What's a Twitter?

What’s most amusing and remarkable, I think, about this video is the fact that it goes back only eight years. In 2004, who would’ve ‘thunk of’ blogs? I stumbled on a Wall Street Journal article, around 2008, about following someone and something, but I had no idea what Twitter was, either.

Well, how about going back further in time, shall we, when the internet was still a novelty?

Some choice quotes from this video:

• Technology and the internet became “tools of the human spirit.”
• “It feels a bit like everyday human fellowship, but it’s bigger and more precise … It’s tap a yearning to connect.”
• “It’s a modulated anarchy. It’s an interesting kind of restraint that you find. There’s not a lot of cursing or swearing. There’s not a lot of personal cuts … There’s not screen fulls of ‘go to hell’.”
• “This overwhelming desire for people to be rooted.”

Hmm, the good old days, eh, before YouTube gave thousands of viewers a forum to vent their rude, demeaning and vulgar sentiments. The explosive rate of innovation in media and technology in the last decade alone seems to have released scores of us from restraint. Lawmakers and citizens alike sometimes bemoan a sense of lawlessness on the Wild Wild West of the internet. Hardly a form of restraint, is it.

Now fast forward to the present, and glimpse at the future.

We’re now well into the second decade of the 21st century. If the first decade brought us such revolutionary media as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and such revolutionary technology as iPod and iPhone … If the first decade also brought us such disruptive economic, political and military tragedies … then what can we expect next? If the curve on which media and technology progress gets faster and steeper, then might we fall off and get left behind at some point in the future? Or can we slow and flatten that curve a bit, so we can catch our breath and catch up with that rate of progress?

There are all kinds of predictions for this ‘teenage’ decade. Such as mobile technology being the next frontier for disruptive innovation, business models, and global reach. Such as China supplanting the US and becoming the number one economy in the world. Such as Google+ overtaking Facebook. In point of fact, we don’t know exactly. To me, predictions are an amusing academic, if not cocktail, activity. But with what I call The Black Swan algorithm, we ought to be mindful of, prepare for, and essentially expect the unexpected!

How was the preceding decade for you, and what do you anticipate in this decade? If time, money and knowledge were not an issue, what ‘next big thing’ would you want?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

To Stop or Not to Stop

It’s ludicrous to try to stop media.

Whether it’s social, traditional, or ‘old school,’ the means with which we can communicate with one another are vast, varied, and frankly unstoppable. The thing is, as media has evolved in the last several decades, we’ve adopted new forms of it without necessarily shedding old forms of it. Sure, authorities can try to shut down Twitter or the internet in general, but then people have access to TV, landline, or simply word-of-mouth in their community or circles.

So when Duncan Geere asks this question (left), I think he is speaking pointedly about (a) the realities of media as multiple platforms, but also speaking more tacitly about (b) the complexities of the content that passes through and the people doing that passing.

Geere mentions the UK Prime Minister specifically at the beginning, “Amidst widespread calls from MPs, David Cameron has pledged to investigate the possibility of turning off social networks during times of crisis, lumping Britain in with some rather unsavoury company.”

But when I follow that link to what was pledged, I see that Cameron was actually talking about stopping the people passing destructive content, not about stopping the media.

(quote credit)

Put this way, I agree with Cameron. Criminal activity must be stopped, anywhere it occurs and anyhow it’s done.  He goes on to add that the police must be verse in social media and mobile devices, and have the tools necessary to monitor such activity on such platforms. I agree once again. I understand, for example, that authorities in Egypt weren’t as verse in this respect, and consequently were caught off guard when the rebellion gathered momentum in social media.

Geere’s article triggered a slew of comments basically agreeing that, yes, trying to stop media is ludicrous. I encourage these readers to follow what Cameron actually pledged.  I imagine, then, that they’d have a different point of view about this sensitive, complex matter.

At the end of the day, it’s highly impractical, if not impossible, for us to find and follow all the news reports about a set of incidents. Still, I believe it’s a good idea to read a little more, before reacting.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Internet Reflections and Reversals

(image credit)

Like millions of others, I am terribly excited about the internet.  Social media makes it so easy to connect with people around the world.  YouTube, in particular, is a treasure trove of learning and enjoyment.  I love to think and tinker with ideas, and I love to study its practically limitless videos.  From Albert Einstein, and drawing on his tectonic equation E = mc², in order to help companies push their results further.  To Warren Buffet, and reflecting on his beguilingly simple approach to investing, such ‘Invest only in business that you can understand.’  To the Tour de France, as I am a cycling fanatic and I can’t get enough of racing videos to watch.

