Euphoria in a single stroke

For many people a stroke means death, permanent paralysis, loss of speech or living inside a body cut off from the world of other humans. But for neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor it was ringside seat for research into euphoria.

It all began one morning when a blood vessel burst in her brain and developed into a clot as big as a golf ball, which pressed on her speech centres. What started out as a life threatening, excruciatingly scary but curiously euphoric moment became an opportunity to relate theory to practice.

At TED, Jill Bolte Taylor demonstrates we each have two clearly separate brains by showing us a real but deceased brain complete with several feet of spinal cord.

The "separateness" of the two brains is visually astonishing. Most of us just accept the seamless one-ness of our brains. But Jill Bolte Taylor explains that each brain has it's own personality and unique way of engaging with the world. Serial left and parallel right, joined together by 300 million nerve fibres across the corpus callosum and connected to our bodies via the central nervous system.

In a sense we are "energy beings" says Jill Bolte Taylor. The left hemisphere of the brain tends to define us as a unique individual - an unconscious automatic "I"-ness. The right hemisphere tends to connect us consciously to the universe in an integrated "we-ness".

The right engages with the world through pictures, sounds, tastes, smells and touch. It's the sense-making lobe that makes meaning from the constant stream of energy that floods into our senses.

The left works with language, symbols and signs. It busily organizes, categorizes and sequences activity. It is a successive processor that performs speech or motor actions for us, so we don't have to think about it.

With her language out of action Jill discovered she could not express or understand any words. The spoken word sounded like her Labrador, "woo woo woo woo" and when she tried to speak, the words came out the same way. She also struggled to recognize the printed word and numbers, so dialing a telephone number to get help became an almost impossible task.

Unhampered by the filters, rules and limitations imposed by the left hemisphere, she became overwhelmed by the energy that flowed into her brain, which hurt at first, but developed into feelings of euphoria and a sense of one-ness with the universe.

Here are some questions and activities to explore the world that Jill Bolte Taylor discovered:

1. Thought experiment one: Imagine you only have a left hemisphere brain. What would like be like if you had just a simultaneous "we" cognitive processor? No pattern detector. No processor to interpret incoming sounds, visual images, touch sensations, tastes etc.
2. Thought experiment two: Imagine you only have a right hemisphere brain. What would like be like if you had just a successive "I" cognitive processor? No categorizer. No sequences of new complex actions.
3. What is it about serial cognitive processing, categorizing etc, that might help us define us as individuals - our "I"?
4. What is it about simultaneous processing, sense making, seeing patterns etc, that helps define us as part of the whole - our "We"?
5. The brain features successive and simultaneous process. What other parts of the human body functions feature interdependent pairs. Make a list and explain how do they work together e.g. lungs, breathing in and breathing out.
6. How could you switch off one side of your brain to focus on the kind of thinking performed by the other hemisphere?
7. If you could spend more time exploring the "we"-ness of the right hemisphere of your brain, what journeys of discovery might you want to pursue?
8. Based on Jill Bolte's unintended "experiment", what is Nirvana?
9. How might Near Death Experiences be explained by Jill Bolte's "experiment"?
10. How might we more powerfully connect our inner and outer worlds?
11. What can we learn from reverse-engineering the integrated whole systems approach of our brains to better manage/control/deal with interdependent pairs of activities in our lives that we often consider unique/separate e.g. cost and quality, centralized and decentralized, incremental and transformational innovation?

Real Hyperreality

Thank you Umberto Eco for the word Hyperreality for this is what you experience when you watch this TED Talk. How some works of art can become larger and more "real" than the original.

Adrian Hohler and Basil Jones of Handspring Productions show us how to breathe life into a dead object - a puppet - so the character is larger than life.

They present two of their creations, both feats of "emotional engineering" - a puppet horse that has starring roles in the London and New York productions of War Horse and its ancestor, a hyena created for a 1995 Handspring production of "Faustus in Africa", to play draughts with Helen of Troy.

War Horse is a play based on a book of the same name by Michael Morpugo, about a young boy who falls in love with horse that is conscripted into World War I. He joins up to be reunited with his horse. On stage there are several horses, each with riders aboard, that collectively create the power and danger of a cavalry charge.


They explain that while "an actor struggles to die onstage", "a puppet has to struggle to live" and that this is "a metaphor for life".

