A recipie for happiness?

Nothing worth blogging about has happened in my life since my last post. Until now. And now I understand why. I have been too busy. Working too hard. Spending too little time thinking.

Of course, it was a TED-talk - this time from psychologist Shawn Achor - which made me think. My favourite quote from the talk probably is

Not just how to move people up to the average, but how to move the entire average up.

which he mentions while talking about how it’s the anomalies that are really worth studying and how that’s how you discover new things. In todays society, we often tend to focus on the normal and how to make everyone fit the same mold. The only problem with the normal is that is normal because it’s average. Think about it, most people say “I’m rather normal” which has a good ring to it, but how would it sound to say “I’m rather average” – quite a difference, right? Doesn’t sound very positive, does it? I don’t think many people would call themselves average, even though it basically means the same thing as normal.

The part of his talk which really got to me though was

First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades […] And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there.

Why did this get my attention? Well, for starters, it’s about education – my pet peeve – and secondly, I recognised myself completely in it. During my “higher education” in high school and at the university I felt a need to get good grades, really good grades. I never thought about why back then, it was just something you should do. Study hard to get a good future and then become happy, I guess.

The only problem was that it very quickly became meaningless. Achieving good grades, that is. It became mechanical. No feelings involved what so ever. Sure, it was… fun(?) to learn new things and the good grades became a tangible result of this, but it never made me feel successful. Never made me feel happy. Not then and not afterwards. It was just hard work and a lot of stress.

During his research, Shawn discovered the same thing while studying students at the prestigious Harvard university.

 And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.

Isn’t this sad and once again an example of how schools – even the “best” ones – absolutely kill creativity and take the fun out of learning?

So, why should we focus on becoming happy instead of just successful? Well, because it will allow us to “move the entire average up”.

Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you’re positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

“Having fun” just doesn’t make you happier, it also makes you smarter! That’s really amazing! The only problem for me, is his recipie for how to get there. How to become more positive and thus happier.

We’ve done these things in research now in every single company that I’ve worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they’re grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.

For a cynic like myself, this recipie sounds all too easy – like all those “Teach yourself X in 21 days” books – and something that might work for average people, but not for people who tend to think and analyse too much. People like myself. But I’ll give it a go, starting right now:

Three things I am grateful for today:

1. My wonderful 45 minute training session in the sun down at the beach close to where I live. Running barefoot 1 km to the beach and then playing(!) MovNat-style at the beach for about half an hour before running home again felt absolutely great. Thinking about it, natural exercise has similar effects to what Shawn is talking about. Playing on a beach is quite a different exercise compared to sitting in a machine in a gym.

2. Sitting in the sofa reading books with my three year old son.

3. Eating half a pack of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream.

Wow, wasn’t that hard. Will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes – a normal Monday at work where I will spend the whole afternoon looking at my watch in order to not forget about time and become late to pick up my son from kindergarten.

See you in 21 days!

 

Six ways to save the Internet

A former colleague of mine sent me a link to Roger McNamee‘s TED-talk “Six ways to save the internet”. In this talk from March 2011, Roger presents – in a very convincing and quite funny way – some of the big current tech trends.

I really liked the talk – especially the insights it gave me on commoditization of information and “content”.

Below I will reflect upon the six things he talked about:

- Windows is dying. Many of the new Internet connected devices use other operating systems like iOs (iPhone + iPad) and Android (smart phones, tablets, etc.). This is probably true, but how many people really care about operating systems? Not many. People care about what they can do with the devices and this is not really dependent on an OS since all/most OS:es contain more or less the same features.

- Index search has peaked. Traditional general search engines like Google are loosing ground to new specialised sites with search capabilities like Facebook, Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, Match.com, etc. Traditional index search has become “just another thing we do” – like word processing.

The reason for this, according to Roger, is the commoditization of information that Google (and others) are engaging in. A very obvious proof of this is that “the only logo showed on a Google search page is Google’s own”. Simply put, Google will now get a taste of their own medicine when users stop caring about who delivers their search results. Much like most of us really don’t care about which company that delivers electricity to our homes.

- Apps beat Web. In a boxing match with the web in the open source corner and Apple in the corporate/business corner, Roger means that Apple will win a Technical Knockout Victory since their technology allows the organisations, corporations and individuals who create “branded, thoughtful, value added, copyright protected content” to get paid. With Apple expected to sell 100 million closed Internet connected devices, they are indeed a formidable foe to the open alternatives.

- HTML5 changes it all. Roger means that HTML5 will be the true savior for all creative people who create content and who want to be economically compensated for it without selling their souls to Apple (or Adobe). The reason is that it will become easy to create a true immersive experience on the web – comparable to what you can do in an app – and that the creator will own and have full control of the content.

Personally, I think he is have a little too much hope for HTML5. Sure, it’s great that multimedia is finally standardised, but I’m not sure that Adobe’s Flash have been seen as a big hurdle for people who want to publish multimedia on the web.

Also, when the web finally gets true multimedia through HTML5, I think there is a big risk of starting a new browser war where each browser will claim they are the fastest for graphics, etc. That is, there will be no standard platform for developers to develop for – you will have to provide different content for different browsers since some won’t be fast enough.

- Tablets win big. Sure, iPads will make a big dent in the PC sales and it’s no surprise that both consumers and business people are taking the iPad to their hearts since it is the latest “cool thing”. However, it’s worth noting that the people that are buying iPads today will probably also buy the next “cool thing” of tomorrow. They are not a very loyal bunch.

Personally I have never been very impressed by tablets since they are as big as a laptop and therefore don’t fit into a normal pocket. Not a good choice for a mobile lifestyle. Choosing between a laptop and a tablet when you’re stationary – at home or at work for example – is also an easy choice for me as long as I need to type a lot. A traditional keyboard versus a virtual keyboard on a tablet really isn’t a choice for me.

- Social platforms set and the whole social thing is just a sideshow. Even though there are a lot of contenders around, Facebook really has won, Roger argues. If you want to build something social today, do it on top of Facebook. Probably true at least in the western world, but it’s also nice to hear that he realises that social is just a “feature” and not a platform.

I think “social” also is “just another thing we do” – like word processing. I’m not a Facebook user and have never understood what’s so great about it. All it lets you do is share stuff with your friends (status updates, pictures, gaming experiences, etc.) As often, I guess it’s just a matter of packaging – Facebook has packaged all this into a neat package and that’s what attracts users.

(Swedish) Podcast-intervju med Klarnas grundare

Nordic e-Commerce Forum intervjuar Klarnas grundare

Nordic E-Commerce Forum har släppt en ljudintervju med de tre grundarna och en av nyckelpersonerna bakom Klarna. För mig som älskar att höra sanna historier om hur framgångsrika företag, organisationer, etc. har startats och lyckats så såg jag fram emot att lyssna på den. Trots att jag egentligen tycker att Klarnas framgång inte är särskilt överraskande eftersom deras affärsmodell – kreditgivning – är svår att misslyckas med. Allt handlar om att vinna förtroende, vilket grundarna påpekar flera gånger, men när man tänker på det kanske det är den svåraste affärsmodellerna av alla?

Intervjun är välgjord och de intervjuade personerna bjuder förvånansvärt mycket på sig själva – både personligt och professionellt. Den största, men inte helt oväntade, besvikelsen är att både frågor och svar är alldeles för genomtänkta vilket gör att man får en känsla av marknadsföring. Det finns flera svar som verkligen bjuder in till fler frågor – frågor som skulle ge verklig insikt i bolaget och personerna bakom det – men då går man raskt vidare till nästa fråga i manuset. Lite tråkigt.

Det mest slående med Klarna är något som jag själv ofta glömmer bort: En enkel affärsidé baserad på enkel teknologi har mycket större chans att lyckas än affärsidéer som bygger på avancerad teknologi. Enklare uttryckt: Man behöver inte vara särskilt smart för att lyckas, det räcker ofta med att jobba hårt!

Nedan kommer en lite krass summering av vad Klarna erbjuder:

- Kredit. Konsumenter älskar att handla på kredit och detta faktum har åtskilliga banker, finansföretag, kreditkortsföretag, sms-låneföretag, etc. tjänat enorma summor på under flera decenniers eller till och med seklers tid. Reflektion: Verkar alltid finnas plats för nya spelare på den här marknaden, eller är det så att det upplevs som “för enkelt och för tråkigt” av de flesta entreprenörer att inte så många ger sig in i konkurrensen?

- Fakturor. Upplevs som säkra och bekväma eftersom man får dom tillsammans med varorna man har köpt och dessutom inte behöver betalas på en gång utan kan sparas till efter man fått lön. Att man se’n inte behöver leta fram sitt kreditkort när man genomför själva köpet är mycket smidigt. Att det sedan ofta kostar 40 kr extra för kunden verkar få bry sig om. Reflektion: Att folk är beredda att betala för smidighet är ingen överraskning i sig, men är ändå värt att poängtera! Folk betalar gladeligen för tjänster som Spotify bara(!) baserat på att dom är smidiga. Är man smidig behöver man varken vara bäst eller billigast.

