Ross Hill » Ideas

Dangerous Ideas

Ross Hill — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:00:46 +0000

When Dave Pollard saw the Edge Foundation‘s bland, disconnected answers to the question “What is your dangerous idea?” he decided that he should put together his own list of ideas.

“There are ideas that threaten deeply-entrenched ideas and strongly-held, widely-held beliefs. Because those who they threaten will do almost anything to prevent them becoming widely accepted. And because they’re actionable. Take them as your own and they will change what you think, believe and do.”

Our civilization is in its final century [John Gray]. No civilization lasts forever, and there is no political, economic, social, educational, religious or other ‘solution’ that will make the members of any civilization suddenly and radically change their behaviour. We do what we must do, and nature will do what she must to compensate for our excesses, and, since…

Nature always bats last [Kenny Ausubel], the world will go on just fine after we are gone.

The crowd is always wiser than the experts [James Surowieki]. No elite, no godlike president or junta, no priest or CEO, no crack team of managers or consultants or global thought leaders can make better decisions, or predict the future better, than all of us together in our collective wisdom. Leadership of all kinds is a dysfunctional vestige of an era in which that collective wisdom could not readily be tapped.

The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred [George Bernard Shaw]. If you really think that anybody really understands what another person has said, do an experiment after the next presentation you attend and ask attendees one-on-one immediately afterwards what they got out of it. You’ll be astonished.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality [Bucky Fuller]. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Show, don’t tell [Derrick Jensen]. This is a key answer to the malaise of our education system, and to the ineffectiveness of ‘knowledge management’. We learn much more from observing than from listening or reading, and we learn even more by trying it ourselves, hands on.

Human beings will be happier only when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again [Kurt Vonnegut]. The way we live today isn’t the way human beings were meant to live, and deep inside we know it. That doesn’t mean throwing away technology, it means interacting with those in your community (human and non-human) in deep, authentic, synaesthetic ways we have forgotten.

People will listen when they’re ready to listen and not before [Daniel Quinn]. Probably, once upon a time, you weren’t ready to listen to an idea than now seems to you obvious, even urgent. Let people come to it in their own time. Nagging or bullying will only alienate them. Don’t preach. Don’t waste time with people who want to argue. They’ll keep you immobilized forever. Look for people who are already open to something new.

No one is in control This is two dangerous ideas in one, though I’m not sure if anyone has realized this explicitly. The first idea is that because no one is in control, the appearance of control that governments and corporations and their handmaidens in the media try to convey is all illusion: This world is far too complex for even the most powerful and complicitous elite to be able to steer or direct. That is the liberating idea: Don’t worry about fighting the ‘bad guys’, because they’re just caught up in the flow like all the rest of us. The second idea is that because no one is in control, everything is out of control. That is the terrifying, personal responsibility-burdening idea: No one can stop global warming, biochemical warfare, [your worst nightmare scenario here]. So now what do you do?

My question to you: What do these dangerous ideas mean to you, today?

Winter hibernation with Pareto

Ross Hill — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:11:15 +0000

Gilligan’s Fish and Chips in Barwon Heads know that they do 85% of their sales over summer, so they have decided make the most of it by closing for 4 months of quiet winter hibernation!

Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. This observation that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes later became known as the Pareto principle (and also as the law of the vital few).

Dormancy is a period in an organism’s life cycle when growth, development, and (in animals) physical activity is temporarily stopped. This minimizes metabolic activity to help an organism conserve energy. Dormancy tends to be closely associated with environmental conditions.

Hibernation is a state of inactivity during winter. It may last several days or weeks depending on species, ambient temperature, and time of year, and fur on the animal’s body. The typical winter season for a hibernator is characterised by periods of hibernation interrupted by sporadic euthermic arousals wherein body temperature is restored to typical levels.

It makes good sense doesn’t it?

Networking Awesomely with people everywhere

Ross Hill — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:54:02 +0000

The way I think about networking has evolved with the realisation that we have got people everywhere now. We are more connected than ever before and the new messaging networks we use mean that we are now linked with everything in the world through only a few degrees.

