Mutual dependence or slavery?

Joshua Klein asks whether crows could be enlisted to do stuff for us like recover the millions of dollars worth of coins humans lose every year.

Or perhaps crows could learn to collect and dispose of garbage, the billions of pieces and tens of thousands of tons of packaging hurled out of car windows, that despoil our freeways and roads.

Thanks to us, crows are thriving. They have adapted, like rats and cockroaches, to benefit from human activities. They live everywhere that we do.

Crows are really smart. Really, really smart. Klein demonstrates how they quickly learned how to operate a "crow vending machine" that dispensed food in exchange for loose change.



Crow power presents a unique opportunity to offer a universal, standardized service, wherever they are located, which is everywhere, just like the internet, electricity and roads.

Perhaps crows could be enlisted to perform the repetitive and scalable tasks that we don't want to do. Collect certain kinds of bugs that eat crops most prone to attack. Trim hedges. Weed gardens. Harvest crops. Or clear gutters.

But the question remains, would such a relationship be really equal, one of "mutual balance" between humans and crows? Or would we humans be guilty yet again of enslaving a fellow species for our benefit.

Here's a workshop to explore the issues:

1. What other smart creatures could we enlist to help us perform useful roles for humans in a kind of "mutual interdependence"?
2. What are some of the repetitive tasks that crows could be enlisted to perform on our behalf, with a little training?
3. What is the boundaries/differences between "mutual independence", "slavery" and "service"?
4. What might be the possible consequences of enrolling many more other animals to become our servants of "mutual dependence" in addition to dogs, pigs, horses, cows and ducks?
5. What ethical issues does this idea of new "servant animals" raise?
6. For a long time, humans have asumed that what makes us different from other animals is our ability to evolve culturally as well as genetically. If crows clearly learn from each other (as do dolphins, monkeys etc), what differentiates us from these animals?
7. If we are only different from other animals by a matter of degrees what gives us the right to enslave/co-opt other species? Give your reasons why or why not.

Something out of nothing

Authors create their own universes, their own cosmology, says Amy Tan the mischievous author of The Bonesetters Daughter, The Joy Luck Club and Saving Fish from Drowning.

Which begs the question, "if there is a creator of the universe, is she a writer?"

Tan explains the ambiguity of the creative process to the TED crowd using a curiously warped interpretation of modern day physics. She equates the nebulousness or indeterminism of the creative act with the uncertainty principle of quantum dynamics and the "11 levels of anxiety" experienced by a writer with the 11 dimensions of string theory.

Tan jokes that creativity has three sources. Nature, nurture and nightmares. Nature involves some inherited genes. Nurture is a dash of childhood trauma. And the nightmares are the psychoses, depression and the temporal lobes seizures she personally has experienced.



Encouraged as a child to become a doctor or concert pianist, Tan chose to ignore her teacher's assessment of her literary talent of B/B+/B- grades and become an "artistic arranger of words".

On stage she is a living, breathing version of her own story telling process. She starts with nothing except some ambiguous concepts which seem unconnected - accidents, serendipity, ambiguity, balance, intentions, and peripheral exploring - then weaves them into a compelling narrative.

The creative act, she says, is about answering three questions. Why do things happen? How do things happen? How do I make things happen?

She asks if ideas turn up serendipitously just when you need them or do artists simply discover new ways of seeing the world and become aware of patterns that were already there.

She surmises the answer could be either/both, (just like the famous experiment where light passing through a slit behaves both as a particle and a wave - my words, not hers).

Tan also reveals that as she writes a story, she learns from the "life" experiences and interactions of the characters, and in doing so, she "becomes the story".

Over time, each story develops it's own internal consistency. She tells the story of meeting a man who created towers of rocks, large and small, perfectly balanced, one of top of the other, who explained the principle that "there is a place of balance" for everything in life.

But Tan also says that a light touch is required. Push too hard and creativity is stifled. Write around the periphery of what you don't know and something new emerges.

So here's a workshop to explore some of Amy Tan's ideas about the creative process?

1. What is the something in your nothing? What unusual pattern or thing have you observed/noticed or been amazed about lately to which you are attracted? e.g. the chewing gum stuck to the pavement.
2. Thinking about your unusual pattern/thing, in what other situations have you seen such a pattern, and why might it be interesting to others? e.g. the mess we humans leave behind, which we ignore in our daily lives.
3. Create a minor solar system of characters, and a scenario, to explore your interesting pattern/thing. e.g. the derelict sleeping on the pavement with accumulated junk/garbage all around, who dreamed of being a.....
4. How did your character get to be in this stuation?
5. As you start creating your character and the story, what can you now observe around you that you did not see before?
6. As you start creating your story, what do you learn from the character, and especially how does this learning enrich who you are?
7. If you were now faced with death, what stories do you now feel compelled to tell, as urgently as possible to your friends, family, the world?

Compassion and peaceful co-existence

Religious Historian Karen Armstrong made a 2008 TED Prize wish that has resulted in thousands of people around the world joining together to collectively create a Charter for Compassion so we can live together in peace, and leave the world in a better state for our children.

At the heart of all the world's religions is a Golden Rule, to "always treat all others as you'd like to be treated yourself. Yet religious people often ignore the Golden Rule at the heart of their belief system and define themselves by how different and right they are compared to others, rather than what they have in common.



When we don't live a compassionate life and go back to being thoughtless, selfish, spiteful and egocentric, we ignite the flames of hatred or mistrust. Such differences become a major source of conflict between the world's people. Then, when we discriminate against people on the basis of some perceived difference - their sexual orientation or gender - we become less than what we can be.

Living the compassionate life is not about feeling sorry for another - a narrow interpretation of compassion - but having the ability to to stand in another person's shoes and know how they would feel, and to be sensitive to how they see the world. When we live the compassionate life, we somehow transcend or transform ourselves, and become of greater value to each other and to the world.

Here's a workshop to explore the issues:

1. Describe how you like to be treated by others.
2. Describe all the the different ways you would NOT like others to treat you.
3. Give examples of what Rabbi Hillel, the contemporary of Jesus Christ, might have had in mind when he says "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor" when describing the Torah and all its ramifications.
4. Think about someone special who is very different to you. Step into their shoes. Describe them, their mental models, and how they might interact with the world.
5. Imagine yourself standing in that other special person's shoes, how might you now perceive your own mental models/world view?
6. What can you and that special person focus on jointly, to become friends so you and your two worlds can live in harmonious co-existence?

Seeing without sight

When we grow old and lose our sight, one-in-ten of our brains will invent images that can be both surprising and challenging.

Surprising because the "hallucinations" come and go suddenly. Challenging because we think we might be going mad.

Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist, assures us that such people are not crazy. The brain is forming the images in the imagination, simply because "we see with the eyes and the brain as well".

When some people lose their vision, constellations of cells in their brains where millions of images are encoded, can become hyperactive. They start to fire off and you begin to see things. It's like a movie over which you have no control in the form geometric shapes, cartoons or people, often with accentuated features such as big teeth. Soundless and without a story line.



All you can do is watch, unlike psychotic hallucinations, which argue and interact with you.

Sacks explains that a mere 1% of us have the confidence to speak up about this kind of condition. Most of us keep quiet, worried that we might be diagnosed as "crazy" and locked up or given inappropriate treatments.

Sacks is best known for his heart-felt stories about brain malfunctions and how they change our lives. His best-selling book Awakenings, tells the true story of a group of patients, frozen like statues, unable to speak or move on their own, and how they responded to the "miracle drug" L-Dopa. The patients were survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness epidemic, encephalitis lethargica. L-Dopa helped to unfreeze their movements, but only for a short time.

Sacks admits to experiencing some of the geometric hallucinations which, like his tinnitus (ringing in the ears), he tries to ignore.

