Aaron White

Stop Thinking, Start Knowing: a Glimpse into our Future

I play an interesting and scary game with my friends. When one of us asks “Who was that Actor?”, or wonders about “When did [some event] occur?”, or any kind of question with a factual answer, I call “Full stop, bring out the iPhone!”

This takes the ‘wonder’ out, and that’s the point. We’re living in a world where this information is available, and with the mobile internet, it’s now conveniently available. If you’re interested in understanding where we’re heading, force yourself to play this game, because sometime soon, we won’t need a human advocate to initiate the search, we’ll already know the answer.

Imagine a device that marries speech recognition, natural language processing, Google search, and a permanent connection to the internet (WiFi/3G). Now imagine this device has two interface elements: a microphone, and an LCD readout of around 10 lines. This device will always be on, always listening, and always have the answers.

When a question is asked, you’ll look at the display, and you’ll know, not wonder.

We are not that far from this! (I’d like to prototype one…) Once this exists, how long until we have in-sunglass integration? How about in-eardrum? In-brain?

The answers exists, and the workflow is getting easier. What happens when an entire society is acclimated to this, and leveraging the web reflexively, not consciously? The implications on how we think is mind-boggling, an entire society with a new-found superpower. How will we change?

I encourage you to start playing the game now! 

The Metric Revolution

nrbd:

I propose that we all start using the Metric System for units and Celsius for temperature. Cars already have km/h markings, we drink from 2-litre bottles of soda and measure drugs and the nutritional content of food in grams. Converting to Celsius is as easy as pressing a button on my iPhone. The majority of the world, save a handful of countries, switched decades ago. Fuck the government, let’s just do this from the bottom up.

Who’s with me?

We’ve miles to go, but the common man must foot the burden as we inch towards this. We’ll use our righteous rod to pound our cause, until there is not an ounce of doubt that we’ll prevail! 

Dumbification and the science of Engagement

PR prodigy & digital renaissance girl, Amanda Mooney, points us this morning in the direction of a new book, “The Dumbest Generation”. In it, Mark Bauerlein argues that the kids are trading enrichment for entertainment, and the Internet is to blame. 

My gut reaction is that this is both true and misleading. (I have yet to read the book, but before you take me to the coals, Amanda and I are cooking up a virtual book club, so if you’re interested in reading this with us, drop me an email) 

My thinking is that enrichment and entertainment are individually quite valuable, and indispensable when combined. The ‘problem’ (i.e., opportunity) I see is that a science is developing around entertainment-engagement, while self-enrichment is largely left to the motivation of the individual. 

Nailing the ‘entertainment equation’ yields megabucks (last week alone: Iron Man $100 million, GTA4 $500 million. Facebook is valued at over a $15 billion dollars). Where there is money, there is research and experimentation, and investment equals advancement. We’re learning what is engaging, what is frustrating, and what is fun. The better we understand those dynamics, the greater the pull of these products, games and services.

It’s no surprise that kids are drawn in this direction; that’s the idea! These diversions aren’t without cognitive benefit, however. Games teach abstractions, demand practice, encourage puzzle solving, and in some cases teach skills (ask me about my singing!). Multiplayer games foster competition, coordination and cooperation. Social services encourage peer interaction, help us understand social nuance, while granting us a cultural ‘six-sense’.

So why hasn’t enrichment’s pull caught up? Video-game engagement ‘technology’ is equally applicable to education-based products and systems. Is it an economic problem, or an older-generation stigma around video games? Perhaps this is just the natural cycle with entertainment leading education (In Latin, the word ludus means both school and game. The relation between these two concepts may be exceedingly old).

My personal belief is that we’re still transitioning through an enablement phase, and when we’ve emerged, we’ll collectively return to the kind of ideas and discourse Bauerlein worries we’re ignoring. When the dust settles, when game technology and social networks are part of the day-to-day for everyone, and we have an intuitive sense of their value and boundaries, we’ll find new intellectual dimensions to compete on. 

Trivially, individuals with an intellectual edge will ‘win’ when all else is equal. So no matter what dips or regressions we suffer, we’ll always creep back in that direction. If you’d prefer to leap in that direction, we have an incredible opportunity to apply entertainment’s new power-of-the-pull science to enrichment.

Maybe, “The Dumbest Generation” is about to birth “The Smartest Generation”.