Mike Zach, Professor at UW-Stevens Point is doing some amazing things in nanotechnology. What I like to note about his (humble) sense of his work is that he doesn't claim they are inventing anything new, but rather they're figuring out how does nature do things and then emulating that in the lab. Innovation shouldn't always be about inventing something entirely new, more often it's about discovering something entirely old.
What have you changed your mind about? This is the question asked of a lot of scientists and thinkers (apparently someone put futurists into that category . . . ) and the answers are exceptional. The combination of curiosity and humility are absolutely necessary for the notion of progress with factual things.
Once I read that the notion of "I might be wrong" is essential to a democratic society. If I can admit that I might be wrong and thereby you might be right, I guess I'll let you live. I don't think I'm wrong about this . . .
I particularly liked the essay from Stewart Brand talking about how Good Old Stuff Sucks. Nostalgia for old things often leaves us with stuff that just doesn't work as well as the new stuff. My kitchen, bath and technology are almost all new. My art and most of my furniture is all old - my comfy sofa and my bed are new.
Let's be practical about what we're going to bring forward from the past. My antique lamps (all of my lamps are from the 20s and 30s) have all been rewired - and some of them have been re-plated (for the antique purists, this is sinful, but I prefer aesthetic and utility to having something authentic that looks like junk). I have an old phone from 1933 designed by Norman bel Geddes - that has a dial and a bell ringer, but I also have a modern 5.8ghz phone with a headset. The old phone works and I use it from time to time, but it's more there for looks, when I'm wanting to have a conversation more than a few minutes, I put on the headset. For those chairs that I have that are old, all the cushions have been reupholstered. My dinnerware is all old, my dishwasher is new.
This relates to my notions of innovation. I used to call my company Innovative Futures - as in, we got this future by continually innovating upon what has come before us. Some futurists believe that the past is just an anchor. It isn't. It's a rudder, or to keep with this entry's metaphor, the past is more of a workshop. There are lots of resources and tools (and art) that's old, but it still has value. We have to ask the question of how will we use the past, even protect the past so that we keep the best of it? How does the old mix with the new? When is old appropriate, even desirable, and when is new more appropriate?
As Stewart Brand notes, old boats and old windows leak and are a constant pain to repair. (Three years ago I sold a 1982 Datsun 280zx, my own personal little money pit - now I have a 2006 Toyota Prius, I miss the t-tops, but I really like my high tech car that ALWAYS works.) I want to see old buildings renovated and I want to see old ideas renovated. I want to see old art appreciated. I want new art to run through the mill of objection to determine if it has any long-term merit. Art is a great example of just because it's new doesn't mean that it's good. A lot of new stuff sucks too.
To see both beauty (& the beast) in Scientific Information, here are the winners of the National Science Foundation's contest for Science and Engineering Visualization. (This one is a photo of human nasal cavities.) Click through to also see the award winner from previous years.
In an age of information, the beauty of the presentation will certainly affect the acceptance, understanding and utility of the information. Of course, as everyone past childhood should have learned, beauty can't always be trusted.
The need for improving the presentation of information is equally matched by our need to improve our ability to interpret it, to filter it, to ignore it. Without this sort of training, in the battles for the attention, the spoils of war go to the distractors. They are winning because we don't even know how to define the conflict.
Here's a link from Univ. of Texas-Austin on Information Architecture.
Here's a link defining Information Archtecture from wikipedia.
And, of course, here's a link to one of the fathers of information design, Edward Tufte's website. He offers several workshops (I keep want to take the time to do these classes.) and seven books on the design of information.
Author of a series of books on Information Archtecture, here's Richard Saul Wurman's bio page and www.ted.com, a particularly great website of free videos explaining most anything that's at the cutting and bleeding edge.