So here is a workshop to explore some of the issues that arise from this talk:

1. Why, in these times of unprecedented knowledge creation, would people be fearful of revealing to their families and doctor, unusual events in their inner world?
2. Make a list of variations to the human condition where fellow humans might take action against you because of a condition or experience which seems weird, either out of fear or lack of knowledge.
3. What are some of the deep 'hidden assumptions" about variations in the way our bodies work that cause people to be mis-diagnosed or maltreated by the "caring professions" in some unreasonable way?
4. If the loss of capability in a functional network such as the human brain can stimulate "hallucinations" what might the declining capability in a social or corporate system produce, metaphorically speaking?
5. What kinds of fears/prejudices might we need to be aware of and guard against that could arise as a consequences of failing system capability that produces the metaphorical corporate/social equivalent of "hallucinations"?

The "true facts" about "carrots and sticks"

If creativity and productivity are going South in your organization it could be the "carrot and stick" incentives on offer.

Dan Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, shows there is a huge "mismatch between what science knows and business does" about getting the best out of people.

Business continues to use financial rewards designed for a late 19th and early 20th century workplace when higher pay, bonuses and other rewards (and punishments) improved productivity of workers engaged in routine and mechnical work, like the factory production line.



All this has changed. The old ways of rewarding people are not working any more.

A whole raft of scientific studies now show that financial and other incentives are the least effective way to reward the people in "right brain" jobs. It's all about solving wicked problems, creativity and creating new knowledge that can't be automated or sub-contracted to unskilled workers in low-cost countries.

For this kind of 21st Century work, the intrinsic motivators of "autonomy, mastery and purpose" deliver the most sensational results in postcodes like 95128 (Silicon Valley, CA) and 02139 (Cambridge, MA) and countries like Australia and India.

So knowing this, why do we still keep on paying the bankers of Wall Street and the CEOs of big companies huge bonuses to turn our financial system and our corporate sector into rubble?

Pink shows that knowledge and wisdom workers respond positively to the very human desire to exercise control over our lives, to do what we think is important, to choose our own directions. We also love to do it incredibly well and feel proud of our achievements. And do so in the service of a cause much bigger than ourselves.

It's the new way that up-and-coming software companies treat their employees. Instead of rules, time clocks and managerial control, it's ideas like "Fedex day" where all the programmers do whatever they please and create some new software fix/application overnight. And celebrate together over a beer. It's the amazing 50% of new software products coming out of Google produced during the 20% of the time they can do whatever they want. Its the amazing productivity of the millions of people who worked tirelessly to create Wikipedia, for NOTHING!

And, says Pink, it's not a socialist conspiracy. Nor a philosophy. But as Washingtonians would say, "a true fact".

Here's a workshop to deal with your productivity/creativity gap:

1. What's the mood of your organization, how does it feel about itself and what it does? Is it a party, a wake or something else?
2. List all the jobs in your organization where the staff are motivated by EXTRINSIC rewards (money, bonuses, sanctions etc.) and describe how they are rewarded.
3. List all the jobs in your organization where the staff are motivated by INTRINSIC rewards (autonomy, mastery and purpose) and describe how they are rewarded.
4. What programs (e.g. bonuses, piecework rates) does your organisation have in place to recognize and reward success at "left brain" routine work that can be automated?
5. What programs (e.g. FedEx days, celebrations) does your organisation have in place to recognize and reward success at "right brain" problem solving, decision making, improvement and creativity tasks?
6. Thinking about your "productivity/creativity crack/gap/gulf/chasm" (if any), what could you do NOW to allow your people take control of their lives, be brilliant, and serve a higher purpose?

3.8 million years of R&D

Nature has spent 3.8 billion years perfecting how to make stuff without messing up its' own back yard.

Humans have taken just 40,000 years to pollute our oceans, raise the earth's temperature, change the climate, pollute the rivers and streams, eradicate numerous species and generally poison/pollute the world we share with millions of other organisms.

Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Inspired by Nature, shows that humans use a heavy-handed approach to making things using the full spectrum of elements from the periodic table via a "heat, beat and treat" process that produces 96 per cent waste and a mere four percent that's useful.



