SPARKING OR INCITING CHANGE - Paradigm Shift, Ideas and Saving the World

Related Projects/ Derivatives

SaWiaGoS
Think.Shift.Design
Plant a Forest of Ideas
Teach a Man to Fish

Knowledge and Information Database

ReSearch

Organisations

RSA Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts (.ORG)
TED: Ideas Worth Spreading - https://www.ted.com/
Nudge (.org) - Improving Decisions behind Health, Wealth and Happiness
The School of Life (Site) - Ideas for Living
Applied Psychology (tumblr) - Blog posts on Application
Authentic Happiness Questionnares by UPenn (Site)

WebSites

Emotional Bag Check - http://emotionalbagcheck.com/
List of sites: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/8-knowledge-websites-free-online-video-lectures/

Individuals Who Spark Change

Dave Mueslin
Sir Ken Robinson (Site) - Education, Creativity and Innovation
Matthew Tailor (Blog) - Musings from the Chief Executive of RSA
Mark Vernon (Site/Blog) - Books, Articles, Interactive, Blog author and journalist on friendship, wellbeing, belief, science and the philosophy of the everyday.
Bill & Melinda Gates
Elon Musk

Media Examples

On People and Their Abilities
- Super Fast Spray Pain Artist (Youtube)
- Korea's Got Talent (Youtube) - Powerful Opera Singer
- Guy with no limbs
- Taylor Malie
Beautiful Works of Art
- In Your Arms” by Kina Grannis (Site) - Stop Motion Music video with Jelly Beans
- SUPAKITCH & KORALIE Art (Youtube) - Wall Painting and Design
Did you know?
Lost Generation
Ted Videos - From Spreadsheet Database (Link)
Wilderness Downtown (Link) - Interactive Video with Music from Arcade Fire
Guy Travels Around the World and shoots a seconds video in each location (Youtube)
Pursuit of Happiness A Kinetic Typographic Video (Youtube)

Articles

Enterprising Types? (Article) - by Matthew Taylor
Scientists Cure Cancer but No one takes Notice. (Article) - on Sott.net
5 Things you Should Stop Doing (Article)
The Rape of Man (Article) - From Guardian

Interesting knowledge

Interesting Historical Facts: http://home.bitworks.co.nz/trivia/human.htm
Paper to Pencil machine: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/09/15/paper-to-pencil-just-like-that/
50 Lessons learnt from Movies: http://static-romance.org/wordpress/random/50-lessons-learned-from-movies
Creative Use of Food: http://gipsypalace.com/creative-using-of-food-2
http://pinterest.com/
Political Ideologies by reference to cows: deshoda.com/words/famous-world-ideologies-as-explained-by-references-to-cows/
Before I die Board: candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/
How to be a Morning Person: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracey-marks-md/morning-person_b_864377.html
Euphemistically Speaking: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/05/euphemistically_speaking
http://brainz.org/ten-most-revealing-psych-experiments/
http://www.globalone.tv/profiles/blogs/7-lessons-from-7-great-minds
http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/25-everyday-things-you-never-knew-had-names
26 Amazing Facts about Finland's Education http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12#
The Creative Personality - 10 Paradoxical traits of the creative personality: http://talentdevelop.com/articles/TCPTPT.html

Research

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071722/Rats-wrongly-maligned-actually-kind-hearted-generous-creatures.html
http://longestjokeintheworld.com/

My Creations

Story Presentations
- Galileo and the Leaning Tower
- Michangelo and the Sistine Chapel
- Death Valley
Multimedia
- Evo Vs Lamborghini
- Shoulder to cry on
- Fall to Fly
- Annie's Song

Video Reviews and Outlines

Jane Goodall (TED)
- Things that are common between us and apes
  - Desire to do things well ( Ai in Japan on a computer)
  - Tool making (Digging for termites)
  - Culture - Imitation and learning across generations
- 2 things that separate us from apes
RSA Animate
- Drive: The Surprising Truth on What Motivates Us (Youtube) - Excellent animation
- Where Good Ideas Come From (Youtube) by Steven Johnson
- The Emphatic Civilization (Youtube) by Jeremy Rifkin
- 21st Century Enlightenment (Youtube/ Page / Transcript/ Article)
- Emphatic Civilization (Site/ Youtube) - With RSA video presentations
- Changing Education Paradigms (Youtube/ Transcript)

RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms

(Youtube/ Transcript)

Every country on earth at the moment is reforming public education
- Economic Reasons
  - How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies of the 21st century? Even though we can't anticipate what the economy will look like at the end of next week.
- Cultural Reasons
  - How do we educate our children so they have a sense of cultural identity, so that we can pass on the cultural genes of our communities. While being part of the process globalization, how do you square that circle?
Challenges to Public Education Reform
- Economic: Trying to meet the future by doing what they did in the past. And on the way alienating millions of kids who don't see any purpose in going to school.
  - When we went to school, story was if you worked hard and did well and got a college degree you'd have a job.
  - Our kids don't believe that, and they're right to.
  - You are better having a degree than not, but it's not a guarantee anymore.
  - And particularly not if the route to it marginalises most of the things that you think are important about yourself.
- Intellectual: Current system of education was designed and conceived and structured for a different age, based on the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment, and in the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution.
  - Before the middle of the nineteenth century there were no systems of public education. (you'd get educated by Jesuits if you had the money)
  - Public education paid for from taxation, compulsory to everybody and free at the point of delivery, was a revolutionary idea and many people objected to it.
  - They said it's not possible for many street kids working class children to benefit from public education. They are incapable of learning to read and write.
  - So there was also built into the whole series of assumptions about social structuring capacity, driven by an economic imperative of the time, an intellectual model of the mind, which was essentially the Enlightenment view of intelligence.
  - The real intelligence consisted in this capacity for certain type of deductive reasoning, and a knowledge of the Classics originally, what we've come to think of as academic ability. And this is deep in the gene pool of public education.
  - There are really two types of people. Academic and non academic. Consequence of that is that many brilliant people think they are not, because they've been judged against this particular view of the mind.
Twin Economic and Intellectual Model (Above) has been great for some - but most people have not. Instead they suffered this.
- ADHD is not an Epidemic.
  - Based on a map of the instance of ADHD in America. Or prescriptions for ADHD, it increases as you travel east across the country.
  - I don't mean to say there is no such thing as attention deficit disorder: a great majority of psychologists and paediatricians think there's such a thing, but it's still a matter of debate.
  - kids are medicated as routinely as we have our tonsils taken out on the same whimsical basis and for the same reason medical fashion.
  - Our children are living in the most intensely stimulating period in the history of the earth, besieged with information and parse their attention from every platform, computers, from iPhones, advertising holdings from hundreds of television channels.
  - And we are penalizing them for getting distracted. Boring stuff.
  - For instance of ADHD has risen in parallel with the growth of standardized testing. And these kids are being given Ritalin and Adderall, to get them focused and calm them down.
- The Arts particularly (like science and maths) are Victims of this mentality
  - As the Arts especially address the idea of Aesthetic experience, which your senses are operating at their peak. When you're present in the current moment. When you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you're experiencing.
  - When you are fully alive. And anaesthetic is when you shut your senses off, and deaden yourself what's happening. And a lot of these drugs are that. We're getting our children through education by anaesthetising them.
  - we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn't be putting them asleep, we should be waking them up, to what they have inside of themselves.
We have a system of education which is modelled on the interest of industrialism. and in the image of it.
- Schools are still pretty much organised on factory lines. On ringing bells, separate facilities, specialised into separate subjects.
  - We still educate children by batches, through the system by age group. Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are, like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture.
  - There are kids who are much better than other kids at the same age in different disciplines, or at different times of the day, or better in smaller groups than in large groups or sometimes they want to be on their own.
- If you are interested in the model of learning you don't start from this production line mentality. This is essentially about conformity, as you look at the growth of standardised testing and standardised curricula. and it's about standardisation.
We've got go in the exact opposite direction, changing the paradigm.
- Great study done recently on divergent thinking -
  - Divergent thinking isn't the same thing as creativity. I define creativity as the process of having original ideas which have value. Divergent thinking isn't a synonym, but it's an essential capacity for creativity. It's the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question. Lots of possible ways of interpreting a question. To think, what Edward de Bono publicly called laterally. To think not just in linear or convergent ways. To see multiple answers and not one.
- So I made up a test for this: How many uses can you think of for a paper clip?
  - Most people might come with 10 or 15, those who are good at this might come with 200. And they do that by saying. Well, could the paper clip be 200 foot tall and be made of foam rubber?
  - The test is this. They gave them to 1500 people in a book called Breakpoint and Beyond. And on the protocol of the test if you scored above a certain level, you'd be considered to be a genius of divergent thinking. this was a longitudinal study
  - What percentage of the people (Kindergarten Children) tested of the 1500 scored genius level for divergent thinking? 98%
  - they retested the same children five years later, ages of 8-10. What do you think? -50%?
  - They retested them again 5 years later, ages 13-15.
  - This tells a interesting story. Because you could've imagined they're going the other way. Could you? You start off not being very good but you get better as you get older.
- But this shows 2 things:
  - One: is we all have this capacity
  - Two: It mostly deteriorates.
  - Now a lot have happened to these kids as they grown up, a lot. But one of the most important things happened that I'm convinced is that by now they've become educated. They spend 10 years in school being told there is one answer, it's at the back, and don't look. And don't copy because that's cheating. I mean outside school that's called collaboration but, inside schools. This isn't because teachers wanted this way it's just because it happens that way. It's because it's in the gene pool of education.
We have to think different about human capacity.
- We have to get over this old conception of academic, non academic. Abstract, theoretical, vocational and see it for what it is: a Myth.
- Second, we have to recognize most great learning happens in groups. That collaboration is the stuff of growth. If we atomize people and separate them a judge them separately, we form a kind of disjunction between them and their natural learning environment.
- Thirdly, it's crucially about the culture of our institutions. The habits of institutions and the habitats that they occupy.

