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The Disrupters: Working Outside The Business Norm | Fast Company

[From 3. Joi Ito]

"The Japanese government once asked me to be on a committee about taxes and information technology. The first thing I said was, 'Let's figure out a way to use resources more efficiently to lower taxes.' And they said, 'No, no, no--this committee is about using computers to collect more tax.' So I asked, 'How do we reduce costs?' And they said, 'Oh, there's no committee for that.' [Laughs] That's the problem with large organizations. They create roles and constraints, and sometimes people forget why they're there."

creativity innovation business leadership 2012 joiito committees scale roles bureaucracy constraints organizations from delicious
february 2012 by robertogreco

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TOC 2012: Tim Carmody, "Changing Times, Changing Readers: Let's Start With Experience" - YouTube

Notes here by @tealtan:

"unusual contexts in writing / reading text

“In a hyperliterate society, the vast majority of reading is not consciously recognized as reading.”

“What readers expect is more important than what readers want.”

Bill Buxton: “every tool is the best at something and the worst at something else”

skills, path-dependency, learning effects

“…we actually like constraints once we're in them.”"

And notes from @litherland:

"11:40: “I do things like … just obsess about weird little details. So, for instance … like, how do you do text entry in a Netflix app on the Wii? You know? I think about this a lot.” Your many other talents notwithstanding, Tim, you may have missed your calling as a designer. /

18:30: “I think it’s a tragedy that we have not been able to figure out a good interface for pen and ink on reading devices.” Holy grail. My dream for years. I would give anything. I would give anything to be smart enough to figure this out."

design reading writing journalism history timcarmody toc2012 via:tealtan constraints billbuxton bookfuturism ebooks stéphanemallarmé paper 2012 media mediarevolutions sentencediagramming advertising photography change books publishing printing modernism context interface expectations conventions skills skeumorphs skeuomorph
february 2012 by robertogreco

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MAKE | Zen and the Art of Making

"Some of the most talented and prolific people I know have dozens of interests and hobbies. When I ask them about this, the response is usually something like “I love to learn.” I think the new discoveries and joys of learning are the crux of this beginner thing I’ve been thinking about. Sure, when you’ve mastered something it’s valuable, but then part of your journey is over — you’ve arrived, and the trick is to find something you’ll always have a sense of wonder about. I think this is why scientists and artists, who are usually experts, love what they do: there is always something new ahead. It’s possible to be an expert but still retain the mind of a beginner. It’s hard, but the best experts can do it. In making things, in art, in science, in engineering, you can always be a beginner about something you’re doing — the fields are too vast to know it all."

philliptorrone making learning unschooling curiosity education experts generalists creativegeneralists 2011 zen knowledge expertise lewiscarroll makers electronics art artists science scientists tinkering tinkerers lifelonglearning deschooling mindset beginners invention arduino fear risktaking riskaversion teaching lcproject failure stasis yearoff openminded children interestedness specialists motivation intrinsicmotivation exploration internet web online constraints from delicious
november 2011 by robertogreco

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Developing Your Creative Practice: Tips from Brian Eno :: Tips :: The 99 Percent

"1. Freeform capture. Grab from a range of sources without editorializing… 
 
2. Blank state. Start with new tools, from nothing, and toy around… 
 
3. Deliberate limitations. Before a project begins, develop specific limitations… 
 
4. Opposing forces. Sometimes it’s best to generate a forced collision of ideas… 
 
5. Creative prompts. In the ‘70s Eno developed his Oblique Strategies cards, a series of prompts modeled after the I Ching to disrupt the process and encourage a new way of encountering a creative problem. On the cards are statements and questions like: “Would anybody want it?” “Try faking it!” “Only a part, not the whole.” “Work at a different speed.” “Disconnect from desire.” “Turn it upside down.” “Use an old idea."… 
 
In the end, don’t underestimate your personal feelings about a project. Eno states: “Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off as just being good fun.” Amen to that."

art creativity music productivity brain neuroscience via:preoccupations brianeno 2011 jonahlehrer ideation classideas innovation noticing limitations constraints making doing glvo howwework process idleness boredom thinking ideas has:via from delicious
september 2011 by robertogreco

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Frank Chimero’s Blog: Everything you ever needed to know about design, answered in five minutes by Charles Eames.

"Everything you ever needed to know about design, answered in five minutes by Charles Eames. 
 