On the other hand, nature makes stuff using the lightest possible touch, at room temperature and pressures by recombining in clever ways a small sub-set of the chemicals at its' disposal. The result is an environment which is sympathetic to other life forms.

Benyus asks three qestions about what nature can teach us. How does nature make things, make the most of things, and make things that disappear into systems or become part of systems?

She puts up twelve big design ideas such as self-assembly at room temperature. Carbon dioxide as a feedstock to make stuff from glucose and protein chains. Harvesting light directly. Power shapes that reduce friction or improve flow. Extracting water directly from the atmospshere. Using "green chemicals" rather than the dangerous and toxic. Metals without mining. Timed degradation.

Here's a workshop to explore the possibilities:

1. Brainstorm some ways Benyus 12 rules might change our world and the tools we use.
2. What would it take for hard-rock miners to make the switch to extracting minerals using biological rather than physical processes?
3. If we could self-assemble tools and products at room-temperature, using a small sub-set of the least toxic elements, what would be the impact on our environment?
4. What do you know about how nature works that could change the way we design, organize and operate organizations for the better?
5. Brainstorm a list of possible uses for surfaces that are self-cleaning?
6. What might a farm be like if it was part of nature? What new rules might farmers follow?
7. What if we could grow houses, or parts of houses such as light collecting surfaces. What might they look like or be like to live in?
8. If we could unlock nature's rules for timed degradation, what could we use this technology for?
9. If we could convert sunlight directly to usable forms of energy in the way plants do with the same kinds of efficiencies, what impact would this have the social and physical world?
10. What new powers might humans acquire using new kinds of tools we create that not only mimic nature but become a part of nature?

A new fractal future?

For most of the past few thousand years of human civilization, our thinking has been dominated by geometry. The line. The circle. The ellipse. The square. The triangle.

The geometric is reflected in everything we do. The shapes of our buildings, the designs of our tools, the mental models we use. It is both the basis of our incredible success as a species and a millstone around our necks that gets heavier by the day.



According to ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash, geometric thinking dominates everywhere in the world. Except Africa, where villages, homes, living spaces and their tools are fractally organized.

Fractals or self-similarity is how the real world works. The trunks and branches of trees. The blood vessels and capillaries of our bodies. Rivers, tributaries and streams and the patterns they carve out of mountains and deltas. The feathery path that lightning blasts through a resistant atmosphere. The design of a nautilus shell and the peacock's tail. Snowflakes. Our DNA.

It is this new kind of self-organising thinking that the rest of the world needs now to help us design systems that mimic, reflect or are a better fit with nature. To clean up the mess we have made of the natural world through our over-use of geometry.

Which could be just the kind of inspiration Africans need. To see their culture as a resource for the kind of new thinking the world needs right now.

Here's a workshop to explore the possibilities:

1. What are the big differences between seeing the world in terms of circles/straight lines/polygons and seeing the world as a fractal?
2. In what ways does geometry (circles, lines, squares etc.) restrict how we see and what we can do in the world?
3. What might be the advantages of using self-similarity and self-organisation as the way we design products, services, organizations and how we interact with each other?
4. What might a fractal social relationship be like? Give examples of fractal relationships with employers, parents, children or friends.
5. What might a self-organising/fractal learning program look like/be like?
6. Choose one of these concepts and describe in detail what a self-similar version might look/function. Hotel, transport system, garbage disposal system, book, play, dance, social occasion, family or house/home.
7. Apply the concept of self-similarity to solving one of these world problems. Poverty, war, famine, disease, global warming, virus, dislocation, terrorism/freedom fighting.
8. What features/aspects of self-similarity could we use to design organizations and social systems.
9. How could you use knowledge about fractals and self-organizing systems to create wealth in the 21st century?
10. How can Africa use its deeply embedded knowledge of fractals and self-organizing systems to contribute to a new and more powerful/fulfilling future for the people of the continent of Africa and the world?