If you happen not to be convinced on how crazy revolutionary and exciting the internet is, have a look at this video by Erik Qualman.

Getting lost in the internet

Still, I know how easy it is to get absorbed on the internet, and lose touch with people in the physical world.  How easy to get caught up on the treadmill of answering my private messages, e-mails, SMSs etc., and often times it seems I fall behind anyway.  Then, I’m frustrated, and feel reluctant to go out and socialize.

So it is with these introductory words that I mention an intelligent, illuminating yet warm, approachable article that John Freeman wrote:  Not so Fast.

Slow down, feel the grass under your feet.

Everything we say needn’t travel at the fastest rate possible. The difference between typing an email and writing a letter or memo out by hand is akin to walking on concrete versus stroll­ing on grass. You forget how natural it feels until you do it again. Our time on this earth is limited, the world is vast, and the people we care about or need for our business life to operate will not always live and work nearby; we will always have to com­municate over distance. We might as well enjoy it and preserve the space and time to do it in a way that matches the rhythms of our bodies. Continuing to work and type and write at speed, however, will make our communication environment resemble our cities. There will be concrete as far as the eye can see.

Get physical, go out and have coffee with a friend.

A large part of electronic commu­nication leads us away from the physical world. Our cafes, post offices, parks, cinemas, town centers, main streets and commu­nity meeting halls have suffered as a result of this development. They are beginning to resemble the tidy and lonely bedroom commuter towns created by the expansion of the American interstate system. Sitting in the modern coffee shop, you don’t hear the murmur or rise and fall of conversation but the con­tinuous, insect-like patter of typing. The disuse of real-world commons drives people back into the virtual world, causing a feedback cycle that leads to an ever-deepening isolation and neglect of the tangible commons.

Pause and step back, don’t send.

We need context in order to live, and if the environment of electronic communication has stopped providing it, we shouldn’t search online for a solution but turn back to the real world and slow down. To do this, we need to uncouple our idea of progress from speed, separate the idea of speed from effi­ciency, pause and step back enough to realize that efficiency may be good for business and governments but does not always lead to mindfulness and sustainable, rewarding relationships. We are here for a short time on this planet, and reacting to demands on our time by simply speeding up has canceled out many of the benefits of the Internet, which is one of the most fabulous technological inventions ever conceived. We are connected, yes, but we were before, only by gossamer threads that worked more slowly. Slow communication will preserve these threads and our ability to sensibly choose to use faster modes when necessary. It will also preserve our sanity, our families, our relationships and our ability to find happiness in a world where, in spite of the Internet, saying what we mean is as hard as it ever was. It starts with a simple instruction: Don’t send.

Uncluttering, cleaning up

(image credit)

Years ago I got into the habit of throwing things out regularly.  I had a large study in my house in Chicago, and on pickup day for trash and recycling, I made sure I had a few old magazines, papers, and other unwanted stuff in the bins.

Then, I lived in a flat in Dubai, and it was only about the size of my basement where I had my study.  Not much stuff here, that is.  Still, my communication and computing devices had loads of stuff that, in keeping with this habit, I regularly got rid of.  For example, I used a clean-up program to delete junk on my PC and “clear all history” on my browser, regularly.  I deleted old contacts, and friends who didn’t respond, on my smartphones and Skype.  I did the same with some contacts, groups and pages on Facebook and LinkedIn, and with some subscriptions and favorites on YouTube.  I quickly deleted e-mails I didn’t read anyway, or I simply unsubscribed to e-mail lists.

In this vein, I wrote about this poem:  'Delete' (February 2011).



So what stays are the people and things that matter most to us.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Value for Many

Imagine this. You’re a confident young engineer, with an outstanding university pedigree. Now, you’re part of a project team, and together you’re called upon to create something as commonplace as the car. But you’re given such severe cost restrictions that you’re wont to throw your university books out the window, if not scratch your head and bang it against the wall.

Your director tells you, “I don’t care how you do it, just do it!”

This is a talk by RA Mashelkar at TED India, and he offers lessons not just on innovation and philanthropy per se, but also on human capabilities under severe constraints. Below are screen shots from this talk.