The video was produced for the exhibition “Qu’est ce que le design?” (or What is Design?) at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Palais de Louvre in 1969. A full transcript of the interview can be found here, and the video is available as part of The Films of Charles & Ray Eames DVD set."

design art eames charleseames definition frankchimero action creation designethic constraints from delicious
august 2011 by robertogreco

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The Auteur Myth | Wired Science | Wired.com

"…it’s also important to remember that nobody creates Vertigo or the iPad by themselves; even auteurs need the support of a vast system. When you look closely at auteurs, what you often find is that their real genius is for the the assembly of creative teams, trusting the right people with the right tasks at the right time. Sure, they make the final decisions, but they are choosing between alternatives created by others. When we frame auteurs as engaging in the opposite of collaboration, when we obsess over Hitchcock’s narrative flair but neglect Lehman’s script, or think about Jobs’ aesthetic but not Ive’s design (or the design of those working for Ives), we are indulging in a romantic vision of creativity that rarely exists. Even geniuses need a little help."

jonahlehrer creativity collaboration alfredhitchcock stevejobs johngruber design film decisionmaking auteurs howwework constraints support making business teamwork leadership 2011 from delicious
july 2011 by robertogreco

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Weekend At Kermie's: The Muppets' Strange Life After Death | The Awl

"A character without specificity is not one."

"To demonize is to become the demon."

"When I say that the Muppets’ art direction is makeshift, I don’t mean that it’s shoddy. But it celebrates human limitation. As we watch one of these movies, we never lose our awareness that these scenes were made by men and women. Craftmanship, the game of how good any one artist can be, is presented—not hidden—and as such it can inspire others."

"What matters in the Muppet universe isn’t perfection, but expression. Dancing across the screen, they embody the philosophy that it is not what you look like that matters, but what you do."

art creativity film copyright muppets puppets perfection human humanism specificity makeshift making craft limitations constraints via:rushtheiceberg doing meaning purpose glvo jasonsegel jimhenson remix remixing remixculture craftsmanship from delicious
july 2011 by robertogreco

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Animated GIFs Triumphant - Anil Dash

"The facts about animated GIFs are stark. They only support a palette of 256 colors. No current browser lists support for animated GIF as a codec for the HTML5 <video> tag. That omission is understandable, as GIF compression of animation isn't particularly efficient. They even lived under an unfashionable cloud of patent uncertainty during the web's formative years. And those are just some of the traits I love about the format… 
 
But to my eye, GIF is the most popular animation and short film format that's ever existed. It works on smartphones in millions of people's pockets, on giant displays in museums, in web browsers on a newspaper website. It finds liberation in constraints, in the same way that fewer characters in our tweets and texts freed us to communicate more liberally with one another. And it invites participation, in a medium that's both fun and accessible, as the pop music of moving images, giving us animations that are totally disposable and completely timeless."

culture history web animation anildash animatedgifs gifs 2011 kickstarter constraints technology from delicious
july 2011 by robertogreco

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Less Is More: Using Social Media to Inspire Concise Writing - NYTimes.com

"How can online media like Twitter posts, Facebook status updates and text messages be harnessed to inspire and guide concise writing? In this lesson, students read, respond to and write brief fiction and nonfiction stories, and reflect on the benefits and drawbacks of “writing short.”" 
 
[Related: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20selsberg.html AND http://www.pdscompasspoint.com/?p=4466 ]

writing literature twitter facebook brevity classideas fiction stories storytelling socialmedia summary texting constraints from delicious
april 2011 by robertogreco

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David Byrne's Journal: 03.18.10: Collaborations [updated]

"why collaborate if one doesn’t have to? … one big reason is to restrict one’s own freedom in the writing process. There’s a joy and relief in being limited, restrained. … But one might also ask: Is writing ever NOT collaboration? Doesn’t one collaborate with oneself, in a sense? Don’t we access different aspects of ourselves, different characters and attitudes and then, when they’ve had their say, switch hats and take a more distanced and critical view — editing and structuring our other half’s outpourings? Isn’t the end product sort of the result of two sides collaborating? Surely I’m not the only one who does this?"

music collaboration creativity davidbyrne writing constraints limits tcsnmy classideas editing via:preoccupations from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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Uncleftish Beholding - Wikipedia

"Uncleftish Beholding (1989) is a short text written by Poul Anderson. It is written using almost exclusively words of Germanic origin, and was intended to illustrate what the English language might look like if it had not received its considerable number of loanwords from other languages, particularly Latin, Greek and French. 
 
The text is about basic atomic theory and relies on a number of word coinings, many of which have analogues in modern German. The title "uncleftish beholding" calques "atomic theory". The text begins: 
 
"For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.""

language history english linguistics via:migurski uncleftishbeholding 1989 poulanderson theory german germanic constraints classideas writing literature from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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Does a strict upbringing make you a better designer?: Observatory: Design Observer

Coment from pboy: "Oh, barf! Even the Tiger Mom has expressed some ambiguity about the outcomes of her parenting philosophy, but to use the current craze over her as the excuse for yet another reification of the moldy-oldie of graphic design 'Modernism' is just pathetic. Beirut was lucky to have experienced the Kalman corrective to Vignelli's moribund fake discipline. ... romanticize the intolerant and didactic daddies all you want, it's the generation that finally walked away from what had devolved into a rigid and phony stance that let the 'discipline' grow. And that includes Beirut, even if he's too traumatized by his own experience with tough love to be able to recognize it, or to be able admit more clearly, and without the unnecessary flattery to Vignelli, that he learned to think for himself, and move on."

design typography modernism michaelbierut via:migurski parenting amychua rigidity graphicdesign massimovignelli authoritarianism creativity criticalthinking toughlove teaching education learning identity unschooling deschooling discipline tiborkalman rules constraints from delicious
february 2011 by robertogreco

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Tom Armitage on Vimeo
games rules play gaming tomarmitage gamedesign systems systemsthinking constraints gamemechanics interestingnorth classideas from delicious
january 2011 by robertogreco

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space clearing (15 Jan., 2011, at Interconnected)

"Constrained walks and the dérive both reveal the city's psychogeography, and force the city to give up more of itself. It's funny to find, right on my doorstep, the streets I didn't know that I didn't know, the ones I'd got the unknown habit of avoiding. The city grows. 
 
Space clearing makes visible and disrupts the psychogeography of my home. By standing in far corners, I find new perspectives. I strengthen rarely visited spots in my own mental map. Later, I find myself noticing the corners more. My house looks larger. The changed shape of my rooms encourages me to walk differently about the space. I stand in slightly unfamiliar spots, look at my bookshelves with a new-found unfamiliarity, and this prompts new combinations of titles to come to my attention, and new ideas. 
 
I wonder if I could make something to do this for me? Maybe a robot vacuum cleaner programmed to find rarely visited corners and play an attention-grabbing sample, hey, over here, over here."

space perspective mattwebb situationist dérive psychogeography robots constraints flaneur cities homes spaceclearing mentalmaps mapping maps attention 2011 derive from delicious
january 2011 by robertogreco

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Film History 101 (via Netflix Watch Instantly) « Snarkmarket [See also Matt Penniman's "Sci-fi Film History 101" list: http://snarkmarket.com/2010/6492]

"Robin is absolutely right: I like lists, I remember everything I’ve ever seen or read, and I’ve been making course syllabi for over a decade, so I’m often finding myself saying “If you really want to understand [topic], these are the [number of objects] you need to check out.” Half the fun is the constraint of it, especially since we all now know (or should know) that constraints = creativity."

film netflix history cinema movies timcarmody snarkmarket teaching curation curating constraints lists creativity forbeginners thecanon pairing sharing expertise experience education learning online 2010 frankchimero surveycourses surveys web internet perspective organization succinct focus design the101 robinsloan classes classideas format delivery guidance beginner reference pacing goldcoins surveycasts from delicious
december 2010 by robertogreco

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The 101 « Snarkmarket

"Some of the teachers I remember most from college are the ones who would say something like: “Listen. There are only two movies you need to understand to understand [whole giant big cinematic movement X]. Those two movies are [A] and [B]. And we’re gonna watch ‘em.” (I feel like this is something Tim is extremely good at, actually.) It’s a step above curation, right? Context matters here; so does sequence. So we’re talking about some sort of super-sharp, web-powered, media-rich syllabus. I always liked syllabi, actually. They seem to make such an alluring promise, you know? Something like: 
 
Go through this with me, and you will be a novice no more."

curation curating robinsloan frankchimero lists organization experience expertise teaching learning online web classes classideas format delivery guidance beginner forbeginners reference 2010 pacing goldcoins surveys surveycourses the101 education internet perspective succinct focus design history constraints creativity thecanon pairing sharing surveycasts from delicious
december 2010 by robertogreco

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Frank Chimero - The Two Best Things on the Web 2010

"My top two choices, however, stood tall as perhaps the best stock I’ve had the pleasure of reading on the web, both in terms of their scope, but more interestingly about how they treated their content and audience. There’s a pattern here that I enjoy. I’d like to introduce you to them, and hopefully in the process make a bit of a point about the direction I want the web to take in the next year." 
 
