Robots guided by their own computer “brains” now can pick up and peel bananas, land jumbo jets, steer cars through city traffic, search human DNA for cancer genes, play soccer or the violin, find earthquake victims or explore craters on Mars.
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SOT’s basic formula for thinking is: e + s = t.
e + s = t means escape + search = think and you can learn this formula quickly in our 59 Second Course in Thinking.
You can click here to do this course now.
In the last decade a 20 billion dollar industry has sprung up in the middle of this formula which is now known as: the SEARCH industry.
Currently there are more than 6 billion Google searches a month, and growing. There is also Yahoo and the coming Wolfram Alpha and many others.
So, as a thinker, when you want to escape from your current thinking and search for better thinking you can do so at the press of a button. This facility is something that any 10-year-old who is online can do and it would have made most of history’s great thinkers, from Plat0 to Confucius, green with envy.
Now Google has released some new options for thnkers who are searchers and you can check them out in this short video.
When was the last time you were asked to invent something?
When was the last time you asked someone to invent someone?
Yes, most of us are good at critiquing the ideas of other people. We can easily find faults in their ideas and point them out. We never tire of complaining about the shortcomings of our bosses, our leaders, our customers, our family members, our football team, our phone company etc etc.
When it comes to thinking skills, fault-finding is childsplay. It’s too easy. It requires no imagination. Anyone can do it.
But, to invent? That’s not easy at all.
To invent requires thinking outside the square. To invent requires risk-taking. To invent courts failure. It invites criticism from the rest of us. No wonder we hardly ever invent things.
… that’s why I am so enamored with the work of inventor/author/cartoonist/former urban planner Steven M. Johnson, a sort of R. Crumb meets R. Buckminster Fuller. Johnson is a former urban planner, and his work tends toward the nodes where social issues intersect with design and urban planning issues.
Hrad to blveiee taht you cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht yor’ue rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan bairn, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, sowhs taht it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.
.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn biarn deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe ptatren. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and you awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
DARPA, who gave us the Darpanet aka the internet, is the U.S. military’s premiere research agency.
It is already trying to use math to predict human behavior and neuroscience to replicate a primate’s brain.
The next step: Lean on the study of energy and heat to create an entirely new theory for how intelligence actually works.
The idea behind Darpa’s latest venture, called “Physical Intelligence” (PI) is to prove, mathematically, that the human mind is nothing more than parts and energy.
In other words, all brain activities — reasoning, emoting, processing sights and smells — derive from physical mechanisms at work, acting according to the principles of “thermodynamics in open systems.”
Thermodynamics is founded on the conversion of energy into work and heat within a system (which could be anything from a test-tube solution to a planet). The processes can be summed up in formalized equations and laws, which are then used to describe how systems react to changes in their surroundings.
EMERGENT FUTURES – BOOK REVIEW: Click through for more …
William Duggan opens his final chapter in this book by describing two statements that he uses in his classes to ask students which one they most agree with:
1. You can achieve anything you want if you believe in yourself, set clear goals, and work hard.
2. You can achieve many things if you prepare for opportunity, see it, and act on it.
He says that most American students, business executives, army officers and non-profit leaders say that the first statement is the one they agree with more. Non-Americans tend to agree with the second statement more but the longer they have been in America the more likely they’ll agree with the first statement.
If you read the first statement critically it is clearly nonsense…
This book is essentially about the difference in strategy approaches between the “that is our goal lets go and get it” school of strategy and what might be termed anticipatory awareness, which we would argue is far more needed in a fast changing and modern world.
Essentially Duggan asks where we get the flashes of inspiration that create great goals in the first place, and innovative ways of achieving them.
Here’s a short 60-second ad on Youtube that cleverly answers just that question: What’s happening now?
Oscar Wilde once said, “When the gods want to punish us they answer our prayers”. Here’s an interesting article on that contrary view from Wharton.
From KNOWLEDGE WHARTON:
Ambitious goal setting has become endemic in American business practice and scholarship over the last half-century. Goals have pervaded industries as diverse as automotive repair, banking and information systems, even spilling over to the debate on how to improve America’s public schools.
Yet new research by Wharton operations and information management professor Maurice Schweitzer and three colleagues documents how corporate goal setting can cause more harm than good.
The paper, titled “Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting,” was co-authored by Lisa D. Ordóñez from the Eller College of Management, University of Arizona; Adam D. Galinsky of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Max H. Bazerman from the Harvard Business School. Their work appears in the February issue of the Academy of Management Perspectives.
•• Click through to original article from From KNOWLEDGE WHARTON:
Recently, in Canberra, I was invited to work with a very interesting and unique group of leaders of leaders.
These were 24 men and women–Australia’s creme de la creme of the current generation of military leaders. All were recently promoted to General, Flag or Air rank (Generals and equivalent) rewarding outstanding Army/Navy/Air Force careers in war and in the field. They have been promoted to Canberra and will be leading Australia’s defence for the next decade.
What a dream class! They dived in without hesitation to the session and I was able to challenge them with stuff that one rarely gets the chance to use in even the most senior of business groups. I did have fun.
I asked an Iraq War veteran if he could explain succinctly what was the kind of warfare the coalition were up against in Iraq. Here he gave his ’25-words or less’ lesson in warfare. He said, “The enemy have 27 million targets. We have 1000 targets. That’s the problem we are working to solve”.
We all have our problems, of course, but that’s a REAL problem to have to solve!
When it comes to Pandemics the World Health Organisation (WHO) has the most accurate and informative information for governments and others around the world.
Although the Swine Flu is the most current in the public awareness, the Avian flu is still the greatest threat to world health.
Here are the FAQs–Frequently Asked Questions–and answers from WHO.
It is in your interests to read these carefully and to spend at least an hour to THINK about your own CVS and what you can do about it: