what comes first: the innovation or the change

Today I just wanna to share convergence rather fun/weird that happens me today. I'm now reading a book call "the rational optimist" by Matt Ridley, who is talking about how ideas and innovation is the motor behind the progress of humanity and how the exchange is the fuel for this to happen, when I came across with the column from Johan Lehrer in Wired magazine which is talking in this post (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/cultivating-genius/) about how throughout history geniuses had cluster in specific times and places. He bring the notion of meta-ideas, propose by Paul Romer, to solve the riddle of why this clustering -or clotting how he calls it- happens. By another hand Ridley go through the same issue discarding: government, intellectual property (a meta-idea propose by Romer), capital and science, only to set the "clotting agent" on the exchange. Information exchange. Were there is ideas being exchanged -or having sex as he stated- innovation, hence innovators, will happen.
Both authors state that innovation is needed urgently nowadays -to reactivate the economy, dodge the environmental collapse, fight the totalitarianism or corporatism or anarchism, or just change the world for better in some way- but even when they don't really agree in the essential factor, or factors, which detonates the appearance of innovation, the same question remains in the backstage of both arguments: to make a better societies -or world for what matter- we need more innovation; but for having more innovation, isn't that we need first to change ours societies?

Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

Finally after several month of delay my article was published on RChD (in spanish)

Revista Chilena de Diseño » Tres cosas que se deberían saber antes de recibirse de diseñador

The personal mobility turning point

This video is a quite interesting trip through the personal mobility history focused on describing how we found ourselves in the turning point of this industry. The arguments for this claim are the upcoming electrical technologies and material that are now being introduce in the develop of personal mobility devices, the longer performance of electrical batteries and the reduction of their sizes as well as the incorporation of high sensitive capabilities have opened broadly the spectrum of possibilities for imagining and realize new ways of interacting with the vehicles, new uses for them and, the most relevant issue, new categories of vehicles. Since the foundation of this industry both the morphology and the configuration of personal mobility vehicles has remain pretty much the same until recently devices like the SEGWAY and the Honda's U3-X (the main character of this video) have overlook the the idea that a personal vehicle has to be a car or a bike or, if you are an eccentric driver, a tricycle to bring a new category of self-balancing vehicles, and altogether opening a hole new branch in the mobility industry.

The proliferation of new devices in this area has already begun, and we can count now with transitional hybrids like one-wheeled motorcycles or Segway like devices for off road but the disruption of personal mobility it is far from being exhausted and I guess we will witness the arise of other new categories on which the power storage technology and the active sensitive capacity as well as the new ways of human vehicle interaction will have a main role.

From the Design point of view, being involved in this turning point means a bit more than just to make these new devices more aesthetically appealing or user friendly; it means also to imagine, research and prototype new ways to communicate the human will to an electromechanical device so the relationship between them can become more intuitive and responsive.

That's it for now, by the way, this video is produced by Gizmag and you can read the hole article here.

Enjoy

Work vs. Play

Yet another talk about how IDEO work. This time related to the value of Play at work, with good examples of how a relaxed but focused environment where failure is tolerated can drive design teams to a successful delivery of solutions in complex situations.

RIP: A Remix Manifesto (or the left side of the rights)

This is a documentary about how we choose to experience culture. It is a tricky issue because we can either say that is a consumer good and feel free to consume it or we can just take it and use it as we please. the thing is, if we call it a consumer good means that is a product being offer to us, the one we trade so we earn the right to use its inscripted functions (the functions intended by the creator of that cultural good) until its life cycle, a close cycle, is over. by the other hand if is available to be taken and use, so it is public domain, means that it has an open life cycle and with this comes two different implications. first, the trade is open, which means that that cultural good is traded not anymore between the creator -or the mediator-and and individual, but the social space (the community within the scope culturally influenced by that ''good''). Second, the functions of the good itself are open; this means that in this case not only the intended functions are available but also any function that the good, by its properties, allows and also the functions that the user of the good can imagine.

All this becomes meaningful when we understand that one of the functions of any cultural good is to be a building brick for whatever comes next. Every cultural object, in the broader sense of the word, is a functional part of the future of that culture. This movie-manifesto is about what happens when we overprotect the cultural goods on which the innovation, which enriches the future, is fed.

Low tech v/s high tech

As Wade Davis says, ancient wisdom really matters in the modern world, technological wisdom present itself in every culture in different ways to solve local problems, and in the traditional way, with local materials and skills. Ancient technologies solve problems based on locally available materials processed through simple or low skills techniques and usually also with low secondary or post process wastes. Today’s obsession with high tech solutions is leading us to an overexploitation of resources and dependence on a global supply chain. but is even a deeper difference between high and low tech as Professor Kai Simons explain in this video, high tech require more specific and less available materials which are running out fast increasing the price and the availability of solutions based on high tech. If we keep relying in high tech and don't focus soon on start producing local low-tech solutions there is a danger that this issue turn from a technological problem into a political one with the well known characteristic of the political approach when it comes to deal with precious resources.

''Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain'' C.G.Jung

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