Three puppeteers control the Joey the horse, two inside one who manipulates the tail and the other the breathing with his knees, and one who controls the head. All three puppeteers contribute to a whinny or other sounds the horse makes.

Joey's tail flicks, his ears point in different directions which is an emotional indicator of the horse, his chest heaves with breathing, he stamps his feet, gallops, rears up. It is all very convincing.

So here is a workshop to explore some of the issues Handspring raise:

1. In what ways is the hyena the ancestor of the horse? What could we learn from Handspring's process of invention/innovation?
2. If puppets are "emotional engineering" what are the features? How does the engineering relate to the emotions?
3. What is it about the horse puppet that is so mesmerizing?
4. Why do you think the puppeteers seem to disappear from view?
5. Choose from this list and describe how you might think like/act like it. Photon of light, the moon, a spider, an unborn baby, a neuron in your brain, an elephant, the wind, a cuckoo clock.
6. Make a list of unusual objects, people, creatures, etc. that it might be interesting thing to imagine thinking like/acting like. Choose one and describe how you would think or act if you were this.
7. Describe the differences between a puppet and a robot? A puppet and an animation.
8. What could it mean that "an actor struggles to die onstage, but a puppet has to struggle to live." And how is this a metaphor for life?
9. Explain how puppetry is a fusion of technology and art. What helps makes the horse puppets come alive? And how is this related to how artists interpret our world?
10. How could a horse puppet seem more real than real? How could we apply this to other human activities? e.g. product design, leadership .
11. What other art forms are a fusion of technology and art? Make a list of the tool that are used for example in opera, dance, or sculpture and then explain the rules of use of the tool e.g. chisel is used by a sculptor to remove excess stone to reveal a figure inside that previously only existed in the imagination.

Eco, U. (1967, 1986) Travels in Hyperreality. Orlando: Harcourt.

Designer as "change agent"

Paola Antonelli, a curator at MoMa, the New York Museum of Modern Art, discovered at a early age that relationships with objects were easier than with people. And so began a love affair with things.

Throughout her life she has tried to discover what is happening in the world and make the patterns explicit so others can benefit from the knowledge. 

In her role as a curator she is a "knowledge creator". Picking the trends. Suggesting better designs for a better life. Pointing towards the possibilities of low cost affordable designs, not just decoration.

Antonelli regards designers as mavericks who build bridges across the boundaries of ideas, a unique fusion or  confluence of the economic, the social, the cultural, the aesthetic and the scientific, where the result is greater than the sum of the parts. Each design makes some kind of point about what has gone before or amuses us, because it shows us the stupidity or quirkiness of past ideas that seemed a good idea at the time.

She thinks of heaven as "satisifed curiosity", a really comfortable cloud where design dreams are fulfilled. Some of the best designs are "humble masterpieces" where you discover the extraordinary in the ordinary, or even iconic, so that the design points the way to a new and better future.

She argues that designers are "agents of change" increasingly focused on inventing new ways for people to do things. So we behave differently. Remember to take our medicine. Interact more personally and joyfully. Or learn from our mistakes. It's all a kind of "civil disobedience".

Her next show will be about the intersection of science and design, our concerns and issues that design in a partnership with science csn solve, and point us in new directions.

1. Heaven is "satisfied curiosity" for Paola Antonelli. What is heaven for you?

2. If you could create a "humble masterpiece", your own private collection of extraordinary arrangements of ordinary objects, what would it be?

3. In what ways can design make a point? Or show a sense of humor?

4. If Spaniards invented the mop, Italians the pizza and Kentuckians moonshine, what iconic form was invented in your part of the world and why might that be important to you? 

5. As a designer, in what ways are you a maverick, and you pretend something never existed before, or what you create will change what people do?

6. Choose an artfect your wish to redesign. Brainstorm some new scientific aspects (materials e.g. buckbyalls, biomimicry), social aspects (emerging trends in what it means to be human, e.g. brain plasticity), economic aspects (emerging values, eg, wise application of knowledge, sustainability) and aesthetic stuff,(emergent styles, e.g, glamor at every pricepoint). And combine them all into a new idea.

7. What is the difference between design and decoration? Give examples.

8. Think of a big unsolved problem and an extreme means by which you may need to solve it. What "suit for civil disobedience" could you could employ to cause people to engage with you?

9. What could you design that has no real immediate purpose, that just seems a good idea at the time e.g a chair that protects you against radiation.

