If you've never thought of it like that, we can help

"PressThink's" Jay Rosen speaking on the nature of "wicked problems:"

It is hard to say what the problem is, to define it clearly or to tell where it stops and starts. There is no 'right' way to view the problem, no definitive formulation. There are many stakeholders, all with their own frames, which they tend to see as exclusively correct. Ask what the problem is and you will get a different answer from each. Someone can always say that the problem is just a symptom of another problem and that someone will not be wrong. The problem is inter-connected to a lot of other problems; pulling them apart is almost impossible. In a word: it’s a mess....

Tame problems are not easy to solve, but they are easy to define, to fix in a proper frame. How to build a bridge over the Mississippi that won’t fall down, and determining what it will cost: we’ve tamed that one. The engineers apply the science and select the best design within the constraints the government has put forward. The politicians figure out how to pay for it and how to sell it. We can know in advance what kind of expertise will be needed.

Wicked problems aren't like that. As the founders of the concept said in 1973, “You don’t understand the problem until you have a solution.” - Jay Rosen, speaking at the UK Conference of Science Journalists in June at The Royal Society, London.

While Rosen talks about wicked problems in the context of journalism - he's determined to keep "media" from gobbling up the press - the formulation is a useful way in which to understand the bedeviled nature of enormous issues such as climate change and health care, which have outgrown the capacity of their respective experts, alone, to solve.

Wicked problems require many sets of eyes. 

To create one of the largest scientific instruments in the world, the builders of the domed Allosphere in Santa Barbara recruited artists to visualize and sonify data. Working with their scientific colleagues they may just improve our understanding of nature. Confident behavior, artificial intelligence and epistemology are all linked by the concept of embodiment. Perhaps dance may serve as an interlocutor. Synesthesia, as Daniel Tammet so beautifully explained in 2010, is not just a neurological quirk but an opening onto the nature of human creativity.

Are you an architect, biologist or attorney? Do you sculpt, theorize or write?

The IdeaFestival excels at generating and exploring new connections. In addition to meeting some of the smartest people on the planet, at some point during the many presentations over three days - and you really should consider attending them all, the effect is cumulative -  you will relate something you have heard to something you do professionally. It will come as a surprise. Perhaps it will be the result of a point made by Lisa Randall about the vanishingly small nature of particle physics and the concept of scale. Or maybe Peter Sims' entrepreneurial experiences may suggest a way to optimize your medical office, or set up an experiment in your lab. The difference between the festival and the journals and experts in your field is that the festival goes wide, not deep. It will not suggest the answer. Nor will it implicitly narrow the scope of acceptable answers. And if you are anything like me, you will find it helpful to take a break from the data.

This is how it will go down: you won't understand something has been bubbling beneath the surface until 33 minutes into the fourth presentation on day two, and suddenly you'll sit a little straighter in your chair and say audibly, but not so loud that your neighbors understand that hundreds of bottle rockets are snapping off one after the other in your mind: "Oh! - Oh! - Oh, crap. I never thought of it like that." 

Then the fun begins.

Wayne

Image of Diavolo from IdeaFestival 2009: Geoff Oliver Bugbee

Sir Ken Robinson: We need every kind of mind

If you've been following along, you know by now that IdeaFesival 2012 will feature a couple of speakers who will talk to the changing nature of education. And why not? The Great Recession has prompted many people to go back to school. Institutions like Stanford and MIT are making a high level education available to all comers by putting coursework online. You won't get a degree, but should you take the instruction and pass the tests, you will sure qualify for one.

Perhaps what we should know and what we do know are at odds.

Speaking in the UCLA Hammer series in the video embedded here, Sir Ken Robinson describes a grade school "linearity" rooted in the industrial age that manufactures students who have been trained to take tests at regularly scheduled times. It assumes, he says, that the most important thing any group of children have in common is their age. There is of course wide variety of human aptitudes and learning styles, each of which are capable of making meaningful contributions to an increasingly interconnected and complex age that prizes critical thinking, curious minds, and skill sets the recognize opportunity - and its accompanying tests - well before the scoring sheet is opened and the clock starts. Robinson:

If we live a life that is straightened by this particular conception of academic ability, we deny the multiplicity of talents on which our communities, [not to mention] a fulfilled life, actually depends.

As a much younger man, I would often rush through the coursework placed before me in the Louisiana public school system so that I could go to the back of the room and pick a battered 50's-era encyclopedia at random from the shelves. Just as routinely I would be asked to stand outside the classroom for leaving my seat. I don't remember a thing from the formal instruction, but can recall that the indexical lettering on the spines of the volumes represented the summae of knowledge for this 1970's Louisiana boy. "B" stood for Biology and Burma, "C" for Cathey and Cells. I happily skipped from peak to peak, and then exited the room.

Knowledge isn't a linear affair with one subject leading inevitably to another. And like Robinson - though far, far less eloquent and warm. Watch the video! - I think it should be possible to recognize that different children learn in different ways, that some must move and learn with their hands, and some will remain content encountering knowledge that appeals directly to their minds. I think that because I was the kid who didn't care for the coursework on offer, the quiet kid who would happily stand outside and with the unnatural pluck of someone for whom some deep doctrine had been violated, confidently explained my presence to the principal walking from room to room.

One of the reasons why I love the IdeaFestival is that it recognizes that we need every kind of mind, that our passions are kindled in different ways. The festival annually presents leading thinkers and innovators from all kinds of disciplines, and this year it will present, among many others, educators, artists, a theoretical physicist, a historian of science, musicians, entrepreneurs, a diplomat and a poet.

At the end of three days, your credentials will include a closer familiarity with ideas that inform both culture and enterprise. And you'll love the instruction.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by Caitlyn Willows

Peter Sims: Perfect ideas discovered, not planned

The skills we’re taught work well for familiar situations, yet we’re trained to perfect our ideas and use the past to predict the future with linear plans in a nonlinear world. As such, we need a completely new mind-set. Linear thinking is a death knell for creativity.

When I worked as a venture capital investor, I found that most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with perfected ideas or plans — they discover them. Entrepreneurs think of learning the way most people think of failure. - "Little Bets" author, Peter Sims

Peter will speak at IdeaFestival 2012 on why non-linear thinking is key for the creative mindset, and why "little bets" accompany non-linear thinking.

Stay curious. 

Wayne

1952 DeSoto image: Some rights reserved by bsabarnowl

The world doesn't care what you know, but what you can do with what you know

Beginning his talk by asking his audience how many elements were in the periodic table, Tony Wagner uses the relative silence to make the point that knowledge is constantly expanding. What has served people in the past may be of much less use in the future.

"The world doesn't care what you know, but what you can do with what you know."

Twenty-first century literacies combine knowledge (of course), but stress competencies such as initiative, critical thinking and curiosity.

We'll certainly go along with that.

Wagner was recently appointed the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, and will speak at IdeaFestival 2012 on The Finland Phenomenon, taking a deeper look at the innovative and highly effective educational system that has that Nordic country at the top of many educational categories.

As for his periodic table question, every tentatively offered answer from the audience was wrong. Two more elements had been added the week of his presentation.

Stay curious.

Wayne

Friends of IdeaFestival

Friends of IdeaFestival play an important role in designing and sustaining our world-class programming and events. By supporting the Festival with a contribution of $1,000*, you will receive:

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