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this is an eclectic page of random raw entries related to the IAS concepts.
Instructions for use: complete ideas on your own and cook up what's good
for you (let me know).
List of News:
Interactive
Ride on the Cluetrain (March
2000)
Evolution,
Creationism, and the Big Bang (February 2000)
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Interactive Ride on the Cluetrain (March 2000)
Return to this
page after you check the Cluetrain Manifesto
(if you have not seen it already). What a breath of fresh air! Four veterans
of the new medium are giving top value to style on the web (the style is the
message, so to speak). And they assign highest value to styles which express
the genuine voice of the designer. In other words:
• don't give us gimmicks (they are a waste of time)
• don't try to fool us (we know the tricks already)
• eye candy is
bad for your health (so is idea candy)
The manifesto (now an engaging book as well) suggests that the most rewarding sites on the web (commercial or otherwise) are those which use their genuine voice and give it to you straight out (whether you like it or not). I couldn't agree more. A frustrating time at the web is when I sift through sites which disguise their contents or give far less than they claim.
Years back,
the late David Ogilvy and others followed a similar concept in advertising:
"the consumer is not a moron," insisted Ogilvy. In the 40's it seemed
somewhat radical not to insult the consumer's intelligence. He gathered his
advertising clues in the book All
Consumers Are Not Created Equal. Riding his early model cluetrain, he became
a founding partner of Ogilvy & Mather,
now one of the biggest ad agencies in the world.
Cluetrain extends this argument to companies (how they present themselves to customers). Picture a company's image as a web page and you get the idea: the explosion of networked communications is allowing us to switch companies much like we turn web pages. The reward will go to companies which are honest and open with their customers (as well as competitive). It is a tough act to follow, but it is heartwarming to believe that it pays to be open and genuine. These days, the marketplace seems to agree more and more. Why? Because information is at our fingertips: we do find out. It used to be that you could fool . . . . Now we are getting to the point where you can't really fool anyone anymore (if we don't want to be fooled--and we don't).
"Markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. . . . The human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked"
"The future of businesses that have a future will be about subtle differences, not wholesale conformity; about diversity, not homogeneity; about breaking rules, not enforcing them; about pushing the envelope, not punching the clock; about invitation, not protection ..." from Cluetrain
Where is the Cluetrain headed? In the words of Christopher Locke, one of Cluetrain's four engineers, our imagination will create the maps to follow:
"Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. . ."
I would stress that all this hinges on education: we must educate ourselves as broadly as possible if we don't want to catch the wrong ride. This ancient wisdom is now becoming potentially accessible to all: that is revolutionary.
And, naturally, interactivity powers the cluetrain: the interactivity of conversations in the broadest sense of the word.
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Evolution, Creationism, and the Big Bang (February 2000)
(The Rochester Leadership Academy with students from kindergarten to 8th grade intends to teach about creationism as a scientific theory along with evolution. New York State education officials say that presenting creationism as a theory rather than religion does not violate state or federal law--NYTimes 2/18/2000)
What does this have to do with IAS?
• In IAS I argue that it is better to teach multiple viable theories rather than just the dominant one at the moment. This is a practical approach: we can't tell what will work in the future, so let's keep our options open (see IAS' choices). This teaches flexibility and responsibility to make things work within systems.
• But creationism has not been developed as a viable theory within the scientific system of work. Perhaps it will. It cannot be presented as a scientific theory to be taught along with other viable theories. Pedagogically, creationism belongs elsewhere. Excluding religion, where could it belong? Natural places would be philosophy, mythology, or cultural studies, along with other views of creation from around the world.
• Yet
if representation of various scientific view of how life unfolds is the issue,
then we could do better at making students aware that there are other viable
evolutionary theories. The work of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is neglected, for example:
it does not replace Darwinism but offers one of many viable complementary alternatives
(see John C. Greene's Debating
Darwin, Edward J. Steele's
Lamarck's
Signature).
• The issue of evolution/creationism in education is actually quite complex. On the one hand there is an attempt to present religion as science. On the other hand there is an attempt to present science as truth. Both positions are counterproductive: the first leads to poor science, the second restricts science (see IAS's arts & sciences).
• My favorite
example to discuss the issue of multiple points of view in science is the Big
Bang theory. In a nutshell: Big Bang is to creationism what Steady State is
to evolution (currently, Fred Hoyle's
quasi
steady state theory remains an alternative to what he once termed tongue-in-cheek
the Big Bang view of cosmology--for more ideas see Eric J. Lerner's
The
Big Bang Never Happened). Big Bang cosmology is not religious, but it cannot
avoid calling for a moment of sudden and scientifically unexplainable creation.
A steady state view has less theological baggage. It is more in line with processes
of emergence. It holds a far more interactive view
of nature. That doesn't make it more correct, only more participatory (an IAS
delight).
• To conclude: we do our students a serious disservice by presenting as scientific what is not. But a benefit of the ongoing controversy over evolution/creationism is to show that we do a similar disservice to our students by restricting the scientific imagination. This issue becomes a non-issue, the closer science is to technology and to everyday problems where the bottom line is: "what works, works" (see IAS' marketplaces).
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interactive
art space © 2000
by luis o. arata contents
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