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The Idea Collective by Nate Hunter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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I’ve spent a lot to start my business, and I’m hoping like hell I succeed.
I’ve dreamed for over a year now of starting my own business. It seemed so grand calling myself a businessman, an entrepreneur. Standing on the edge, taking risks, and coming out not just on top, but ON TOP!
Life, however, has many lessons to teach on the way to the top.
I had a setback this week. For a few minutes the potential for my huge success wilted away like a weed removed from the soil. I was forced, for a moment, to imagine living the remainder of my days not as a businessman, but as an employee. Not as a man in charge of his existence, but as a dog fed once a week with the food we call money. In my mind the days extended into eternity, each one a grey struggle and sharp with quiet desperation, as I muzzled my desires with the food bag of poverty’s distractions.
That’s sad old me, just behind Mr Special
Fortunately positivity won the day. The setback was (and still is) a setback, but there are a myriad of alternate routes around any wall. What was illuminating was how much my dreams of success had permeated my life, how much my energy thrived on a constant supply of positive dreams. It is an amazing and valuable human trait, the ability to dream. To be buoyed and shielded by those dreams is the pre-requisite to persistence and tenacity.
Here’s ten rad things about day- and night-dreaming:
1. A man must dream to realise what is possible
2. Dreams enable you to imagine a path around an obstacle
3. Dreams allow you to create possible (and impossible) scenarios
4. You can escape dreams if they become nightmares
Oh Crap
5. You can control dreams, both daydreams and nightdreams
6. Dreams can give you answers
7. Dreams can energise you for the day
8. Dreams tell you what your energetic state is like. Vivid dreams point to an energised state
9. Dreams enable your creative energies as you interpret them (after you wake up)
not the disappearing into the telly thing againnononononoNoNoNoNONONONOOOOOO
10. You can try on different personalities when dreaming, and
11. Lucid dreaming is one of the coolest things you can do
As a result of my dreams, my ambition and drive have come to life after 20 years in hibernation.
Life is awesome, and I’m prepared to risk everything to get it even more so.
Advertising is sterile, the twenty second commercial is dead and the ad industry is a painted corpse that TV is attempting to resuscitate.
The people who should be taking note of this are not the advertisers. Parasites always suck until they die. It’s their nature. But its the people who are selling the goods and services and employing them that should smell the air.
And to think that we once liked those ad-men… c’mon, let’s go honey.
Take note, advertisers are not the only people in advertising. Commercial TV stations are in the advertising business. It is their sole source of revenue. Check how many shows on your favourite channel are merely for ads. Every cooking show, every current events show, every kids show. I would rather take a hammer to my own head than watch a morning show. How can two hours of television remain bereft of any information? Are the people on those shows human or clothed robots? I guess the local chemist does great deals on soul-anaesthetics and sleeping pills.
Please fork out my eyes immediately
I must confess, I do not own a television, and have not for at least seven years. I have missed it’s presence only for the World Cup. But when I go to my mother-in-law’s house, I am struck dumb by the utter inanity, the stupidity, the stereotypes, the complete absence of information of any kind and the unanimity of the call, “YOU ARE STUPID. BUY THIS.”
Your local advertising “creative”
It seems that regular exposure to this white noise creates a type of reverse cynicism toward anyone who points out the hopelessness of this media. Because they see it regularly, they view it as a demented dribbling uncle, accepted simply because of his reassuring and familiar presence.
Take my ads OVER MY DEAD BODY!
But advertising pisses people off. It interrupts our shows. It gets in the way of our phone apps. It drowns out our favourite songs. It preaches desire. Listen to this, from an advertiser:
“Modern marketing and advertising professionals believe that the business has evolved into a much more sophisticated, more thought through, more professional and smarter business than it was say in the 1960s.
But how is it then that 99% of all advertising put in front of us is pretty much absolute shit?
Why do messages fall flat?
Why do they fail to connect with the man-on-the-street?
Why do people find advertising more annoying and less helpful than ever before?
Why does the advertising turn out to be so complicated that it is generally indecipherable, even if someone wanted to decipherable it.