Drive: The Surprising Truth on What Motivates Us

(Youtube)

What motivates us?
- What we perceive motivates us is counter intuitive to research on motivation
- Positive Vs negative Motivation
  - Rewarding something you want and punishing something you don't want

We are not as endlessly manipulable and predictable as you would think

Premise: If you reward something, you get more of the behaviour you want. If you punish something, you get les sof the behaviour you want.
- Cambridge MIT (Conducted by economists from University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon and MIT)
  - Students given set of challenges: Memorise Digits, solve word puzzles, spacial puzzles, physical tasks like throwing balls into hoops
  - To incentivise performance, 3 levels of rewards.
    - Small, Medium, Top performers with incremental prizes.
  - As long as task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as expected. Higher pay = Better performance
  - Once task called for rudimentary cognitive skill, larger award led to poorer performance.
- Madurai
  - Participants were given substancial awards. in salary increments.
  - Medium and small reward had similar performance, but those with large award had big drop in performance. Higher incentives led to worse performance.
For If then, you get that tasks, algorithmic and procedural tasks, rewards lead to outstanding performance.
When task requires more complicated, it requires conceptual or creative thinking, it doesnt work.
Fact: Money is a motivator
- If you don't pay enough, people won't be motivated
- Pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table and to focus on the work.
3 Factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction
- Autonomy: The desire to be self directed
  - Traditional management Vs Engagement
  - Example: Atlassian software
    - Thurs they can work anything they want, but must show results in fun meeting.
    - Software fixes, new product ideas.
- Mastery: The urge to get better at stuff
  - Eg: Why do you play musical instruments
  - Would you get people from around the world, do highly skilled work for free, then give it away rather than sell it?
    - Linux, Apache, Wikipedia
  - Challenge, master and making purpose and contribution
- Purpose
  - Skype: Goal to be destructive but in cause of making world a better place
  - Steve Jobs: I want to put a ding in the universe.
  - We are purpose maximizers as much as profit maximizers.

RSA Animate: The Emphatic Civilisation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g

RSA Animate: 21st Century Enlightenment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo

TED: Clay Shirky: Institutions Vs Collaborations

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration#t-80220

UN's Key Issues and Campaigns

http://www.un.org/en/sections/about-un/funds-programmes-specialized-agencies-and-others/index.html

Democracy
Decolonization
Rule of Law
Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect
The Holocaust
The Question of Palestine
The Rwanda Genocide
Action to Counter Terrorism
Victims of Terrorism
Children and Armed Conflict
UNiTE to End Violence Against Women
Messengers of Peace
Millennium Development Goals (deadline passed)
Sustainable Development Goals
Climate Change
Zero Hunger Challenge
Global Issues
Observances
UN and Sustainability
World Humanitarian Summit
NEW: Refugees and Migrants

TED: Using Nature's Genius in Architecture

From http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pawlyn_using_nature_s_genius_in_architecture.html

Biomimicry Examples
- Aramid Fiber and Spider Silk
- Forest Fire Detection
- Roof Structures and Giant Amazon water lillies
- Buildings and abalone shells
- Light-weight bridges by Plant cells
- Harvest freshwater in desert and Namibian Fog-basking Beetle.
  - Lose heat at night with matt black shell
  - Moist breeze condense on beetles cool shell
  - Hydrophilic bumps with waxy hydrophobic finish in between: mobile Water droplets form in between
  - Water easily runs into mouth when it tips itself.
Benefits of Doing things the way nature does
- Factorial savings in resource efficiency and energy use (Delivering same function, with fraction of resource input)
- Solution to answer all three needs (listed below)
- Catalogue of millions of products with 3.8 billion year research and development
- Beauty, efficiency, simplicity, elegance
3 Changes needed for Sustainability Revolution
- Radical increases in Resource Efficiency
- Shifting from linear wasteful polluting way of using resources to a closed loop model
- Changing from fossil fuel economy to a solar economy
Resource Efficiency Examples
- Eden Project
  - Soap Bubbles --> building form
  - Pollen grains and radiolaria and carbon molecules --> hexagons and pentagons as structural solution
  - Pressurized membranes --> ETFE polymer as alternative to glass
Linear to Closed Loop Idea
- Linear Model: Resources are extracted, short-life products and dispose
- Ecosystems Model: Waste from one organism becomes nutrient for something else.
- Value Proposition
  - Turn waste streams into schemes that create value.
  - Turn waste into massive opportunity
  - Combine Cycles of Food, Energy, Water, Waste
Cardboard to Caviar Project by Graham Wiles
- Shops and Restaurants: Food, cardboard and plastic waste
- Equestrian centers: Shredded Cardboard as horse Bedding
- Siberian Sturgeon Farm: Soiled Cardboard as food to produce caviar
- Restaurants: Caviar sold back to restaurants
Mobius Project (Building Ecosystem, Restaurant in a green house)
- Anaerobic digester: Turns biodegradable waste from local area into heat for greenhouse and electricity to feed back into grid
- Water Treatment System: Treat waste water into fresh water and generate energy from solids using plants and micro-organisms.
- Fish Farm: Fed from begatable waste from kitchen, worms from compost and fish back to restaurant
- Coffee shop: Waste grains as substrate for growing mushrooms
London Central Roundabout Proposal
- Open space for people, reconnect people with food
Sahara Forest Project
- Theory and Observations
  - During evolution of life on earth, Colonization of land by plants that created benign climate
  - Julius Caesar noticed Large areas of land in North Africa covered in cedar and cypress forests
  - More vegetation lost, exacerbate climate change leading to desertification
  - Photosynthetic activity over years coincides with boundaries of deserts shifting
- Aim: To intervine at boundary conditions to halt, reverse desertification
- Sea Water Greenhouse (Arid coastal Regions)
  - wall of evaporator grills where Seawater is trickle over and picks up moisture and is cooled.
  - Inside the Green house is cool and humid and plants need less water to grow
  - Back of green house: Freshwater as condensate
  - Net production of freshwater + elevated humidity, encourages plants to grow
  - Plants reduce surrounding temperatures and elevates humidity etc.
- Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
  - Requires Demineralised Freshwater, produces waste heat.
  - Synergistic link with seawater greenhouse
- Sea Water Residue
  - calcium carbonate crystalized from seawater used as light-weight building material
  - Salt --> Building Block (Bolivian hotel)
  - Phosphates --> Fertilizer
  - Lithium --> batteries
Forming Technologies as symbiotic clusters
Underutilized resources are used to create more value

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