Det mest givande jag fick ut ur dokumentären var en förklaring till varför Klarna anställer så många ingenjörer och utvecklare. Jag har nämligen aldrig förstått att det kan behövas så många för att göra det dom erbjuder. Skicka fakturor är inte direkt high tech och Klarnas webbgränssnitt är en klassisk web 1.0-lösning rakt igenom.

Hur som helst, Klarnas “rådgivare” på det legendariska riskkapitalbolaget Seqoia Capital avslöjade för Klarna att liknande företag som dom jobbar med normalt har 50% ingenjörer och utvecklare medan Klarna då låg runt 10%. Efter den kommentaren har Klarna jobbat sig upp mot 25% och gör allt dom kan för att öka andelen ytterligare.

Att Klarna som är skapat av tre killar från Handelshögskolan hellre anställde säljare än ingenjörer kanske inte kom som någon överraskning, men vad var det då som fick dom att ändra inställning? Jo, det Seqoia avslöjade var att man, för att verkligen kunna lyckas och kunna skala upp verksamheten, måste automatisera så många processer som möjligt och för detta krävs datorer och mjukvara, vilka i sin tur kräver IT-personal i form av systemadministratörer och utvecklare.

Att automatisering av företagsprocesser kräver utvecklare vet ju alla eftersom alla företag är unika och absolut inte kan använda standardtjänster och -program för sin verksamhet – alla företag måste självklart utveckla egna system!

Klarna har gjort en fantastisk resa och är byggt av tre unga killar (samtliga fyller 30 i år) som är kompisar från barndomen, vilket var tillräckligt som motivation för mig för att lyssna på dokumentären. Därför kan jag – trots kritiken ovan – rekommendera alla som är intresserade av entreprenörskap att lyssna på den. Frustration är ofta den bästa källan till inspiration av alla: “Va, kan man bli så framgångsrik på att göra något så enkelt?”

Glöm bara inte bort huvudbudskapet från intervjun: framgång kräver ofta att man arbetar riktigt mycket och hårt och är beredd att ta konsekvenserna av det: minimalt med tid till andra aktiviteter, minskad möjlighet att umgås med nära och kära och risken för utbrändhet. Samtliga självupplevda…

Is MovNat risking to become yet another system?

A colleague and fellow barefoot runner recently recommended me to read an interview with Erwan Le Corre – creator of MovNat – in Lotus-magazine, issue four. My colleague knows how much I like Erwan and his view on society as well as his ideas on how we can become better humans and build better societies by becoming more natural in the way we move and exercise, and how this can influence how we live our lives.

The interview is quite good since it really lets you feel how enthusiastic Erwan is about this topic and also how frustrated he is with the current state of affairs. This is one of the reasons for why I like Erwan – I like enthusiastic people!

For me, who have always loved to run jump and play - preferably outdoors - I agree wholeheartedly with his views on how most people exercise today. How unnatural it is to use machines to isolate specific muscle groups, run on treadmills inside a sweaty gym while watching tv, etc. Still, I also understand how these kind of activities can be really rewarding for some people. Working out at a gym can make you feel really good and can also give you a wonderful sense of achievement. However, I’m also quite sure that even if you ask the most enthusiastic gym people, they won’t tell you it’s fun. That’s sad.

If you want to find people who’ll tell you that the exercise they are doing is fun you have to look elsewhere. A playground full with young kids is probably the best place to start. You’ll probably hear laughter long before you see them and even though most of them will be sweaty when it’s time to go home none of them will even be aware of that they are exercising – they are just playing!

And the best thing, if their parents didn’t tell them it was time to go home, they would probably have stayed there a few hours more and after that they would have continued to another place to play even more – just to get some variety and new opportunities and challenges.

Erwan started MovNat in order to teach people how to move and use their bodies efficiently, but also how to have fun and play. I think this is a lovely thought and that it really can open up the eyes of some people, but at the same time I’m afraid that it is becoming yet another system since people love to categorise and label things. This is addressed in the interview and it’s obvious that Erwan is fighting against it, by trying to simplify what he does:

“We’re teaching you about efficiencies! We can’t reinvent the way you run—but we all share the same biomechanics and the same laws of physics, so the efficiencies are the same. We teach principles and techniques.”

One thing I am afraid of though is that MovNat is risking to become yet another system. A system with a manual - just like religions have their holy texts – which people will stick to and tell you things like: “No, this is not how we climb in MovNat – this is how you should do it”

This is not Erwans fault, it’s just how most people function. They want to learn something  and then rely on their new skills in order to accomplish something – climbing a tree for example. Learning skills is indeed very efficient, but unfortunately it misses the most important point – understanding how something works. Your body for example.

Another bad thing about just learning something opposed to understanding something is that it relies on memory and if you ever find yourself in a critical situation you might end up not remembering how to climb instead of just start climbing.

Learning skills can become a path to understanding things though. It can open up your eyes and make you realise that you are capable of doing much more than you thought possible. It can give you the self confidence to start experimenting and playing and those are the keys to start understanding something. Repetition is what will really make you understand something, but that will usually come naturally when you’re doing something fun.

Fun and repetition often explains why some people become extraordinary talented at something. World class skateboarders and soccer players for example often loved what they did when they were kids and tried to spend as much time doing them as they could – just because it was fun.

They often also started out by playing alone, which made them understand how they and their bodies – in their own unique way – function and interact with the, say, skateboard or soccer ball. When you have reached a basic - true - level of understanding it is probably beneficial to start spending time with other people though to get new influences and insights which you can apply to yourself and your own body.

I think this is similar to what animals do and why they become so good at what they do. When they are young they play all day long and have a lot of fun doing it. What separates animals from humans though is that, even though they don’t play (as much) when they get older, they continue applying the experiences they gained as children in their everyday lives.

Mostly in order to survive but also to live a good life – being able to climb a tree to get a nice fruit just because it tastes great for example.  This means that they will continue gaining experiences during their whole lives, becoming true masters of what they do.

We humans more or less stop engaging in physical playing after a certain age only to discover a few years later that our bodies have started to deteriorate and loose function. That’s when we hit the gym or force ourselves to run to get into shape.

I think we – as a society – should try to encourage people to play and have fun doing physical activities for our whole lives. Build more playgrounds. Introduce interactive architecture in the cities which lets you go from point A to B in more than one – obvious – way. Add cool equipment to offices which lets people play a little why standing waiting for the paper to come out of the printer or while going through a long corridor to a meeting. Why not schedule more meetings outdoors? Build a playground on the roof of every office building perhaps?

The best thing of all though is to encourage people to start using their imagination – then anything can become a playground and everything you do can be turned into a game!

Have fun living your life!

What’s all this education good for, anyway?

Education is one of my favourite subjects, both in life and in this blog. At least in the broader sense of the word, that is, how we teach people (especially children) the things they need to know. I’m also interested in what things we consider important enough to teach, but lately I have also begun to think about why we need all this education.

Why is it so important that every kid in the world should get a “good education” and what is a good education?

Teaching children the basic things they need to survive – watch out for snakes and cars, don’t eat poisonous plants, etc. – is good, but most children will know (but probably not understand) this long before entering school where the real education is supposed to start.

Teaching children how to behave in a social environment is probably also wise since humans are social animals and our societies are built around this fact. Even here, at this early step, it starts to get complicated though. Different cultures have different rules and recommendations on how to behave and even though most cultures teach children not to steal or hurt other people, our societies are full of thieves and murderers.

That even this basic education of how to behave against other human beings seems to fail is a sign of that something is very wrong with the way we teach. I think that the basic problem with education – on all levels – is that we focus on teaching rules and “facts”, forcing people to accept and memorize things instead of exploring and really understanding them. They will know a lot but understand very little.

Another example of how education seems to fail is that a most people (even those who have studied several years at a university) know that outside of the academical world, a degree from an university isn’t worth very much. A degree is often seen more as a proof of that the person is capable of taking in a lot of information and process it (often by memorizing it) in a way that allows them to pass an exam than a proof of that this persons understands something. Depressing.

So what can we do to improve the situation? What and how should we teach (our children) and, most importantly, why? Below I will reflect upon a few of the basic building blocks we use for education; reading, writing and math.

Reading

Everyone seems to agree on that all people should be able to read. When you ask them why, a common answer is that it’s required for further education. Sounds logical, but really is a kind of a circular argument, since it assumes that a) everyone needs further education and b) further education requires reading skills.

In our modern world with audio and video being streamed effortlessly over the Internet, you no longer need to be able to read to learn new stuff. Also, most people prefer listening to a human instead of reading a lot of text. Reading might be required for finding stuff though since most search tools are text based, so that’s probably a better argument.

