Creativity, Law, and Change

I recently listned to a well-articulated TEDTalk by Larry Lessig on "Laws that Choke Creativity". A really interesting and thought-provoking piece about how the changes in culture are leading to creative conflicts in the newest generations.

"We made mixed tapes; they remix music. We watched TV; they make TV. It is technology that has made them different, and as we see what this technology can do we need to recognize you can't kill the instinct the technology produces; we can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using it; we can only drive it underground. We can't make our kids passive again; we can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good? We live in this weird time, it's kind of age of prohibitions, where in many areas of our life, we live life constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law, and that's what I -- we -- are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realization is extraordinarily corrosive, extraordinarily corrupting. And in a democracy we ought to be able to do better."

I thought this was one of the best summaries of one of the biggest social difficulties of the times - the shifting notions of right and wrong, and what kind of impact that has on us as a culture. I think I have some more thoughts on this, but for now I have to get back to writing a paper on the concept and ethics of a national "smartcard" ID. A fascinating topic that has led me down many tangents (such as this video) though most of the diverging hasn't been useful for the paper. Oh well. At least the tangents are interesting and educational.

Changing the World With Design

Since starting my graduate degree in Information Management, I've discovered an entire new and fantastical world called "design" that has entirely changed the way I think and view the world. The principles that make up the foundation of "user-centered design" can also serve not only to design better systems and stuff, but provide a framework through which to view the world.

One of the cooler applications of design to "everyday" life is the work that is being done by Emily Pilloton in North Carolina. Co-founder of ProjectH, a nonprofit design organization, Pilloton has taken on one of the scarier systems ever formed in the US - formal education - and has begun to tackle it with design.

Thinking about how to "fix" our underfunded, outdated, bureaucracy-laden public education system is a difficult, convoluted and systemically heartbreaking effort. But Pilloton has armed herself, and works to create "Design initiatives for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness". And it's working. They are doing some really awesome things over in North Caroline.

Check out her TED talk on "Teaching Design for Change". It is one of the most inspiring TED talks I've seen in a while. Often the people who speak for TED have these wonderful insights, challenges, and ideas, but this one is particularly strong because this a snapshot into work that is creating sustainable change in behavior and attitudes. And that's just cool.

More About Emily Pilloton:

A visit with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report (1/18/2010)

Writing for Design Mind about the need for design to "Get Local", a reflection around the one-year mark of their project in Bertie, NC.

The Beauty of Data Visualization (David McCandless TED talk)

I have to do a quick post about this TED talk from earlier this year. David McCandless talks about "The Beauty of Data Visualization". And it's beautiful. I've been digging around the newest website, "Information is Beautiful" having a lovely time examining all the truly lovely visualizations they've created.

I really do believe that pictures/visuals really are the next sets of vocabulary for communicating data. We have spent a lot of time in using words to describe data (and believe me, I love words), but there's so much power in a picture. And the visualization of data can give you an immediate grasping of context (accurate only if done right, of course) that words just can't quite capture.

For example, McCandless et al. produced a "Billion Dollar-o-Gram" in 2009 to give some context to those billions being thrown around. Go look at that for a second, and then come back after finding the cost to "Wall Street Revenue 2009", "Cost of Obesity Related Diseases", "Eradicate AIDS worldwide", and then "Worldwide cost of financial crisis".

McCandless talks about how the sometimes quoted "absolute figures" don't give you a whole picture - the relative presentation of data through visualization can give you a better view of the landscape. Visualization creates an information map for people to explore, and helps expose the hidden patterns among the data.

One comment he makes was interesting - he challenges the saying "data is the new oil" with a slight modification: "data is the new soil". It is this rich resource, and there is so much of it. We just have to figure out how to ask the right questions of it to get the answers.

"Let the dataset change your mindset" - the use of visualization is definitely a part of making sound decisions that can be backed up by data.