"I suppose I’m hungry for curated educational materials online. These are more than lists of books to read: they’re organized, edited, and have a clear point of view about the content they are presenting, and subvert the typical scatter-shot approach of half the web (like Wikipedia), or the hyper-linear, storyless other half that obsesses over lists. And that’s the frustrating thing about trying to teach yourself things online: you’re new, so you don’t know what’s important, but everything is spread so thin and all over the place, so it’s difficult to make meaningful connections."

education learning online lists 2010 frankchimero surveycourses surveys teaching forbeginners web internet curating curation perspective organization succinct focus design history constraints creativity thecanon pairing sharing expertise experience the101 robinsloan classes classideas format delivery guidance beginner reference pacing goldcoins surveycasts from delicious
december 2010 by robertogreco

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The Cognitive Cost Of Expertise | Wired Science | Wired.com

"Now for the bad news: Expertise might also come with a dark side, as all those learned patterns make it harder for us to integrate wholly new knowledge. Consider a recent paper that investigated the mnemonic performance of London taxi drivers. In the world of neuroscience, London cabbies are best known for their demonstration of structural plasticity in the hippocampus, a brain area devoted (in part) to spatial memory. Because the cabbies are required to memorize the entire urban map of London – it’s the most rigorous driving test in the world – their posterior hippocampi swell and expand, leading to permanent changes in the brain. Knowledge shapes matter."

neuroscience psychology constraints jonahlehrer perception brain chess thinking science expertise memory plasticity generalists specialization mindchanges permanence from delicious
november 2010 by robertogreco

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Institute for Advanced Study - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Richard Feynman on the place: "When I was at Princeton in the 1940s I could see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don't get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they're not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. And nothing happens. Still no ideas come. 
 
Nothing happens because there's not enough real activity and challenge: You're not in contact with the experimental guys. You don't have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!"

education princeton science thinking ideas richardfeynman teaching explaining constraints freedom challenge motivation instituteforadvancedstudy freemandyson alberteinstein paulerdos from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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Is Consumerism Killing Our Creativity? :: Articles :: The 99 Percent

"Have you ever fallen into a black hole of comparison shopping? You’re looking for a new digital camera, for instance. You head over to Cnet.com and read some reviews of various cameras, watch the video demos, identify the model you want. Then perhaps you employ Google’s shopping search to price out the options and find the best deal. All of the sudden, it’s four hours later. You’ve found the perfect camera, but your purchasing triumph is tainted by a creeping feeling of, well, disgust. Couldn’t that time have been used better?… 
 
“Highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.” 
 
When we have less to work with, we have to be more creative. Think about that the next time the consumerist impulse is threatening to encroach on your creativity."

consumerism addiction marketing neuroscience creativity productivity consumption constraints hardship pobronson annieleonard from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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Jugaad: Questions for Santosh Ostwal | The Economist

"SANTOSH OSTWAL, husband and father of two, lost his apartment in 2001 after quitting his job in Pune to solve an engineering problem he’d been thinking about for twenty years. Today his solution – a mobile-phone adaptation that triggers irrigation pumps remotely – is saving water in India and helping more than 10,000 farmers avoid several taxing, dangerous long walks a day. I talked to Mr Santosh for a podcast earlier this year, but it’s worth digging back into the transcript now to help explain the Indian concept of jugaad, an inspired kind of duct-taped ingenuity that employs only the tools at hand."

via:blackbeltjones jugaad santoshostwal india hacking hardware constraints makedo localsolutions theadjacentpossible engineering chimericthinking from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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Design Thinking: Dear Don . . . - Core77

"Design thinking harnesses the power of intuition. It is a process, evolved gradually by designers of all kinds, which can be applied to create solutions to problems. People of any background can use it, whether or not they think of themselves as designers. It uses the subconscious as well as the conscious mind, subjective as well as objective thinking, tacit knowledge as well as explicit knowledge, and embraces learning by doing. I like the analogy of an iceberg that has just a little ice above water level, with a vast mass submerged. Rigorous explicit thinking, of the kind encouraged in institutions of higher learning, limits people to conscious thinking and hence to using just a tiny proportion of the potential in their minds - like the ice above the water. The design thinking process allows us to follow our intuition, valuing the sensibilities and insights that are buried in our subconscious - like the ice below the water..."