Why, if advertising is so damn clever, is no one any the wiser as to whether a piece of advertising is actually going to work or not?Why, if advertising is now so damn clever, is the stuff produced by modern ad agencies so consistently, terribly bad?
The modern advertising business is locked in an irreversible cycle of nonsense.
It’s actually incredibly stupid compared to the business fifty years ago.
But it will never realise it.”http://sellsellblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/is-modern-advertising-more-stupider.html
So why not make advertising that people want to watch? Rather than changing the channel, make them search out your ad, try to find it. Hide it a little, so they can’t immediately find it. Make it rewarding to find and watch.
Ad campaigns sans product, showing the logo or brand at the end, they are the future. Telling a story, a myth, a legend. That is the future. Giving meaning and information. That is the future.
Information=max; Noise=min
See the pattern? Giving, offering, communicating. Not taking, leeching, draining. If you are to spend your money on a product, should not it’s communication be one of meaning and fulfilment rather than annoyance and patronisation?
Bring information back into advertising. Not trivia, Not factoids. Actual information. Ads could become a sought out medium. Limit the distribution and you have yourself a collectable media.
Imagine you are watching a show. A small bubble containing a captivating image floats into the bottom of the screen and disappears. You only have enough time to catch the merest glimpse of it’s enthralling contents. You sit, waiting for the next, waiting to see what it was. Maybe it had a logo, maybe not. All you know is that it was beautiful. intricate, intoxicating.
You want to be a customer.
Next Blog: Information and Noise, misunderstand at your peril.
Will it be decided through the supposedly “robotic” chains of DNA in our systems gradually unlocking the doors to incredible genetic sequences?
Or will we find the way to unlock, or even create these sequences ourselves? Is there a method toward conscious genetic expression? As well as going through the sequences as they are, surely there are scientists out there stacking the building blocks themselves into shapes of their fancy, seeing where they lead.
Is there somewhere within our DNA a gene for radiation resistance? That creates cells walls so resilient they can withstand the nuclear bombardment of a sun? With this gene decoded in a human body, the way for space travel is clear.
Is there a series of genes that can increase the magnetic potential of our brains? Enabled, this gene paves the way for telepathy and teleportation, and a new breed of medical treatment. (Though secretly I believe that once in space and free of the magnetic field of the Earth, humans will rapidly develop telepathic skill without the need for genetic mutation. Not within lifetimes; within days.)
And what will become of us in space? Thousands of movies and TV episodes depict humans as walking around spaceships leading lives similar to ours. But why should we create gravity where there is none? What could become of the human body in continuous zero-G without physical exercise? If we no longer have to fight gravity, do we really need the musculature system?
Then, without the musculature, what will happen to our psychological makeup? Our mental state is bound up with the state of our body, the health of the organs, the tone of the muscles, the hormonal changes we experience when we build brawn or fat. How will we act when little of this is relevant?
How about space as an end in itself. Our discussion about space when it occurs at all is about travel to earth like planets. I don’t think we need planets, except for resources. What is the Earth really, except a spaceship travelling through the universe.
It’s easy to forget that Sol is moving too, pulling us with it. There are additional levels of drift too, that of the galaxy, the galaxy cluster etc etc
Disconnecting the Earth from the Sun’s gravity might ultimately be the answer. We need to store enough heat, which could be tapped from the core.
By the time some of us are permanently in space, the technology will exist to perpetually support an entire ecosystem of gravity free lifeforms.
I had a treehouse in almost every tree.
One was no more than a foot-long plank of wood spanning a tiny fork in an avocado tree. In the walnut, a series of steps led to a chin-up branch. But my favorite was seven six-foot lengths of fence paling five metres up an enormous jacaranda.
I spent days building it, laboriously hoisting up the planks on a wrought iron hook I found in the dust beneath our house. I split plank after plank using the roofing nails from the old billy tin, then took the nail off my thumb. A web of steps led from one fork to another, all of them possiblities for future expansion.
This was where I dreamed. In spring I was surrounded by thousands of pink fragrant flowers, cut off from the world. In winter I wore my biggest coat and pondered the view across town. When summer came I draped my legs either side of a branch, and, with my back snug against the trunk, watched the dappled light weave magic through the leaves, the breeze tickling my sweat in the humid air.