Simplicity Rules

John Maeda is the author of "The Laws of Simplicity" and founder of the Simplicity Consortium at MIT which  develops new methods and technologies in healthcare, play and communication built on these principles.

He works at the intersection of art and computing and is reponsible for much of the graphics "eye candy" that we find on the Internet today.



He wrote the book as a Simplicity 101 to help people in business, technology, design and life create simpler and better design solutions.

Here's a workshop based on his 10 laws you can use to design/develop/conceive of an artefact, product, method, procedure, service or way of seeing or being in the world.

Start with a design challenge: a product that is in need to thoughtful redesign, and follow these steps:

DESIGN CHALLENGE - What is the product, service, method or procedure that you would like to redesign? Describe it in great detail, its' features, what it does, how it does it, how it gives the customer some greater power, capability or usefulness, and what is its intent.
USER FEEDBACK - What have we learned from the customer about their experience of the product, service, method or procedure? What do they like about it? How do they feel it could be improved?
REDUCE - What can we do to thoughtfully reduce e.g. fewer buttons, shrink in size and complexity, hide some functions, embody the hidden value?
ORGANIZE - What goes with what, so the many appear fewer, or can be incorporated into a single or simpler controls, display, switch, suite of functions etc? Sort into categories, and simplify. Squint to see the forest for the trees.
TIME - How can we shrink time, or make the wait shorter, seem shorter or more tolerable? How do you inform progress?
LEARN - What metaphor could we employ so the artefact makes sense to the user by connecting to their lives, feels like they have seen it before, make a connection to a new capability, then work out how to do it themeslves? e.g. desktop giving access to folders and programs.
DIFFERENCES - In what other ways can we make the complex simple and use the emergent simplicity to enable more complexity?
CONTEXT - What's the appropriate balance between attention/focus and expansion/connection? How can it be more attuned/connected to the context?
EMOTION - What must be done to give the artefact a "life force" of its' own? Animate it, bring it alive, to which there can be an emotional connection/attachment? And for it's "being" be clearer and more meaningful, to achieve a greater return on emotion?
TRUST - In what ways can your design "think" for the user so they develop trust in and appreciation for what happens, so there is no need for an undone? But also that can be undone?
FAILURE - If, after "subtracting the obvious" and "adding the meaningful", it did not work out, what can you learn from the exeprience?
THE ONE - If all else has failed, how can you "move it far far AWAY" so more seems less, OR make it OPEN, so the power of the many outweighs the power of the few OR use less to gain more POWER, for example an in-built power source.

Maeda, J. (2006). The Laws of Simplicity. MIT Press: Cambridge

In memory of Benoit Mandelbrot

The king of "roughness" departed the physical world on the 14th October, 2010, but our memory of him lives on in the name of a spectacular example of self-similarity at every scale, the Mandelbrot set.

The Mandelbrot set which honors his work (which can be expressed as z² + c, where Z is a complex number e.g. the square root of -1) exhibits patterns of dazzling complexity at ever greater magnifications, all the way to infinity.

Benoit Mandelbroit discovered order in the apparent messiness of life. He shows how a cauliflower is both simple and complex all at the same time. When you cut off one of the floreats, you find it is composed of many more smaller floreats, that are essentially the same design. And if you cut off one of those floreats, and look closer, you discover many smaller floreats, again similar to the larger floreat.

Self-similarity or fractal order is a field of mathematics which Mandelbrot helped develop and popularize. Simple rules describe natural features or artefacts of great complexity. The ruggedness of mountains. The branching of arteries. The growth of neurons. The shapes of rivers. The leaves of ferns.



He discovered that self-similarity, where simple patterns are repeated infinitely,  can explain complex data sets such as stock prices and non-smooth objects such as clouds and coastlines. His work grew out of a field of mathematics - Julia sets - which was once regarded a mere curiosity with little practical use.

So what if you were able to apply fractals to psychology and sociology.