It may be a surprise for many of us to know that the majority of the world is impoverished. Never mind access to Facebook. Never mind possession of a computer or mobile.  The ultra poor among us don’t even have easy access to drinkable water, let alone anything remotely technological.  Theirs is pretty much a world of low-tech or no-tech.  

So Mashelkar challenges us:

Media and technology experts and laypeople alike may speak as if the internet ruled the world. As if the staggering number of Facebook members, about 750 million today, defined social relationships. Well, this figure represents just 11% of the world population.  So vast swaths of our fellow citizens are not posting status updates or checking each others’ photos. Facebook is arguably an internet giant, but its dominion is actually small.

So how do we, with our media and technology firepower, do good for the majority that need our help but don’t necessarily have the means to secure it?

This TED Talk speaks to what is possible with the creation of the ultra low-cost Nano car and Jaipur Foot. Some of the posted comments were critical of what Mashelkar shared. Granted, helping the poor is not an easy endeavor and sometimes solving one problem begets another problem, such as traffic gridlock and pollution because of car affordability among the masses. Still, his message is important to heed:  The problems of the poor can be solved, perhaps just in part but solved indeed.

In the end, I found his challenges inspirational.

• We’re not talking about low cost, but ultra low cost and extreme affordability. 
• We’re not talking about exclusive innovation, but inclusive ones so that the many can benefit as well. 
• We’re not talking about incremental innovation, with lengthy development period, but disruptive, transformational innovation done at fractions of the usual time. 
• We’re not talking about wide-ranging (concave) talent, but convex lens leadership meant to harness the power of uncommon focus on a challenge.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Think Different

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify and vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Inspiring commercial and ad campaign from Apple. A great success in 1997, it took the public by storm and won critics over. It heralded the return of Steve Jobs, and it ushered in a revolutionary first decade of the 21st century for Apple. Think: iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad. Jobs’ name or image is nowhere in this commercial. Yet, like him or not, he unquestionably belongs among the luminaries captured here.

It isn’t easy perhaps for many of us to think differently. It requires us to break conventional wisdom when looking at things and drawing conclusions about events. Nassim Taleb, author of the book The Black Swan, spoke at length about the foibles of human thinking. For example, psychologists or consultants are wont to identify the traits that make a particular leader successful, say, strategic in thinking, engaging of others, and driven toward results. We believe, then, that if we acquire these traits, we can and should be successful, too. What these experts sometimes forget is what Taleb calls “silent evidence.” What about those leaders who had these very traits, but who failed? They may be far from the limelight, if their failures weren’t at all colossal, relegated into the dusty annals of those who couldn’t ‘cut the mustard,’ and therefore deserve not to be acknowledged or studied. So, to think differently means, among a number of things, weighing things that stand out and also things that don’t. Doing this makes us appreciate, I believe, how extraordinarily difficult it can be to achieve the levels of success portrayed in this Apple ad campaign.

Let’s unpack that inspiring quote above, shall we, and let me add to its short list of luminaries.

“They have no respect for the status quo.”

Sigmund Freud.  Indeed he dared to cut against the grain of 19th century Victorian Europe, by delving into the sexual and aggressive drives within us. Yes, some dismiss or otherwise vilify his views, but there’s no denying his impact on culture and insight into people. For example, these drives percolate in our unconscious, and can prompt us to act irrationally or impulsively. Indeed he argued, provocatively, that we as people weren’t even masters of our own ‘house’ (mind and body). Rather, it was the id and these unconscious drives.

“They push the human race forward.”

Charles Darwin. Through astute observation and painstaking study, he gathered the pieces of a colossal framework to explain the evolution of life. Adaptations over generations vis-a-vis the environment resulted in remarkable changes in the shape, function, and appearance of life. Moreover, he had the gall to suggest that the human was cousin to the chimp and that, with modern scientific discoveries, both human and chimp had a common ancestry in the fish! Evolution was what brought about and pushed the human race forward, not creationism, he argued.

“To think that they can change the world.”

Nicolaus Copernicus. The Ptolemaic view of the universe survived for centuries. It was a geocentric one, with the earth as the cosmic center. Copernicus had a radically different notion. He was greatly reluctant to publish his findings, for fear of criticism, censure, perhaps even death, from government and church authorities. Still, as Galileo succeeded him, there was ultimately no denying that Copernicus was right. That our universe was in fact a heliocentric one and that the earth was simply one of numerous celestial bodies revolving around the sun. What a blow to the ego of humankind, its world having changed before its very eyes!

