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Books on Science - Rethinking What Leads the Way - Science, or New Technology? - NYTimes.com
"n “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead."
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n “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead.
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Technologies evolve, Dr. Arthur writes, based on the chaotic and constant recombining of already existing technologies. In this view all technological breakthroughs emerge as novel combinations of existing technological components, which have themselves come into existence through the same process. And, he argues, both technological and scientific progress are driven by humans looking for a means to an end they have already defined.
It is a profoundly social view of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the “lone inventor” is in fact an invention, part of American economic mythology. The apparently independent genius is always someone who has a deep knowledge of existing technologies and has the inspiration to combine them in new ways.
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Don Norman's jnd.org / Technology First, Needs Last
Technology First, Needs Last
"Necessity is often not the mother of invention. In many cases, it surely has been just the opposite. When humans possess a tool, they excel at finding new uses for it. The tool often exists before the problem to be solved." Nye, D. E. (2006).
I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. Call one conceptual breakthrough, the other incremental. Although we would prefer to believe that conceptual breakthroughs occur because of a detailed consideration of human needs, especially fundamental but unspoken hidden needs so beloved by the design research community, the fact is that it simply doesn't happen.
New conceptual breakthroughs are invariably driven by the development of new technologies The new technologies, in turn, inspire technologists to invent things, not sometimes because they themselves dream of having their capabilities, but many times simply because they can build them. In other words, grand conceptual inventions happen because technology has finally made them possible. Do people need them? That question is answered over the next several decades as the technology moves from technical demonstration, to product, to failure, or perhaps to slow acceptance in the commercial world where slowly, after considerable time, the products and applications are jointly evolve, and slowly the need develops. "
Education Futures - Invisible Learning: Designing cultures of sustainable innovation
"Through the development of 1) a collaborative, printed book; 2) an e-book; and 3) a repository of innovative ideas at www.invisiblelearning.com, we seek to:
* Share experiences and innovative perspectives, focused on rethinking strategies and innovative approaches to learn and unlearn continuously.
* Promote critical thinking of the role of formal, informal and non-formal education at alleducational levels.
* Contribute to the creation of a sustainable (and continuous) process of learning, innovating and designing new cultures for the global society.
This project aims to facilitate the creation of a globally distributed community of thinkers interested on the creation of new futures for the education."
The Valley of My Dreams: Why Silicon Valley Left Boston’s Route 128 In The Dust
"A young professor at UC-Berkeley, AnnaLee Saxenian, wrote a book in 1994 which answers this question. At a time when Boston still thought it was the powerhouse of the tech industry, Saxenian declared Boston the loser in the tech race and explained why it would only fall further behind. This book was titled Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. It kicked off a firestorm of criticism from the Boston elite. Saxenian also alienated friends at her alma mater, MIT.
She noted that Silicon Valley had an amazing dynamism about it. There were extensive professional networks, job hopping was the norm, information was exchanged openly, and the culture encouraged risk taking. The Silicon Valley ecosystem supported entrepreneurial experimentation and collective learning. In other words, Silicon Valley was a very open network—a giant social networking site working in analog before the concept of such a thing even existed."
Twitter Serves Up Ideas From Its Users - NYTimes.com
"Twitter’s smart enough, or lucky enough, to say, ‘Gee, let’s not try to compete with our users in designing this stuff, let’s outsource design to them,’ ” said Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. and author of the book “Democratizing Innovation.”
Economists have long thought that producers — the people making products and running companies — are naturally the ones coming up with new ideas, Professor von Hippel said. In fact, he said, consumers often come up with ideas for products, and companies wait on the sidelines to see if they have mass appeal.
Technology companies have been the most active in relying on others to innovate for them. This is in large part because the Internet lets people exchange ideas easily and rapidly with large groups, and computing tools let people design new products cheaply.
The photo-sharing site Flickr started as a small part of a big online game. When the founders realized that the photo-sharing feature was more popular than the game, they scrapped the game and built Flickr. Open-source software companies leave innovation up to users, and companies like Bug Labs let people build their own hardware. "
Innovative Blades May Have Led to a Stone Age Population Boom: Scientific American
Technological innovations have enabled human cultures to thrive, and now researchers have discovered what might be the oldest example known so far of such an occurrence. These ancient innovations are in the form of miniature stone blades, which appear to have contributed to a population boom in south Asia.