Here is a workshop to think "fractally" to discover the simple rules in the complex, and develop the complex from the simple:

1. Brainstorm a list of all the artefacts, natural features, processes, etc. you can think of that are self-similar at every scale, e.g. like cauliflower floreats
2. Choose one artefact, natural feature, process or method from your list and describe how it is fractal, self-similar at every scale and how the generation of smaller or larger versions follow the same simple rules.
3. Fractals in discourse - Choose a problem to be solved. Write down three solutions. Discuss with a pair, and combine your two sets of ideas, into a single set of three ideas. Meet with two other people and combine your six ideas into three. Repeat the entire group has generated just three fantastic ideas.
4. Create a new fractal decision/learning game. Create a new set of discussion rules similar to the Fractals in discourse
5. Fractal leadership. Craft a set of three rules for how you will expect to be led by others to maximise your support and engagement.
6. Connecting with others. Craft a set of 2-5 simple rules for successfully engaging with others so they feel a close connection. Describe how the rule applies in relation to a wife/husband/partner, sister/brother, friend/enemy, family group, work team, community, organization, nation.
7. Finding the fractals in new relationships. Look back over your life and think about the people, groups, organizations and communities you know or have known or joined with. What are the rules for maintaining long term relationships? What are the rules for losing connections?
8. New concepts. You have been given the task of creating a wisdom age ecology of new products and services. Looking back over the Hunter-Gatherer, Agricultural, Industrial, Information and Knowledge eras, what are the simple rules for generating whole/integrated ecologies of products/services/jobs at each scale?

Blinded by our preconceptions

When Hans Rosling taught a global development class comprising some of Sweden's brightest students at the Karolinska Institute, a medical university, he was surprised to discover they knew less than he thought they did.

He found that what the medical students knew already - their preconceptions - caused them to make bigger mistakes than if they knew nothing whatsoever about the subject.

When the students were asked to choose between five matched pairs of countries, where one had twice the infant mortality of the other, they got it right just 1.8 times out of five, which is worse than chance. Chimpanzees could have done better.



He also tested his fellow Nobel-prize winning university professors. They performed better than the students, but no better than the chimpanzees.

Rosling uses the Gap Minder software program he developed to illustrate the dramatic improvements in infant survival that have occurred in the past 50 years. With smaller families, even in the developed nations, infant mortality in many countries has declined dramatically.

He goes on to show how social change, including health outcomes, comes first, ahead of economic development contrary to conventional wisdom which considers that economic change comes before social change.

Here's a workshop to explore some of Rosling's findings:

1. Give examples of some pre-conceptions/assumptions that you have made about people/things which were wildly off the mark when you finally found out what was really going on.
2. Give examples of common cultural pre-conceptions/assumptions that people from other countries mistakingly hold about you.
3. Now choose a country about which you know little, e.g. India, China, Indonesia, Brazil. Make some guesses about the differences between your countries, with a focus on lifespan, annual average income, population, climate, main exports, attitides and check Wikipedia to see how much you knew.
4. Brainstorm some surprising facts you know about some countries. e.g.  3.2 million US citizens are incarcerated which would translate into 360,000 Australians instead of just 24,000. One in three Indians is middle class. 92% of Australians regard themselves as middle class, only 42% of Americans feel the same.
5. Choose one fact from Question 4 and describe the consequences. Respond like this Fact: consequences.
6. Here are some changes that are taking place in the world. What might be the consequences? In China, children have no sisters or brothers, aunts or uncles. By 2015 45% of all jobs in the USA will require conversation or negotiation skills, yet schools teach critical thinking as an individual activity.
7. Thinking about an economically under-developed part of the world, including parts of rich countries, what kinds of social changes might "change-the-game" sufficiently to engender new economic development.
8. What fundamental social change could transform your community for the better? And what new economic activities could leverage off that?

Haunting music from everyday objects

Circus composer Sxip Shirey takes us back to our musical roots as a species. He shows how mysteriously beautiful and haunting music can be created using everyday objects and body parts.



In this clip, Sxip enrolls the help of an assistant.  With their lips almost locked together, they jointly create an extraordinary musical moment. Rhythmic collective heavy breathing morphs into an orgasmic delight, that should inspire others to explore new dating rituals. A kind of musical mating, at the confluence of "ecstatic melodies" "imaginable sounds" and "deep sexy beats".

Kissing will never be the same.

So here's some workshop activities to see how you might make music using whatever you have on hand...maybe even that will do.

1. Brainstorm a list of body parts and everyday objects you could use to create "ecstatic melodies, unimaginable sounds and deep sexy beats".
2. Choose your everyday object/body part "instrument", describe how you could play it, the kind of music it will produce, and how it will sound.
3. Demonstrate your new musical instrument to others, and after each person does their stuff, brainstorm some ideas about how you could expand the use of the instrument, or create an intriguing/dazzling/wierd couple of bars, a motif, a crescendo, a coda etc.