These three, plus the Albert Einstein, the Amelia Earhart, the Pablo Picasso et al. captured in this Think Different commercial, are exceptional individuals indeed. Rare visionaries and talent, with whom, like it or not, we are gifted. The vast majority of us belong to an average lot, in contrast. Still, I believe that in our small ways, in our daily lives, we can think differently and consequently solve problems, make changes, and fashion things for the better for others.

In what ways have you thought differently about things, and what were the effects of doing so?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

Lessons on Innovation from the Poor

(image credit)

What companies or products come to mind first, when we speak of innovation?  For me, it’s Apple and Google.  It’s the iPod as a platform for iTunes, and iPhone followed by the iPad, all of which have put music, communications and computing on-the-go.  It’s about the sophisticated search algorithms that millions of us use everyday to get hordes of information we look for, at literally fractions of a second.

This TED Talk by Anil Gupta tells a different kind of tale, one that to me is no less compelling (albeit far more unheralded) than what Steve Jobs presents in a big-stage product launch or what the Google boys, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, cook up for the web.

“People may be economically poor, but they’re not poor in the mind.”  

So goes Prof. Gupta, and in a short stretch of time he offers numerous practical illustrations of his point.

I’ve heard this said many times:  ‘Nothing is impossible’ … ‘Anything is possible, if you put your mind to it’ … ‘Impossible is actually I’m possible.’  Many people may believe this, and find it quite motivational.  I don’t.  When we stop to think about it, there are so many things that we as human beings simply cannot do.  For example, even if I had the best of basketball coaches training me, for years and years, I will never have the legs to jump like superstar Michael Jordan.  Scores of people cannot, either.  Have me tutored by the best scientists in the world, around the clock, and still I can assure you that I will never have the intelligence of Albert Einstein.  Vast swaths of us have just average-functioning brains.

But within the nebulous boundaries of our talents, there are indeed very clever, useful, even artistic things that we can come up with.   Things that make our lives more livable, and others’ lives a bit easier and more productive.  The “we” I refer to are among the poor in India, and not just in India but in other countries where impoverished villages exist.  For us who live in industrialized, corporate or wealthy sectors of the world, herein lie lessons for innovating.

How does this innovation happen?

First, it comes from within those very villages, where hardships are a defining way of life.  Where income may hover over the bottom ranges of a country’s currency (e.g., rupees).  Where everyday devices at their disposal are no where like a computer, handheld or desk bound, but more a matter of low-tech (e.g., a bicycle, powered by muscle and bone alone) or even no-tech (e.g., your head, on which you carry water)!

Second, it comes from people living in those villages.  Who think, who reflect.  Who solve common, day-to-day problems, such as grinding small amounts of grain or washing clothes at costs that villagers can afford.  They say, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’  True, very true.  Moreover, it requires a ‘mother,’ symbolic of someone who knows her culture (home) and people (family) intimately.  Can someone like me, who grew up in suburban Chicago in a middle-class family, do what these local innovators have done?  Maybe, or maybe not.  I’m smart, but I’m wholly foreign to their way of life.  My mind is entrenched on Google, and how to get quick answers to my queries.  Not on grinding or washing anything.

Third, it comes from an organization like the Honey Bee Network, which facilitates such innovation, encourages the villagers, and finds a way for them to get some income.  Now I’m not familiar with HBN, but my sense is that they grasp the culture of these people and they know how to help them in ways that recognize, not undermine, their way of life.

Finally, it comes from what I feel is the warm, encouraging spirit of a man like Prof. Gupta, who believes in the very things he says, “Creativity counts … knowledge matters … innovations transform … incentives inspire.”

Solving poverty is complicated, even overwhelming, but I believe it’s a responsibility of us more privileged people to help in this effort.  I believe this TED Talk offers a key algorithm in such a solution:  that is, encourage and-or recognize useful innovations within these impoverished villages.

What do you think, in what ways do you innovate?  What are the common problems you face everyday, and how have you solved them?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD

BlackBerry and its Discontent

(image credit)

Not hopeful about RIM

Let’s be clear about this. I love my BlackBerry for the reasons that many others love it. Its QWERTY keyboard is perfect for me, as it’s familiar to my laptop-fashioned mental schema. Also the surface of its keys fit my thumbs very well, so I can tap a message quickly and accurately. I like the range of messaging options available to me, from BB Messenger (BBM), to WhatsApp and Google Talk, and of course to the commonplace SMS and e-mail. Oh, yeah, I really like the LED, and I check my BB often for its blinking red light, as if it were some kind of fix for an addict (lol)!