architecture core77 designthinking industrialdesign graphicdesign process constraints tcsnmy evaluation criticalthinking prototyping visualizaton slection uncertainty iteration iterative synthesis framing ideation envisioning learning making doing handsonlearning learningbydoing unschooling deschooling lcproject methods design billmoggridge from delicious
august 2010 by robertogreco

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eXpO fotos: an exhibition based on photos taken with XOs - OLPC News

"The cool thing is that all of the photos were taken by pupils from four different schools here in Montevideo. The pupils had participated in a workshop organized by a museum which focused on how to use their XOs to capture impressions from their lives and environment...

olpc xo photography exhibits uruguay montevideo perspective art constraints
july 2010 by robertogreco

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Chris Vognar: Twitter's character limit sparks new style of short-form writing | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

"Clark, Ebert, Poniewozik and Karr all agree on one thing: Long writing isn't necessarily good writing. And Twitter doesn't allow for bloat. I've found that paring down my tweets has made my prose leaner. I chop out more adverbs than I used to.

twitter writing socialmedia constraints short-form chrisvognar rogerebert
july 2010 by robertogreco

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Hopeful Monsters and the Trough Of Disillusionment – Blog – BERG

"Having done so – we had a discussion about how they might breed or be re-contextualised in order to create interesting new products.

berg berglondon mattwebb mattjones recombinantgizmos recombinant hacks hacking troughofdisillusionment hopefulmonsters mashups almostdeadtechnologies technology hardware software constraints rfid computing emergence inspiration 2010 theadjacentpossible foocamp glvo hypecycle
july 2010 by robertogreco

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dy/dan » Blog Archive » TEDxNYED Metadata [Forgot to bookmark this—thanks to Basti for making it resurface. Also, see the comment from Michael Wesch.]

"I'm not saying that the only people capable of describing or critiquing classroom teaching are classroom teachers. There are people who don't work in a classroom who know a lot more about my business than I do. I'm saying it's difficult, as one of public education's foot soldiers, to do much with inspiration. I don't have many places to put inspiration, certainly not as many as the edtechnologists walking away from TEDxNYED minds buzzing, faces aglow, and so it tends to settle and coagulate around my bile duct. It's too hard to forget that tomorrow I and three million others will have to teach too many standards of too little quality to too many students with too few resources. What can you do with this?"

danmeyer education tedxnyed curriculum math reflection reform theory practical doingvsimagining wcydwt teaching schools doing inspiration doingvsinspiring edtech hereandnow now implementation constraints frustration flexibility constructivecriticism power control jeffjarvis michaelwesch georgesiemens davidwiley andycarvin
may 2010 by robertogreco

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Near Future Laboratory » The Week Ending 050310

"Why little movies? Why small little films? Well — the rough thinking is to communicate differently to engage good folks who are perhaps optimized for being talked to via PowerPoint. *Death by PowerPoint, is what one might say. And *Death by CAD renderings. The death of the imagination. What we want are things that start conversations — a clever idea, something that compels a discussion and encourages a new way of doing what needs to be done. It’s also, despite the pain of production which presumably gets better with practice, quite a good way to think and design and not just a means of communication. The process of being forced to tell a small, momentary story about a thing or an experience — it gives you special language powers and new perspectives, and visual metaphors to help shape and smooth and refine the thinking. Clearly — it’s not just the film itself which is the outcome of all that work."

julianbleecker film video communication thinking tcsnmy powerpoint presentations storytelling conversation constraints
march 2010 by robertogreco

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Design Under Constraint: How Limits Boost Creativity

"The idea of operating within constraints—of making more with less—is especially relevant these days. From Wall Street to Detroit to Washington, the lack of limits has proven to be a false freedom. With all the economic gloom, you might not be blamed for feeling that the boundless American frontier seems a little less expansive. But design teaches us that this is our hour of opportunity. In the following pages, we explore a few of our favorite constraints. In each case, the imposition of limits doesn't stifle creativity—it enables it."

design creativity innovation culture constraints tcsnmy problemsolving lcproject
february 2010 by robertogreco

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Thinking in Mind: Questioning "Student Centered Learning"

"important tension w/in this approach to structuring learning; the space must be governed by the authority of the discipline, but open to the possibilities that emerge from the students’ prior knowledge & experience. When designing learning around these “liberating constraints” the teacher must strike a balance btwn the authentic constraints put on the task from within the discipline itself, yet carve out the space for students to participate in the experience through their own creativity & individual voices & experiences. There’s a danger at both ends of the balance – a structure too limited removes potential for possibilities to emerge within the study – a structure too loose removes disciplined constraints that actually create possibility for student creativity...the ‘control’ or ‘power’ in the classroom is no longer something once held by the teacher, that is now handed over the students, but rather a measure of control power resides in the discipline."

neilstephenson education constraints teaching control disciple student-centered inquiry-basedlearning inquiry creativity learning tcsnmy
december 2009 by robertogreco

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Michael Bierut: 5 Secrets from 86 Notebooks on Vimeo

"Pulling from his collected notes and sketches from over three decades, renowned graphic designer Michael Bierut shares five simple secrets for doing great creative work."

pentagram michaelbierut design creativity constraints wisdom
october 2009 by robertogreco

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LRB · Bridget Riley: At the End of My Pencil [via: http://anti-mega.com/antimega/2009/10/18/whatever-diminishes-constraint-diminishes-strength]

“For me, drawing is an inquiry, a way of finding out – the first thing that I discover is that I do not know. This is alarming even to the point of momentary panic. Only experience reassures me that this encounter with my own ignorance – with the unknown – is my chosen and particular task, and provided I can make the required effort the rewards may reach the unimaginable.”

design learning art drawing painting inquiry writers constraints ignorance cv process freesom
october 2009 by robertogreco

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Unprofessional Development | Interface | a-n

"McLuhan suggested that the professional tends to ‘accept uncritically the ground rules’, remaining ‘contentedly unaware’ of the all-pervasive environment in which these have been established. By contrast, the amateur is not constrained by the prevailing purview, and so is potentially able to operate beyond such norms....an amateur ‘need not be a genius to stay out of ruts he has never been trained in’, but this kind of benign ignorance need not be the only rationale for such a position: instead it could be that amateurs are able to risk doing things differently, to think in alternative ways to the acceptable mainstream, because they can afford to fail - after all, their professional ‘career’ isn’t on the line. Of course, just because amateurs can do this, it doesn’t mean they will: many unpaid contributors to blogs or zines are simply wannabe professionals, their output mirroring existing conventions and essentially indistinguishable from mainstream publishing of various species."

marshallmcluhan amateur writing risk rules outsiders convention risktaking gamechanging constraints creativity innovation criticism art
august 2009 by robertogreco

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Relevant History: Fred Kaplan on creative freedom

"Lots of creative moments combine prep & training w/ serendipity or the creativity that emerges out of responding to in-the-moment challenges or opportunities...Other creative acts are grounded in, or push the boundaries of, the nature & limits of the media you're working w/ (applies equally to crayons, Lie groups or reinforced concrete). The tinkering movement recognizes the fundamental materiality of most creative work & puts engagement with stuff at its center...as Matthew Crawford & Richard Sennett argue in their books, the creativity of everyone from machinists to musicians is tested & tempered by the demands that their materials make & the traditions in which they work. In other words, thinking of "creativity" as mainly an expression of a psychological gift– a capacity to be creative– is wrong. Or it's incomplete. People aren't creative when they're free to do whatever they want. They're creative when they're free to experiment, to try out new things, to fail at the boundaries."

alexsoojung-kimpang creativity constraints tinkering serendipity materiality innovation cultofyouth risk jazz experimentation milesdavis
august 2009 by robertogreco

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Stand There And Do Nothing - edublogs

"read so many fewer educational blogs now...not because I'm less interested in learning & formal, schools-based education, but because so many educators' blogs are overwhelmingly samey...concentrating on tools of social media...then...how these tools are the solution to a problem that has only been waiting for this tool to show up" AND "beauty was hidden in that block of stone, needing someone to come along & break that spell, remove the covers of rock that hid the creativity underneath. If we were to take this as our direction it would be at loggerheads w/ constraints of curriculum & 5-year structures. Curricula, school buildings & "creative processes" have generally been designed on spreadsheets and therefore look like spreadsheets. They have the same unresponsive, inflexible formulae as spreadsheets or, at the very least, require a master's hand to change them (hardly the stuff to inspire the masses in our organisations to take the creative lead and bend those spreadsheet columns)."

ewanmcintosh change education technology reform schools teaching pedagogy problemsolving constraints flexibility curriculum lcproject tcsnmy gamechanging
august 2009 by robertogreco

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Brian Eno - interview with the producer of U2's No Line On The Horizon - Telegraph [via: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1601-im-very-opinionated-when-i-was-at-art-college]

"I’m very opinionated. When I was at art college, the teachers who helped me were not the ones I agreed with, or the ones who encouraged me, but the ones who took very strong positions. Because if someone does that, you can find your own position in relation to it: what is it that I don’t agree with? In the studio I want to articulate a position clearly enough so that other people can use it – or chuck it away if they don’t want it...In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of manoeuvre. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic & stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people."

constraints brianeno music art computers creativity opinion
march 2009 by robertogreco

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Derek Powazek - Programmers are Tiny Gods

"Like designers, if you give a programmer a problem with parameters, they’ll apply every bit of genius they have to solve it in the best possible way. If you tell them how to do it, you’ll suffer the wrath of an angry God."

design constraints coding wisdom derekpowazek programming software management nerd humor psychology business process
january 2009 by robertogreco

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ed4wb » Insulat-Ed

Applying Clay Shirky: "A scribe [school], someone [an institution] who has given his life over [whose mission is] to literacy [education] as a cardinal virtue, would be conflicted about the meaning of movable type [free-forming educational networks]. After all, if books [information/teachers/experts] are good, then surely more books [information/teachers/experts] are better. But at the same time the very scarcity of literacy [information/teachers/experts] was what gave scribal [school/institutional] effort its primacy, and the scribal [school/institutional] way of life was based on this scarcity. Now the scribe’s [institution’s/school’s] skills [information/teachers/expertise] were [are] eminently replaceable, and his [its] function–making copies of books [educating]–was [is] better accomplished by ignoring tradition than by embracing it.” (p. 67)

education learning tcsnmy networks constraints filtering insulation rules regulation clayshirky control change reform school schooling policy networkedlearning administration leadership management connectivism 21stcenturyskills networking learning2.0 future
december 2008 by robertogreco

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so ive been reading (3 September 2002, Interconnected)

"What if you didn't know all the rules when you started? ... what if the only win-state was that your opponent agreed you'd won? ... in the real world it is possible to break the rules, and the fact that's done changes the nature of the game. ... there are certain rules that can't be broken in the real world ... But there are rules ... which are more mutable. ... It seems to me that rules are an approximation of pushes and pulls; that if this was linguistics then the real world would be optimality theory. Rules are just the bottom of potential wells. ... How to make a game ... that has no rules except geography and a mutable incentive space that changes based on past moves, and no win-state except your opponent agreeing you've won? And how to make a game which uses present-day technology effectively to change the axis we can play along, one that has a mutable morality?"

via:preoccupations videogames gaming games constraints rules time ethics mattwebb
december 2008 by robertogreco

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COPE: James Wallis levels with you » A Thing of Beauty is a Stout Green Toy

"My talk, ‘A Thing of Beauty is a Stout Green Toy’, a description of how a large percentage of the modern games industry can trace its roots directly to one three-page piece of experimental French writing from the mid-1960s, seemed to go down well. Judge for yourself: I’ve uploaded it here, interspersing the slides with the text. Slideshare seems to have done something odd with several of the fonts, but I’m sure you’re big enough to get past that."

oulipo literatura literature france french poetry language writing play constraints books philosophy fiction games gaming art culture linguistics reading creativity community structure math pataphysics crossdisciplinary
november 2008 by robertogreco

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A Thing of Beauty is a Stout Green Toy - SlideShare

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A Story as You Like It [via: http://rooreynolds.com/2008/11/01/playful-2/]

"Do you wish to hear the story of the three alert peas?"

oulipo literatura literature france french poetry language writing play constraints books philosophy fiction games gaming art culture hypertext pataphysics crossdisciplinary
november 2008 by robertogreco

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Oulipo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [via: http://rooreynolds.com/2008/11/01/playful-2/]

"Oulipo (pronounced oo-lee-PO) stands for "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle", which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature". It is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians, and seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members include novelists like Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, poets like Oskar Pastior or Jacques Roubaud, also known as a mathematician."

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Tim Brown on creativity and play | Video on TED.com

"At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't)." see also: http://blog.ted.com/2008/11/the_story_of_se.php (more info about the Serious Play Conference)

play creativity innovation education design learning psychology process ted ideo games exploration art workplace lcproject drawing children tcsnmy rules risktaking risk constraints materials eames experimentation contructionplay tinkering timbrown prototyping make making roleplaying davidkelley
november 2008 by robertogreco

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Big Contrarian → Divide.

"I’ve seen it both ways. Working in a teams where the vast majority of the staff were multi-disciplined, and in teams where each section was clearly its own echo chamber to the point where it felt like the considerations of one team would always be ignored by the other. I can tell you that the former was not only infinitely more productive, but that the results were exponentially better....The idea of there being these two separate things has to be forced away from our thinking. They are one team, which produce one product."

design engineering multidisciplinary productivity creativity constraints process
august 2008 by robertogreco

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Tom Hume: Going mobile - "Yes, the iPhone and iPod Touch are ways to access the Internet, but every mobile device has two states: online and offline...

"..And you either take offline into account, or you’re forgetting 50% of possible use cases."..."Battery life, intermittent connectivity, input constraints, context of use... all different, all unavoidable, all vital to consider when going mobile."

via:rodcorp iphone mobile location interaction mobility constraints offline online internet design context
july 2008 by robertogreco

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A Brief Message: No Resistance Is Futile

"Now when I face a new writing project, I open a spreadsheet. I want a grid to keep track of sources and dates, or to make certain that the timeline of a story makes sense. The grid imposes brevity. Relationships between sentences are exposed. Editing bec

paulford minimalism howwework simplicity constraints excel productivity writing
march 2008 by robertogreco

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99-cent fine dining (kottke.org)

"Henry Alford prepared all his meals for a week using ingredients purchased from 99-cent stores...Trader Joe's shoppers are already accustomed to those constraints."

cooking food traderjoes creativity shopping constraints
march 2008 by robertogreco

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Social Times SXSW - General Theory of Creative Relativity - Brightcove

"Jim Coudal on the General Theory of Creative Relativity" - "Coudal is like a Montessori preschool" "6, 7, 8 people is a really nice non-political size"

coudal creativity cv sxsw theory art design wordplay fun work generalists constraints creative literature writing howwework thinking process
march 2008 by robertogreco

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k-punk: Can't stay long

"Moving from rented property to another, job (& ‘skill set’) to another...unlikely I will ever have a ‘home’ in sense my parents have one...moving revivifies...as much as drains...thought that there could come point when I won't move again is incr

mobility neo-nomads nomads moving possessions stability furniture future change society life constraints homes psychology work jobs careers place identity memory digital books
february 2008 by robertogreco

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collision detection: Is text-messaging the new word processor?

"But if you think of the phone as a new type of word processor, then a different picture emerges. The reason all these young people are writing novels is that they've discovered, quite by accident, that they're carrying typewriters around in their pockets

writing trends texting youth japan literature mobile phones tools society technology constraints clivethompson
january 2008 by robertogreco

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Cognitive Edge - Relaxing controls

"creating controls not to define what people should do, but to create some loose limits or constraints. Any system needs controls, but an organisation is an ecology not a machine...we need to focus on operating conditions rather than prescriptive action."

via:preoccupations davesnowden organizations management administration control rules networks constraints
november 2007 by robertogreco

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Open Space Technology and the legacy of Education [pdf]

"For those who are deeply embedded in the social norms created by schooling, freedom shock is a palpable emotional experience, overcome only after significant reflection and personal transformation."

education learning freedom johntaylorgatto teaching culture society alternative change constraints reform unschooling deschooling lcproject filetype:pdf media:document
october 2007 by robertogreco

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New Freedom Destroys Old Culture: A response to Nick Carr. Many-to-Many:

"The constraints of print were not a product of “emergent maturity.” They were accidents of physical production."

digitization culture constraints change newspapers production socialsoftware freedom future internet music media publishing technology digital criticism
august 2007 by robertogreco

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Pasta&Vinegar » Blog Archive » About design inheritance

“how people and institutions attempt to plan for inheritance or to avoid being locked into the consequences of previous design decisions“

business design history research designinheritance inheritance constraints money institutions technology organizations schools education learning change lcproject structure politics
july 2007 by robertogreco

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3pointD.com » Blog Archive » SXSW Xcript: Joi Ito and Justin Hall

"The US is an anomally from the rest of the world because they don’t treat children and play seriosuly...This whole barrier between play and work is an American thing. In Japan or Euopre you’re always online when youre walking around, it’s like cybe

flow games play narrative children multitasking twitter sms text messaging japan europe us constraints conversation work learning culture
march 2007 by robertogreco

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zero yen house

"Consider a row of homeless peoples’ houses built on an urban street in Japan. If we look at these houses from an architectural perspective, we can discover many of the capabilities and elements in their architecture."

architecture japan design homeless economics constraints space
november 2006 by robertogreco

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Creating Passionate Users: How to make something amazing, right now

"This blog and many others have talked about constraint-driven creativity a lot, but I wanted to emphasize again that it's not just about inspiring (or forcing) creativity, it's also about getting something done. How many of us keep planning to get around

creativity innovation productivity constraints work film videogames programming coding products kathysierra
october 2006 by robertogreco

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