This was my place. My place to think.
To dream.
To desire.
To watch and admire.
To fantasise and play.
To be alone, to watch and think. This is my hallowed ground.
There is a race going on out in tech land. A sprint for the conquering typing technology. Whoever wins will be as glorified as the VHS system, for far less long. The loser…. well, no one will hear of them. Ever.
So here I throw my two cents into the well for anyone to have a go at. These could be useful… but voice-recognition software could destroy it all at the drop of a hat. Still, programmers will always need data entry systems, as will accountants. And seedy bosses will need something to distract their secretaries while they give them an eye-massage.
One of the new ones for touch-screens is Swype. Say you want to enter “tough-tooties”. Your finger starts on the “t”. You then, without removing your finger from the screen, swipe it to “o”, then swipe to “u”, and so on, only removing your finger when you have finished the word. In essence, the words become symbols drawn on the screen. (Imagine the near future when words are actually replaced by these squiggles…. and the transmutated QWERTY board lives on behind them).
What makes the keyboard so great?
- Our hands are the natural choice for operating the keyboard, until voice recognition software becomes usefully accurate.
- All the keys are available to us at one time, and shortcut keys can be accessed using two or more keys simultaneously.
- All our fingers can be used if we so wish, thus enhancing the speed of data upload.
- On laptops, the mouse is at our fingertips. This is not really an issue in the Age of Touch, but in one of my examples it leads to an interesting alternative.
I see three very concrete requirements in a new typing system:
It needs to be fast. Swype is reputed to be extremely fast once one learns the common shapes.
It needs to be eyes free. Professional typers rarely look at the screen; they usually look at the copy they are transcribing. This is where Swype is the let-down. You have to be looking at your itsy-bitsy touchscreen to be making those shapes.
You must be able to use it anywhere, for any purpose, at the speed you require. While Swype is an excellent solution for small screens and their inherently tiny keyboards, writing a university paper, or lengthy email (or award winningly awesome blog) at a park bench would surely become an even more eye-strainingly tedious task.
What my wife looks like after typing a blog on my iPhone
So, I propose several solutions.
My first idea is the finger-touch typer. The tip of each finger has between one and three electrodes splayed across it. The fingers are touched to the tip of the thumb or the palm of the hand (where another electrode might be situated) creating a circuit. The different combinations of electrodes would create the different letters. Gestures such as slipping one finger across another or snapping the fingers could be used for functions. The sensors could be placed on a glove, or a set of thimbles, or rings of some sort, something portable and easily donned.
What 5 minutes with Illustrator can do for you
Another idea is the touch-screen mouse pad. I am surprised that this hasn’t been incorporated into laptops yet. You probably know that laptops have a touch sensitive mouse pad below the keyboard. This becomes a touch-screen like the iPhone. As the mouse is moved the mouse pad shows the detail of where the mouse is. This would be particularly useful in word-editing software where a simple touch could take you back to the mistake you made rather than tapping arrow or Cntrl/arrow. Photo editing and paintbrush programs would benefit from the microscopic detail possible.
After hearing about the improvements in gesture based gaming and sensors, I don’t think it’s premature to imagine a micro-gesture typing bracelet. It slips over your wrist and, with a sensor on the underside, detects the movement of the fingers and thumb. Lightweight, easy to package, simple to slip on, the bracelet enables typing on any surface. A table, the floor, each of your legs while lying in bed, the back of your iPhone. It’s standard setting is the QWERTY board, but this can easily be customised by the user. Upon initial use, the user must set the parameters of hir own fingers, then the bracelet will work on any surface. The thumb and fingers can also be dragged across the surface to simulate mouse use. It can be permanently worn, similar to those ridiculous balance bands you see around.
What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.
Robert Anton Wilson
I had an argument with a friend recently , and it gave me an insight into how little some people know about science and how it works.
It wasn’t quite this bad. If you want to keep friends though, don’t argue immunisation.
