Hasan Elahi video - Romancing the FBI

Is it possible to hide in plain sight?

One artist responds to being mistakenly identified as a terrorist by creating an online record of his every move, meal and destination. In the words of Hasan Elahi, what began as a pragmatic solution to the problem of being singled out, though, has evolved over the last ten years into an elaborate art project.

He jokes in the video that "he just recently celebrated his 10th anniversary with the FBI." And as romantic as that may sound, the artist in him wonders: what happens to a society that no longer has a need to forget?

Elahi, one of the Creative Capital artists who attended and participated in what has become an annual and much anticipated event at the IdeaFestival, is also the source of this wonderful quote pulled from last year's "Stay Curious" video:

Interesting things come from people interested in things.

There is a lot of truth in that simple statement.

If you haven't purchased your Festival Pass for IdeaFestival 2013, you may want to act soon! After Sept. 1, the prices for passes will increase.

Wayne

Smeagol's "precious" process won't get it done

Scott Berkun nails this point about doing meaningful work. Don't be Precious (with your ideas):

Obsessing about every little choice is a sure fire way to prevent great work from happening. Try a bold choice. Put the beginning at the end, or the top at the bottom. Blow your work up into jagged pieces and put them back together. You might just find this opens doors you didn’t even know were there.... [Otherwise] you'll never call anything finished, denying yourself the essential experience of looking back from a distance and learning from what you’ve already made.

The last sentence is particularly interesting to me. Like many of you, I know perfectionists who will pour over the details, never releasing the final idea or product into the wild. But in doing so, they are, as Berkun points out, doing a huge disservice to themselves. They'll never benefit from an honest accounting by others of what they've done. And of equal importance, they'll deny themselves the personal perspective that could, given a willingness to let go, reveal the way forward.

Reflected as we are in the things we do and make, that kind of attention makes of us a cracked image. It called to my mind the one posted here.

You will inevitably be embarrassed by version one of any successful idea. So let go.

Stay curious.

Wayne

image: Some rights reserved by me5otron

Creative advice: Ignore everybody

Brand consultant and cartoonist Hugh Mac­Leod has some good advice if you're in the business of being creative (you are).

Rule number one, posted by Douglas Eby on his blog on creativity:

Ignore everybody.

It sounds counterintuitive, right? But the more unusual or different your vision is, the less others will be able to help you with it. Heck, YOU may not even know where the thought is headed.

Reading the advice, I was reminded me of this Howard H. Aiken quote:

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats

The sad truth is that original ideas are often difficult for others to grasp and the usual boxes people will try to put them in have virtually nothing to say about the idea's potential and lot more to say about how uncomfortable real change is. So don't be put off by the resistance you encounter. Yes, it's possible your idea or creative vision won't work. But it's certain, if it is an original, that nobody knows that now.

Stay curious!

If you haven't bought your Festival Pass, you'll need to act now. They are going fast.

Wayne

Image: Some rights reserved by f_mafra

The world is too big to know

We are drawn to edges, to our own/parapets and sea-walls. - Robin Robertson

I wasn't going to blog this piece, but having run across a related post that helpfully makes a point I had missed earlier, I will. This ranking of the world's most influential thinkers "uses network analysis similar to Google page rank" to compile its results.

Fair enough. The key word, though, is "influential."

According to "The World's Most Influential Thinkers Revealed" at Technology Review - yes, there is some sarcasm in that lede - influence comes in descending order beginning with economists and political theorists, which in my current charitable frame mind is not the best way to start any list of big thinkers. Technology Review hastens to add that the list is dominated by thinkers in the west and that the source material was generally written in English. It doesn't mention the fact, raised in the comments section, that the overwhelming majority of those that are listed are men. That of course has to change.

My point is that to have influence one must have standing. But as you read this, there may be a mind trapped by mental illness or chemical dependency that nonetheless holds within its folds a workable theory that unifies quantum mechanics and general relativity, or, because this influential mind of the future is only now discovering the talent, might be able to lay down meter with the spare, haunted and elegiac geometry of a Robin Robertson. Her influence will be aesthetic. And if I may: we need poets now more than ever.

In fact, we need every kind of mind.

Moreover, the world, like any "best-of" list, is much too big to know with any completeness. I am as heartened by that fact as I am saddened by people in possession of One Big Idea. I'm also certain that the wonderfully talented and influential people first mentioned by Technology Review share this common trait: they have restless and curious minds. Not knowing drives them toward vast expanses that empty ever onward, and like many before and many to come, they are motivated by reasons they may not understand and by finds that will demand from them answers, the only suitable ransom for the new questions they now have. They are pricked and poisoned. They are urgent, these people. Some find themselves at the IdeaFestival.

We hope you will too. Stay curious.

Wayne

Image: Geoff Oliver Bugbee

The IdeaFestival is a brain altering substance

The most interesting things come from people interested in things. - artist Hasan Elahi at IdeaFestival 2012

Is the IdeaFestival a brain altering substance?

No, no. I don't mean that kind of alteration, although being buzzed for days afterward is one common side effect of attending the IdeaFestival.

But having read over the years how the brain physically changes in response to stimuli, how it's malleable and oh-so plastic, it's not so surprising that our neurons might work overtime during what in Louisville has become a full week of events that emphasize the joy in discovery. We know, for example, that people skilled in meditation can alter the size the brain responsible for empathy, which means that monks can physically grow more compassionate. I love that idea. Likewise, as judged by the activities of mirror neurons, power, or the feeling of power, can affect how we infer motive and thereby short circuit what we can learn.

What specific kind of change, then, can one expect at the IdeaFestival?

I know from personal experience that listening to Daniel Tammet explain how his mind and mine aren't all that different, or to Jane McGonigal gently insist that play is central to creativity, or watching Daniel Simons illustrate just how easy it is to miss what's right in front of our noses - I know that the festival can produce a feeling of being humbled. In some cases I've been nearly overwhelmed or awed by what I've heard. As Oliver Burkeman confirms in this recent video interview, awe is not always comfortable, but it does provide a sense of scale and place that is uniquely suited to subsequent mind opening. The people who speak at the festival are all very accomplished and, generally, scary smart.

Be still. I predict that the specific change you'll experience is a new found desire to ask questions, which at some point in the week will be quickly followed by this internal whisper.

So that's it.

Festival passes are going fast! If you're planning to attend this year, you may want to act now.

Wayne

Image: Geoff Oliver Bugbee