David Zach, futurist

Laptops vs. Lectures: Let's Ban Lectures! — Datamation.com

One science professor achieved minor YouTube fame recently when a video surfaced showing him freezing a student's laptop in liquid nitrogen, then smashing it on the floor. The professor commanded: "Don't bring laptops and work on them in class!" (I wonder how many university students watched that video during class.)

Click below to read the full article.

via itmanagement.earthweb.com

I got a bad feeling about this. Let me see if I have this straight. If kids no longer know how to deal with the basic educational method of lecture, that is lectures ... they should get rid of lectures. Have we gone completely mad?

Sure, entertainment is fine, but at some point, it's not about being entertained or holding on to their attention with tricks. The students have to learn to pay attention. It's a skill like anything else and it's another endangered species no one seems to care about. Learn to concentrate. Not multitask. Focus on one thing at a time. 

(There's a great PBS video called Digital Nation - the first part takes a bunch of proud multitaskers and then empirically shows them how absolutely terrible they are at everything they think they're good at. Marvelous!)

I think the continued customization of the world is leading towards a world that will demand customization for everything. And when it doesn't exactly match expectations, they attitude will cause the person to either be less productive or less attentive — probably both.

Call it "division by design." The better the design and the better our appreciation of great design, the more likely people will reject things that are not great design. I see a lot of companies putting a lot of time, money and attention into making sure that work environments are designed exactly right so as to encourage productivity and happiness in workers. My question is: How exactly do you design for happiness when happiness is such a fluid thing, especially amongst younger workers whose definition of happiness probably changes from day to day? It's a disturbing thing as well when more organizations are buying into the foolish notion that people have a right to be happy instead of a much saner (and older) notion that we have a right to pursue happiness.

Get your heads out of your personal computers and your interpersonal computers. Pay attention. It's not about you, it's about knowledge and the world. It was here first, it doesn't owe you a thing. If you're part of a generation that prides itself on being so open-minded, then be open-minded about something other than the stuff you already agree with. You perhaps forgot or sadly never learned that the entire world with one minor exception is something else other than you. Focus your attention outside of yourself and when it school it means putting it upon books, lectures and your notes. 

Pick up Maggie Jackson's book Distracted. It's subtitled The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Seriously. We are distracting ourselves into a society that cannot pay attention and in effect cannot produce nor defend anything of value. Good luck with that. 

Data Visualization, Data Complexity

I keep thinking there's got to be a better way than just more and more data for us to plow through. Here's an example of Visual Complexity via Gizmodo.com of fascinating data visualization that offers some hope, especially with sense that design applied to data should reveal refinement and a sense of the aesthetic. 

Can data be beautiful and give us a sense of "Ah!" as opposed the the growing sense of "Ugh!" — one can only hope and encourage the information architects to focus not just on measurement, but whimsy as well. 

Modern Times Poem by David Zach, Futurist

I keep getting request for this poem that comes near the end of my talk. I did not know it was a poem, but if they're going to call it that, who am I to resist? (Find a handout poster of this here.)

This is about the world that we give to our children. They are not fooled (like we are) and they see the world for what it is. Just as children are often not fooled by magicians, too often we are. The magicians of today are everywhere, constantly distracting us from what we once knew to be vital. 

Why do we treat unhappiness in children as the most frightening of diseases and must be treated with medications?

When everything is possible, is that a sign of a world that is vital, optimistic and hopeful - or is it a sign of a world that is tired and wants to sleep? 

We are modern, we are distracted, we are clever. 

Children are the message we send to the future. What are we trying to say?

Modern times

  Nothing can wait.

Nothing can satisfy. 

Nothing can last.  

No one can be unhappy.

No one can be judged.

No one can be trusted.

Nothing is hidden.

Nothing is forbidden. 

Nothing is certain.

Everything is a need.

Everything is a choice. 

Everything is possible. 

The New Atlantis: The Myth of Multitasking

The Myth of Multitasking

Related to my last post, the linked article begins with a quotation from Lord Chesterfield: There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” followed by another This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.

Multitasking vs. Singletasking

I just spoke at the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and at one point quoted a woman at another conference who warned audience members to stop doing email during her talk — with the rather assertive expression, "Multitasking makes you stupid!" I then suggested that perhaps young people can multitask, but adults are not so good at it. I've read a few articles suggesting that the "software" of youngsters is actually different from those who grew up in a linear world. Young people can be doing ten things at once and still be bored because there's still available bandwidth, needing to be filled and/or distracted. 

Later at one of the receptions at NCARB I overheard someone explaining, "Young people might be better at multitasking, but they are not so good at singletasking." 

Does anyone who is regularly on email and online have the ability to concentrate and focus for long periods of time? Our attention span is no better than that of houseflies today. Can you possibly do the sort of work you're capable of when you can't pay attention. I would guess not. 

In this sort of game, there are winners and losers. Who wins in an age of distraction?