Recent genetic research of people across the globe suggests that roughly 45,000 to 20,000 years ago, one of the most dramatic population booms after humanity dispersed from Africa occurred in southern Asia, leading to "the highest population densities in the world in prehistory," explains Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in England.
Backstage Pass- Howard Rheingold on nurturing innovation - Sky’s Blog
n the back seat of a London taxi, Howard Rheingold talks with me a bit about how information research centers can form around people who attract talented individuals and then “protect” them so they can innovate.
Party Animals: Early Human Culture Thrived in Crowds | LiveScience
Party planners know that scrunching a bunch of people into a small space will result in plenty of mingling and discourse.
A new study suggests this was as true for our ancestors as it is for us today, and that ancient social networking led to a renaissance of new ideas that helped make us human.
The research, which is published in the June 5 issue of the journal Science, suggests that tens of thousands of years ago, as human population density increased so did the transmission of ideas and skills. The result: the emergence of more and more clever innovations.
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Party planners know that scrunching a bunch of people into a small space will result in plenty of mingling and discourse.
A new study suggests this was as true for our ancestors as it is for us today, and that ancient social networking led to a renaissance of new ideas that helped make us human.
The research, which is published in the June 5 issue of the journal Science, suggests that tens of thousands of years ago, as human population density increased so did the transmission of ideas and skills. The result: the emergence of more and more clever innovations. -
"As population density increases, people migrate between groups more," Thomas said during a telephone interview. "That increases the probability that any skill that's difficult to learn doesn’t get lost or decay."
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White House Officials Discuss Plans for Social-Innovation Office - Philanthropy.com
The new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation was created without much fanfare. In fact, even though it has been operating for several months, it has never been formally unveiled.
But the office, set up to promote creative and effective ways to tackle social problems, is slowly starting to emerge as a public entity.
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The new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation was created without much fanfare. In fact, even though it has been operating for several months, it has never been formally unveiled.
But the office, set up to promote creative and effective ways to tackle social problems, is slowly starting to emerge as a public entity. The White House briefly outlined its goals in a statement last month to announce that the president was proposing $50-million in his 2010 budget for a social-innovation fund. And after months of working behind the scenes, White House officials have started to speak publicly about the office’s plans.
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To carry out the “civic participation” part of its name, the office is exploring ways to use the White House Web site to encourage people to get involved in solving social problems. It is also working with the White House Office of Public Engagement and others to encourage people to volunteer over the summer.
Social melting pots foster technological innovation - tech - 14 October 2008 - New Scientist Tech
BIG cities are the most vibrant centres of innovation - and it's all down to the mathematics of networking.
People in bigger cities are known to be more innovative than those in smaller ones: the figures show that a doubling in the size of a city general
Scientific debate is changing | User-generated science | The Economist
Seed Media Group, a firm based in New York, launched the latest version of Research Blogging, a website which acts as a hub for scientists to discuss peer-reviewed science. Such discussions, the internet-era equivalent of the journal club, have hitherto b
The Mundaneum Museum Honors the First Concept of the World Wide Web - NYTimes.com
In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files.
Big Think - We Are What You Think
A new video sharing site for people who actually have something
interesting on their mind:
Entrepreneurial Journalism in the Facebook Age - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog
had the honor of helping jury a competition in Jeff Jarvis’s Entrepreneurial Journalism class at the City University of New York’s new Journalism School.
We Are Smarter Than Me: How the Wisdom of Crowds Can Help Businesses Succeed - Knowledge@Wharton
Barry Libert and Jon Spector -- and a community of more than 4,000 people who contributed insights to the book -- illustrate how businesses can profit from the wisdom of crowds.
About:About - Shareideas
ShareIdeas.org is an online community and a wiki for sharing ideas on how to use mobile communications for social and environmental benefits.
www.Bioject.org » Blog Archive » Bioscope: visualizing immaterial artefacts
I’m currently building bioscope, a device that materialize the sketches made by gesture while talking to somebody or being in a creative or expressive process. The goal is to be build a creativity research tool that manifest visually the evolution of co
The Network Unbound
This is about how those sites, and their successors, are growing up--and about their impact on how business gets done. Companies, whether they sell software, movies, or dog food, are changing the way they communicate, make decisions, and develop and marke
Hack This Product, Please!
Hack This Product, Please! Dell's new IdeaStorm is just one example of how forward-thinking companies are making their customers co-creators
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