Also, since most information still is available in written form, reading will probably be good to know for quite some time. This argument needs to be re-evaluated regularly as the information landscape changes, though.

A much more abstract argument for reading is that it can trigger your imagination in a different way than audio and video can; it leaves a lot more room for interpretation. Novels are good example of this. Strangely enough, written text is at the same time considered much more exact and formal, leaving very little room for interpretation. Law books and religious texts are example of this.

Writing

Why should humans be able to write? If you have something you want to communicate you can do it much more efficiently by using speech, body language, images, audio and video.

What about road signs, warning signs, and other important information published in our societies? Well, with gps and other technology they are becoming less important. With better user interfaces (not just for software) they will become even less important. Making it impossible to do something is much more efficient than writing text warning against it. Also, the best warning signs often use images rather than text.

Perhaps the best current day examples of why it’s useful to be able to write are: texting on mobile phones, updating status messages on facebook and twittering. These are very efficient ways of communicating, but another important fact is that they are completely silent. Writing lets you communicate efficiently and silently without disturbing the people around you.

Math

Most kids starting school question their teachers on why they need to learn math. Unfortunately most teachers don’t have a good answer to this question and often resort to learned responses like “It will help you in life so you won’t get fooled when doing business”.

Even though this sounds nice and important, I’m afraid math knowledge won’t help you from being fooled by people who want to fool you. Street smartness will probably get you much further than math when it comes to not being fooled. Also, teaching a few efficient defence mechanisms would be much more worthful.

The strongest argument for math, I think, is that it can help us understand and predict things, which can be very important.

Summary

I find it hard to find really strong objective arguments for why everyone needs to be able to read, write and understand basic math. The best answer for why we teach it seems to be that our current education system is based on these skills but what if we can build a much better system based on human interaction (for example through audio and video) instead?

I think we have to start by trying to answer the question of why we need education, because the education we do today (reading, writing, math) seems to exist for the sole purpose of acquiring more education.

Harnessing the power of people’s spare time

From the time I was a small kid up to the point I got a kid of my own 2,5 years ago I had enormous amounts of spare time. I’m talking four to eight hours every day, sometimes more! During some periods in my life I actually had a hard time spending it all, but at least always tried to find something worthwhile to do before resorting to “wasting” it doing something “meaningless”.

Today, when seeing something really impressive but rather “meaningless” where it’s obvious that the person has invested an enormous amount of spare time into it, I often say things like “Wow, this person obviously has too much spare time (for their own good)!”

It almost seems as if I already have forgotten about the enormous amounts of time I myself spent on things which most people judged as “meaningless”.

However, what I actually mean when I say that someone has too much spare time is: ”Imagine if this person had invested the same amount of time and energy into something more meaningful (for more people than him or herself).”

Who am I to judge what’s meaningful? Well, I don’t actually mean that they should have done something completely different, but perhaps just done a slight variation of what they did. Something that could have been of greater value too more people but still just as – or even more – fun and rewarding for them. Then, instead of just being impressed by their work, we could have benefited from it!

The greatest thing of all though is the viral-like inspirational power of such work; people will realise that they too could accomplish things like this in their spare time. And if they do, they would inspire people in their turn, etc.

A few examples of spare time activities which might be possible to make more meaningful, by harnessing the power of people’s spare time:

- freddiew on YouTube. This super creative and very skilled guy has created a large number of short films packed with cool visual effects. By watching the movies it’s obvious that he and his friends have had a great time doing these, but it is also obvious that they have invested an enormous amount of time into doing them. And probably also a reasonable amount of money.

Imagine challenging him with doing something really hard! Perhaps produce a film which conveys some important message to young people in a very convincing – and fun! – way. Imagine what he could come up with and compare that to the rather lame attempts of such films that already exist.

- World of Warcraft. I have no idea how many thousands, millions, billions or even trillions of hours of spare time are spent every year by the 12 million people playing this game. It’s also claimed that their own player-driven WoWWiki is the second largest wiki in the world (after Wikipedia of course).

Imagine if we somehow could tap into this almost endless resource of spare time and direct all the hard work people put into this game towards something more meaningful. It’s of course very important to keep the social, fun and exciting parts of the experience for the players, since that’s the reason for why the spend so much time in the game.

- Facebook. How many hours do the 500 million users spend here per day? Could that time be directed towards something slightly more meaningful?

