and speed are two the hallmarks of our knowledge society. Information abundance and creative decision making are two more.

Many feel overwhelmed - their brains register and react to the sense of helplessness and, bingo, here comes the killer: stress.

The good news though, comes from an ever growing volume of brain research (talk of recursive discourse - the brain researching the brain): we can train our brains to cope with new information and contexts and keep it fresh until old age. We continue to learn until our last day, so to speak.

Here are 11 tips that will help you keep your brain in shape:

1. Learn to love change. We are inherently resistant to change. The law of inertia also applies to our brains. But this creates a stressful paradox: Change is here to stay - and so you might as well make the best of it, in small and big ways. While our beloved little routines keep us going, they also dull our adaptability and resilience. Resilience has been shown to be one of the core success factors for our century. So: deliberately build change into your daily routines: changing your route to work, reading a different paper, storing your cups, plates and clothes in different places all make for eye opening and sometimes amusing surprises.
2. Get some physical exercise. Yes, that old chestnut. Enough said. Just do it.
3. Watch your diet. Rubbish in, rubbish out. What works for databases applies also to our bodies and our brains.
4. Meditate. There are many different forms of meditation, and they all help in different ways to keep the brain alert. Sitting still does wonders for the brain. It is not because you don't do anything that you are not doing anything.
5. Listen to music, and, even better, play it. There has been a lot written on the stimulating effects of Mozart's music on children's brains. It works for adults, as well. And if you don't like Mozart, there are many other composers to chose from.
6. Eat your porridge and your broccoli. I know. But they are good for you. Porridge has the virtue of providing the right nutrients for the brain and releasing them slowly into the system. Broccoli increases the ability to learn and helps protect existing and new nerve cells.
7. Regularly go on training programs. For adults there are essentially two kinds of learning: Perfecting your knowledge in a field or area you already know or entering a completely new field. The second is a lot more difficult for the ego (a beginner again…) but also for the brain: progress will take longer. Yet it will expose you to new perspectives and ways of thinking, including a new vocabulary. This will create new synaptic connections. Connections are good, in fact they are the drivers for keeping the brain young.
8. Adopt a creative pastime or five. Origami, dancing, painting, flower arranging, chess, Go, photography, writing, problem solving exercises… whatever floats your boat. More synaptic connections.
9. Meet new people. Many of us feel a slight sense of unease when meeting new people. That is because the brain has to adjust to the new context and the surprise factors related to the behaviour that unfamiliar people may display. Not to worry though - it's the same for them.
10. Keep a check your level and ability of multitasking. The jury is out on whether it is good or bad for you. On the upside, the brain can learn to handle more things at the same time; on the downside, the more interruptions we get, the less we get one task done. So if you feel that you get too many interruptions, create interruption-free blocks of time. Your brain will breathe. If you feel that chatting, texting, emailing and generally being in touch enhances your creativity - go for it.
11. Kill the sleep killers. Sleep, and the dreams that come with it, carries a vital restorative power for the brain. No sleep, no creativity, no brain training. And I am not talking about the odd work-through-the-night sleep deprivation to finish a project, but of the regular sleep disturbances many of us experience today.

Brain stimulation has to do with creativity, and creativity with brain stimulation. In our world of total interconnectedness, tender love and care for our brains matters. Nurturing, replicating, maintaining and enhancing our beloved synapses is a prerequisite for more open minded, balanced and satisfying life until the end.

And, in the process, for a more interesting world.

Your brain in your pocket: why an Apple Tablet could bring about media convergence

With a rather large library at home and the prospect of moving house has become quite daunting.

As has the chance of finding stuff.

Famous last question: Where did I read that again?, followed by an hour's search across dusty shelves.

This has, of course, its own inimitable charm. Invariably I come across thoughts, ideas, stories that either I had forgotten about or that I had just simply not connected with.

However, as soon as I leave the house (a very regular occurrence), that entire library becomes useless.

So what if?

So what if there were a technological frogleap that would allow me to have that library with me all the time, allowing me to roam through at leisure on the train or the plane?

What if I could access all sources of information and all media, perform instant searches and combine text, music and video into one knowledge mega-library?

A laptop, you say?

Nah, not a laptop. Laptops are still far too appliation-centric (as opposed to content focused) Nah, not a Kindle, either. Too static.

Something that combines the flexibility and the colour of a magazine, the reading comfort of a book (or 1000 books -- without the weight), the charms of a Kindle (or so I am told, not owning one, but I have my doubts) the advantages of a laptop (film, music, searchability) as well as the potential of the new forms of converging media (did you recently visit the New York Times site?).

Well, according to Gizmodo, Apple (yes, I know, them again…) may be about to launch such a device. Much has been written about the Apple Tablet, but what got me animated here, is not so much the prospect of a possible near launch (February 2010), but more the prospect of media convergence in one device with a touch screen.

One thing in particular struck me in the article: the idea of putting school textbooks onto iTunes.

That would be a total game changer - for kids (think about those heavy satchels), for teachers (up-to-date materials), for bookshops (whoops…sorry, no good news here) and also for publishers (a new definition of the marginal cost of text book publishing).

Publishers would also be encouraged to release the long tail, their huge catalogue of books that have been out of print for years.

But most of all, once multimedia content becomes standard fare, tablet content will be to books what television has been for many years to travelogues: wildly more vivid and engaging. Just imagine your standard economics book with interactive, automatically updated graphics.

Whether it is going to be Apple or someone else, is beside the point. We are fast approaching the convergence of media.

If you add the recent evolution of e-paper (flexible screen technology) into the mix… we might just be at the beginning of an(other) information revolution.

Remember the live newspapers in the Harry Potter movies? Well, I have come to think that they are but a frog's leap away.

Footlines 3 October

What caught my attention this week:

• Fancy a drink on the moon? The Times
• Pigs play a vital role in keeping Cairo clean New York Times
• Molecular diagnostics - Microchip can detect type and severity of cancer: PhysOrg.com
• Quest for long life gains scientific respect: New York Times

Also:

• Why we travel New York Times
• Facebook: a viable business model (French): Techtrends
• The US lost 36% of its bee population in 2007-2008.

"We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” 

George Bernard Shaw

Have a nice weekend!

Unlimited clean water?

Michael Pritchard demonstrates a revolutionary water filter, the lifesaver bottle. Live in front of the audience, he drinks his own stuff that he prepares from carefully selected horrors.

This is revolutionary for its immediate use: make dirty water clean and safe in muddy areas, saving thousands of people an (often unfruitful) epic trek to the next clean water source. 

With renewable cartridges lasting for up to 6,000 litres, this has the ability of thoroughly changing lives.

I could see its uses on a larger scale also in our areas, where individual homes, and even industries and agriculture could create much more efficient recycled water circuits, reducing or even eliminating the need to tap non-renewable water sources. It could also make us less dependent on centralised waterworks for water distribution.

Decentralisation of water. With the general water situation worsening by the day, this can only help.

Pipe dream.

Footlines 12 September 09

What caught my attention this week, and made me wonder, worry or wow.

From the Economist Technology Quarterly supplement:

• Three-dimensional printing: have your own personal little factory: Economist
• The waterless washing machine: Economist
• Making softwoods hard, and saving forests in the process: Economist
• Does augmented reality have a more real future than virtual reality? Economist

Also:

• London, UK - 15 SEP: National History Museum opens new Darwin Centre in ultra modern building: NHM Site
• Elephant population decline again (in French): Mutations
• What Skype and Facebook promise - but will they deliver? (Thanks Don): Harvard Blog
• Some of the oldest websites still around: Daily Telegraph