The argument was about immunisation of children, a fiery subject to most parents, particularly those who choose not to immunise. Personally, I favour immunisation because it ensures survival of the greatest number of children. However I do not have a problem with those who do not immunise, as long as the research that they quote to me to justify it is true. Anyway, the sticking point in our discussion was a scientific result that is found on every anti-immunisation website you can find, namely, that immunisation of small children can induce autism.
Jabba’s early psychological scarring explained his later descent into slug-crime
Now, science is finding an accurate explanation for your observations of the world. This is called a hypothesis. A hypothesis is the simplest explanation that can explain your observations.You generally form a hypothesis, then gather your observations using a lot of experiments.
Experiments are structured in such a way that anyone with the resources could replicate the experiment. This allows peer review, one of the foundations science rests upon. If your peers can do an identical experiment and find the same results, and those results can be accurately explained with your hypothesis, then you can have more faith in your newly-formed theory.
The scientist knows that there are many explanations, but that only a couple will mostly fit the data. The scientist tries to not get too attached to his theories. Instead he maintains a detachment that allows him to unemotionally observe the facts.
This is in stark constrast to the average human, who maintains a personal attachment to his beliefs. Unfortunately, this ensures that when his long-held belief is questioned, he takes it as a personal attack. This attachment also forces the average human to use any means necessary to “prove” his beliefs, even if there is no logic or rational reasoning behind it.
The classic example of course is the christian, who upon being asked to prove that God exists simply utters (with angelic righteousness permeating every soon-to-be-rotting-in-the-earth wrinkle):
“The very fact that the world exists is proof enough!”
There is a very good reason that christian and catholic schools do not want ethics classes to be taught in schools. To reach a reasonably ethical viewpoint, one must be logical, and logic is the absolute nemesis of religion.
Anyway, back to the discussion with my friend. The study that he was quoting linking autism to immunisation was completed in 1998 and was led by Andrew Wakefield. As I said, this study is mentioned on just about every anti-immunisation site you can find. He had studied twelve developmentally delayed children, eight of whoms parents claimed that the Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR) vaccine had caused autism.
My friend had created a hypothesis in his own mind, that immunisation was dangerous for small children. As the quote at the top of this page says, what his thinker thought, his prover proved, the thinker and the prover being the parts of his mind involved in belief. In order to prove what he thought to himself (in other words, so he could justify his hypothesis) my friend consulted anti-immunisation websites to confirm that he was right. Thinking that he was consulting proper scientific evidence, my friend was convinced that immunisation was linked to autism.
It turns out that this study was plagued with issues. For example, a study that includes only twelve subjects has huge room for error. Imagine if we did a study on country-wide financial well-being, then conducted it soley in the slums. The figures would not be accurate.
Secondly, it seems that the parents opinion carried more weight than accurate experiment. The dating of when symptoms surfaced was based on parental recall, which is notoriously unreliable.
Thirdly, Wakefield was found to have received 55,000 pounds from a group seeking evidence to use against vaccine manufacturers. (1)
Fourth, it was just plain bad science, and it was bad science that could lead directly to the death of children through non-immunisation. Wakefield’s research could not be repeated, and thus peer review was impossible.
If my friend had known a little about researching scientific studies, he would have been a little better informed.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine_controversy
Readers, I need your help. Here’s why.
Seriously. Help.
Friends don’t just blindly agree with friends. Friends (and enemies) will helpfully point out that the excellent argument categorically proven through impeccable reason and ruthless logic actually has a gaping wound in it’s left side through which a thousand unemployed net-surfers can poke fun at me and forever call this site theureacollective.net or some other equally hilarious play on words.
We all get smarter if we know where the holes are. Agreement keeps us all stupid. Even if you’re wrong, we all get a chance to think and extend our intelligence.
So. If you see I’m wrong, or you have an addition or alteration to make, go ahead! It’s easy! It even increases your sex drive! Unless your a Lady Gaga fan… sorry, there is no help for you.
What. The. Hell.
Here’s a great video on TED:
My favourite lines: “Coffee houses are where great ideas go to have sex.”
“Chance favours the connected.”
The more connected you are, the greater and more creative your network, the better you and your collective’s ideas will be.
I received an email in response to my intelligence blog, and within it there was a reference to how this person saw intelligence as an opposite to physical strength. I thought I might expand on my reply.
As I noted last blog in a ridiculous burst of wit and cleverality, intelligence is about being able to find a common ground for two previously unintroduced points to stand on.
The cool thing about intelligence as humans know it is that we have not only the intelligence of our minds, but of our bodies as well.
Of course, mind and body is the classic dualism. However, that seperation does not exist.
That’s right, you heard me. Tell me where the mind ends and the body begins, and I’ll hand you reams of evidence you can read till the end of time that will prove you wrong. Thoughts, emotions, even morality (1) is being shown to be nothing but chemical and electrical impulses in our physical brains.
Here’s the big idea though guys: Increasing your body intelligence increases your mind intelligence.
Every physical skill you learn and perform enhances your intelligence. You have naturally found solutions to problems through movement, and when that movement became perfected, it led you to still finer and more delicate modes of intelligence.
This was you. Remember?
The coolest part is that this intelligence often (and usually) informs us beyond the language level. It becomes a sort of intuition.
Let me give you a personal example.
Chess. Game of old Ukranian guys down at your local park, and stoners. I played chess semi-seriously for about a year or two. When I say semi-seriously, I mean that I read the occasional chess book, I played at least once a week, and I always played to win. Cos I’m a competitive bastard 
Spock would probably beat Deep Blue.
What I found was that after about six months or so my life became chess. I started thinking about my work, my play and my relationships in terms of tactics, defense, counter-attacks, and castling. It wasn’t an overt thing, I never consciously thought in these term. Rather, chess overlaid my everyday existence with a film of strategy.
So, I propose, does every sport at which one excels (or at least spends some amount of time performing). Chess is a particularly cerebral sport, sure, but I challenge you to imagine what being inside Roger Federer’s head would be like.
Or Messi’s.
If you have not seen this man play, you have not lived.
Or Marcusz Pudzianowski’s.
Or Kasparov’s.
To know a skill at such an incredible level… how does this inform their everyday existence? Think- sport to the elites is nothing but problem solving. To play respected opponents who continue to demand complex and sophisticated solutions from you for hours at a time… this demands unprecedented levels of intelligence. And this intelligence must undoubtedly appear in some way in their day-to-day lives.
References:
1. Functional Networks in Emotional Moral and Nonmoral Social Judgments; Jorge Moll,* Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza,* Ivanei E. Bramati,* and Jordan Grafman†; November 15, 2001; NeuroImage 16,
Yep, you read that right. They are human, flesh and blood, people like you and me.
Yet for some reason normally sane, rational people go into rapturous, trance-like states when given directives by their doctor.
Oh Tommy, our doctor did all this. For us! *sob*
Before I go any further, I want you to think of your job, your profession. Rank yourself at your job from one to ten, one being incontinent zombie, ten being multi-tasking buddha-god. Got it? Now imagine someone at your work you would rate as a one or two. Then, think of someone around a nine or ten.
Optimus Prime; not a doctor, but definitely a ten
Doctors. Everyone seems to think that all doctors are given a magic sausage at medical school, and when they eat it, they are wondrously bestowed with psychic and healing gifts that place them at somewhere between a seven and a twelve on the above ranking. And take note: I’m also talking about every kind of health care professional there is, physiotherapists, specialist surgeons, GPs, masseuses, acupuncturists… all of them.
If there WAS a sausage, this is probably it
But guess what?
They all have bad days where the kids have been playing up, the wife is being a bitch, the mortgage is grinding him down. Some of them only just scraped through their studies so they don’t know shit. Some have all the people skills of a sandcastle.
HEY! HEY YOU! DON'T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!
Sorry to break the news to you guys, but doctors are on the same ranking as everyone else. There are ones. There are nines. Possibly even tens. But the vast majority, I’m sad to say, are like the majority of us; threes to fives.
Moral of the story here? Don’t expect your doctor to make the right diagnosis. Don’t expect your doctor to be psychic. Don’t expect your doctor to prescribe the right medication or exercises for your condition. If something doesn’t feel good about the medication, inquire about it. Don’t take shit from your doctor, it’s your body. Don’t put so much pressure on your doctor to be an omniscient deity. And, Do Your Own Research.