- “Silly” movies, pictures, etc. A lot of time, energy and creativity are spent by people creating “silly” stuff which of course can be very entertaining to a large amount of people, but I’m not sure about all the copy cats which are bound to emerge afterwards.

The point I’m trying to make here is, with a little direction people would probably be happy to contribute their time towards more meaningful activities instead of “wasting” their time doing things which have already been done or doesn’t lead anywhere.

I think most people would find it just as – or even more – fun and rewarding to contribute to something “real”. Especially if they would get more or less instant feedback on their work.

One such very powerful example is presented in Clay Shirk’s TED-talk How cognitive surplus will change the world, but he also speaks about the mechanics behind this.

A more business oriented example of how to tap into (kids) spare time is given in Cameron Herold’s TED-talk Let’s raise kids to be entrepreneurs.

A related and life changing example is given in Charles Leadbeater’s TED-talk Education innovation in the slums, where he wonders what it takes for a 16 year old drug dealer making truck loads of money in the slums of Brazil to start doing something more creative with his life. This talk covers a lot more than this, though and is therefore a very worthwhile way to spend some of your spare time!

More tales from a TED-addict…

Ali Carr-Chellman: Gaming to re-engage boys in learning

For me who have a 2,5 year old son, this talk really caught my attention. As most of you who are following my blog know by know I’m also quite worried about the current school system and the way we educate young people in our society.

Since this talk manages to combine two of my favorite subjects; education and computer games (technology) I was a bit afraid that Ali would be preaching to the choir (me), but she actually managed to surprise me a few times!

The underlying message is very scary; that young boys early on in life get the feeling that school is not a place for them since almost all the teachers in kindergarten and elementary school are female. Ali also touches on the subject of the “ADHD epidemic” where kids who like to run around and play instead of sitting down at a desk reading quickly are diagnosed to have some kind of problem. Insane…

That one possible solution to this problem involves computer games of course warms my heart.

Eben Bayer: Are mushrooms the new plastic?

Taming mushrooms to build physical objects which in many cases can replace the plastic objects we use today is a totally brilliant idea. What’s really impressive is that this research already has come so far that some of these fungus objects already are in commercial use!

Fabian Hemmert: The shape-shifting future of the mobile phone

Cool user interfaces are really… well, cool! In this talk Fabian presents a possible tactile future for mobile phones, but instead of you touching the phone the phone will touch you. Very creative!

Imagine all the cool stuff  you could do with this. (Sorry for the overuse of the word “cool” in this post.)

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization

“Data is the new oil…the kind of ubiquitous resource that we can shape to provide new innovations and new insights”

I’m really into visualization since I think it can greatly enhance understanding of complex things, but also since it can augment reality in a very powerful way.

What first got me started on visualization were these video overlays used to compare the current downhill skiers performance with the current leader’s performance. Compare this  to a boring +/- time difference displayed in the corner of the picture.

During a lunch with friends today we briefly discussed that there is too much data mining going on right now and that data mining has become a boring business tool. Almost as boring as oil. Businesses often bend amazing technology into something amazingly boring, but we must not forget that the amazing technology doesn’t go away because of this. There will always be room for incredibly creative uses for the technology – you just have to look beyond the obvious business applications.

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world

Seth gives a few powerful examples of how game dynamics are used in the real world, but also points out how incredibly crude and simple these “games” are compared to computer games.

Since we humans really seem to like computer games and very easily can get addicted to them, he makes a case for how game dynamics can be used to influence (manipulate?) people to accomplish more in life or make boring things more fun. Education for example!

Talk about untapped potential…

Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves

New ways to interact with computers always interest me, since I think the current state of the art is quite far from optimal to say the least. Brainwave experiments have been around for quite some time and so far all the demonstrations I have seen have been extremely boring and disappointing.

The new cheap wireless device demonstrated in this talk is really impressive though. With just a few seconds of tuning the machine to your brainwaves, it allows you to perform quite complex tasks on the computer. It even makes it possible for the computer to detect your facial expression, if you’re smiling or not, etc.

Very promising indeed.

Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”

“Personalisation” may sound like a great idea, but when it becomes to ubiquitous it turns into a dangerous idea. It’s like being surrounded by people who always agree with you. You will never get any new influences in life and your thoughts will never be challenged.

In his very engaging talk, Eli paints a rather gloom picture of the current state of the Internet where Facebook and Google only serves us information we want to see.

Something to beware indeed so let’s hope the big web companies present in the audience listened to his valuable advice…