Still, I’m not hopeful about the BB, and as Roger Cheng advises in his article, my next mobile device will be an iPad2 and either an iPhone or an Android-operated smartphone. Why? Well, for reasons that have to do more with Research in Motion (RIM), the BB maker, rather than the BB per se.

You see, I bought my (first and only) BB in July 2010. Friends had been asking for my BB PIN, and I was embarrassed not to have one. But in less than a month, there was an uproar about the United Arab Emirates, where I live, threatening to block BBM services. Saudi Arabia and India made similar threats to RIM, unless it allowed these countries access to its BBM data. They cited security concerns. This issue was intriguing in and of itself, but that’s another story. What I learned about RIM, with just a bit of research, was how UN-innovative it was and how late-to-the-party it was. The Torch was coming out about that time, and RIM was touting its touch screen and sliding keyboard. Whoop-de-doo (haha) ;P Been there, done that. It was so first-decade-of-the-21st-century.

Reports were that about 500,000 BBM users were in the UAE at that time. So I expressly reassured my friends that the UAE was unlikely to actually block BBM. But I also posted on Facebook that BB was on the royal road to extinction. What Apple does, what Google does … well, that excites me, both as a consumer and as a businessman.

I love my BB, as I said, but my love for it has waned steadily over the past year. I gathered that RIM was in a panic mode about how to regain its market share. Well, that’s understandable, but panic in the high stakes business of mobile devices is not exactly a confidence-booster in the marketplace, is it.

Unfortunate negative association

Rioting must be as old as humankind itself, and it’s no less tragic when it happens now.  It inflames emotion, to say the least.  One friend on Facebook, for example, described the rioters in the UK as a “bunch of pathetic wastes of space.”  Another friend is sick and tired of hearing all the feeble excuses for their rioting.

A Bloomberg article noted that many of the rioters organized themselves on the BlackBerry Messenger.  As one marketing director suggested, the association between this unrest and BB was another negative hit for an already panicked Research in Motion, the maker of BB.  You see, RIM is rapidly losing market share to Apple and other mobile makers using the Android operating system.

Well, it’s a bit of irony for RIM, isn’t it, that so many of these young people in the UK seem to have taken up the BB.  Good for its market share, no?

The most unfortunate irony for me, however, is this negative association.  For a UK Parlaiment member to call for a ban on BBM services is as illogical, indeed, as to blame the long-trusted (stationary) phone or the venerable handwritten letter as the cause of negative events communicated through its medium.  If BBM could speak, it would harken back to that old saw, “Don’t kill me!  I’m only the messenger.”  It’s frankly nutty.

So it is.  Such association is clearly part of human nature.  It’s irresponsible, too, that Bloomberg would (initially) title this article so provocatively that it reinforces this sort of blaming:  “BlackBerry Falls from Executive Suite to UK Mobs.”  Alas, the editors of Bloomberg are part of that human nature.

I have noted before that under heightened emotion, in high stress situations, people can lose their sense of perspective, judgment, and logic.  Put more bluntly, the smartest among us can come across as downright dumb, if subjected to sufficient degrees of pressure.  Understandably, the thinking mechanisms in our brain have their limits.  So, just as with any piece of machinery, these mechanisms can break down, if operated beyond its predesigned uses.

What to do, then?

All parties involved in this rioting need to find a way, of course, to calm down and regain self-control.  So better judgment can prevail once again.  RIM itself must grasp human nature in all of its glorious (and IN-glorious) manifestations, especially how it gets played out in groups (i.e., mobs).  As Apple and Google understand rather superbly, their success is based not just on how innovative their technology is, but also on how well they grasp human thinking, emotion and behavior.  How well the executives at RIM understand these, I don’t know.

It is laudable indeed that RIM, as a “good corporate citizen,” will work with authorities to help in any way that it can.  But this is not enough!  The company must give a firm, clear message that it does not condone the violence in the UK and that, at the same time, people ought not kill the messenger.  BB is not to blame for the rioting!  But as of right now, there is no such message on the RIM website.

Amidst this awful rioting, RIM has an opportunity to strengthen its position, and to do so in a sensitive but strong manner.  Is it late-to-act again?

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD