(Source: Spotify)
Our lowest level of hell is embarrassment from being deemed uncool. When did we begin to worship this false god: the God of Cool? The God of Cool forbids spontaneity, silliness and innocence. He encourages snickering not belly laughter, he allows crotch grinding, and ass-shaking but not the smooth arm extended glide of romance - romance is patronized, smiles must be condescending and arrogance is encouraged. What an evil god the God of Cool is.
Transcendence
I’ve been thinking a lot about transcendence lately. This talk by Jonathan Haidt at TED helped me view of transcendence not in terms of a religious experience, but simply as the desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
In this sense religion is one way to seek transcendence, perhaps the most obvious way; this could be why we’re seeing a resurgence of religion in young people. We can achieve transcendence in other ways too, by fighting wars, by making things, by espousing a principle.
Two talks that have been very thought provoking for me this year are Wilson Miner talking about the lasting effects of our work, and Brett Victor on ‘Inventing on Principle’. These are both great talks on their own, but they also provide a perspective on the work we do as designers and developers. We make software as our own work that we do for our own purposes, but there are also greater causes that we are all working towards together.
I visited Project West Wind over Easter weekend. I love the apparent simplicity of Wind Turbines, you can practically see the electricity being generated as the turbines spin. If only we could solve the storage issues then we could run the whole country on Wind. Even now, we have the technology to run on only wind and hydro.
According to Wikipedia, as of 2010 New Zealands electricity is 74% renewable. 42% of our total electricity comes from Hydro and less than 3% from Wind. Project West Wind is the second largest wind farm in New Zealand and produces enough electricity for 71,000 homes.
We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
—
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964
I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote since seeing Wilson Miner speak at Webstock 2012.
We get to choose the things we own and to some extent, the things we use. Choosing these things is equivalent to shaping our tools. Thereafter our tools shape us.
I bought a car and now I find myself driving when I could be walking. I bought an iPhone and thanks to the Maps application I’m no longer afraid of getting lost. I downloaded the Facebook app on my iPhone and now I find myself checking Facebook when I’m out with friends.
If every thing we choose to own is going to have an effect on us then we should be very selective about what we choose.
I did the Terrace Tunnel walkthrough a couple of weeks ago and it looks to be a big improvement. Highlights: the exposed ceiling (I love seeing the full arch of the tunnel and it also makes the space much bigger), limited yellow cladding (a lot easier to clean)
Finding only the absolutely essential features that are required for something as complex as blogging takes a lot of work. For something like this, to paraphrase Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the design is finished not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
— Dustin Curtis on Svbtle
How incentives saved Darwin’s man-eating crocodiles
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to attend a post-conference dinner at Crocodylus Park in Darwin, Australia. We ate outdoors surrounded by over a thousand crocodiles while Grahame Webb, the founder of the park, spoke to us about his work saving the crocodiles from extinction.
My favourite solutions involve aligning incentives to achieve the desired result, and the story of Darwin’s crocodiles is a good one.
Saltwater Crocodiles are reasonably common around Darwin, and they’re dangerous. They grow up to 5 metres long, can weigh up to half a tonne and eat people. Not regularly, but it happens. At a visitor centre in Darwin I flicked through a folder of news clippings on crocodile attacks, reassuringly the attacks are uncommon enough to be newsworthy.
Since their arrival in Australia the settlers hunted crocodiles for their skins, their meat, and because they were a threat to people and livestock. By 1973 the crocodile population was in danger and the focus switched from hunting crocodiles to helping then survive as a species.
However by 1980 the crocodiles were doing too well. The wild population was thriving and during 1979-80 there were four serious attacks on humans by crocodiles, two of which were fatal.
While conservationists were patting themselves on the back for saving the crocodiles from extinction, the general population was increasingly unhappy with the growing population. There were calls to start hunting crocodiles again.
At this point saving the crocodiles became a matter of convincing the community not to kill them all.
The proposed solution was to make the crocodiles as environmentally valuable to the community as possible, such that the economic value of the crocodiles would outweigh the threat they posed.
To the chagrin of many conservationists Webb turned is efforts to finding ways to derive economic value from the crocodiles. That’s how Crocodylus Park came to be. It’s not the only one, we drove past other crocodile farms .
“If the public valued crocodiles for economic reasons, added to their other values, there was public support for their ongoing recovery.” - Grahame Webb
During my trip to Darwin the town was flooded with people. University students partying after exams. Tourists from around the country enjoying the school holidays. The came for the mild weather, the national parks, and the crocs.
How Club Penguin teaches charity
Yesterday I heard Lance Priebe, the co-founder of Club Penguin speak at AnimFX 2011. I was looking forward to his talk because Club Penguin is kind of a big deal. It’s a safe virtual world where children can play games and chat with each other. With over 150 million users between the ages of 6 and 14 it’s the most popular child oriented site around. Ask any 10 year old and chances are they’ll be able to tell you all about Club Penguin.
The whole story of Lance told of growing Club Penguin from a side project to an acquisition by Disney was remarkable, but the highlight for me was hearing about their Coins for Change program.
In Club Penguin kids earn coins by playing games, and then they can spend those coins on stuff like clothes for their penguin and decorations for their igloo. Each year when Christmas comes around, the kids are given a choice: they can buy themselves presents with their hard earned coins, or they can donate them by throwing them in a well. This is Coins for Change.
Every year Club Penguin produces a video showing what happens to the coins. You see the coins fall down the well (which looks more like a cauldron) and travel through an underground pipe until the pipe surfaces in Africa. The coins fly out of the pipe and into the hands of African children (at this point we switch from cartoon animation to video footage).
In halting english, the African children explain the impact that the coins donated by Club Penguin members has had on their lives. They show off the schools and playgrounds that have been built, and they say thank you, a lot. Watch the 2010 Coins for Change video here. This is the reward for donating.
Last year Club Penguin members donated over 12 billion coins, or about one million US dollars. That represents the decisions of millions of children around the world to forgo a new igloo decoration and donate to charity instead.
It will be a few years before Club Penguin’s users face decisions like this in real life but through their penguins they’re already learning how charity fits into their lives and how rewarding it can be to donate.