These connections have always been there, but the time it takes to make the connection is now much quicker and that is why this is really exciting. As you travel around the planet, being able to talk to a local who shares your interests is amazing on a number of levels. The obvious one is that you can see the place from a locals perspective instead of through the lens of a tourist. They can put you in touch with friends from your industry or who have similar hobbies. Or depending on the language barrier, it may just mean that you have somebody who speaks your language! None of these are meant to substitute the spontaneity of travel – but they can be a good supplement particularly if you are traveling over long periods of time.

You never know what will emerge from the people you talk with. I met with Colin Wright because I stumbled onto his blog post describing how he shifts location every four months based on where his blog readers vote for him to go, and that he would be passing through melbourne. I suggested we get a coffee but since we both had a flexible day that turned into a drive down the great ocean road stopping in at some awesome local cafes and a great organic burger shop. When I mentioned I would be going through LA on the way to SXSW in Austin a few weeks later Colin mentioned I should couchsurf with his buddy Andrew Elkins who lives there. So when I stepped off the plane Andrew gave me a lift from the airport to Venice Beach / Santa Monica and pointed out the landmarks to explore. I paired that with some recommendations from people from all around the world through Twitter and had a really interesting day. That night we had a great dinner and discussion about some shared interests before a good nights sleep and a trip back to the airport for my onward journey. The experience was so much richer because I had locals to talk to and stay with. Locals that weren’t complete strangers. I repeated this for much of my trip.

Your network will grow over time, and as the mass builds so will your gravity – attracting great opportunities. Here are three things to keep in mind as you build your network on the fly:

Introduce the people you know to each other and become the connection. This will mesh your network tighter and ultimately lead to richer opportunities. You can probably think of two people you know now who would should catch up – make it happen.
Be interested in what people do. Try to understand their stories and where they are going. To do this you need to talk to interesting people. Go find them!
Follow up quickly and relevantly when you meet people. It can be as easy as a simple email or twitter reply but it makes a big difference and gives them a chance to raise anything they didn’t get to in the initial conversation.

It’s not a business network or a personal network – it’s simply your network. It is a foundation that can enable amazing things for you, if you are open to them.

This is the piece I contributed to Colin Wright’s ebook, Networking Awesomely.

Minimalists blogging

Ross Hill — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:34:56 +0000

the less constraints you have the more agile you can be. minimalism describes the pendulum away from the consumerist behaviour of today, towards a simpler way of living that steps more lightly on the world. it is about clearing non-essentials to gain focus and clarity.

these five blogs from four bloggers have been writing some really amazing posts recently. you should take a look, then i certainly recommend subscribing to them.

colin wright from exilelifestyle
colin is a designer from la who moves country every four months to wherever his blog readers vote for him to go.

his book is networking awesomely.

ev bogue from farbeyondthestars
ev lives with less than 50 things and works from anywhere in the world

his ebook is the art of being minimalist.

tammy strobel from rowdykittens
tammy lives car-free and is a tiny house enthusiast

her ebook is simply car-free.

leo babauta from zenhabits
leo is very well known for his zenhabits blog, one of the originals in the simplicity space

his ebook is the simple guide to a minimalist life.

leo also writes mnmlist
the most minimal blog of them all!

What have you done that’s interesting to me right now?

Ross Hill — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:37:57 +0000

I have been particularly interested in how to search the collective consciousness and also in how we can mine these information flows for sentiment (tip: it’s not an easy task!) especially since they are all becoming realtime now.

There is a huge amount of activity in the social web profile analytics space right now because this is the first time people have had access to such an enormous amount of detailed realtime data. In the past, researchers had to spend most of their time collecting data so that they can analyse it, but with the social web we are publishing so much information that the focus can shift to how we filter that data.

When Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read Write Web recently asked Kevin Marshall from Wow.ly what he thought about Twitter giving everyone access to the realtime message stream, he gave a very interesting response:

“The more I do with and around social data, the less interested I seem to become in ‘realtime’ and the more interested I become in ‘over time.’ When I first started hacking on Twitter (and Facebook) apps, I was in love with the idea of parsing and analyzing data in real-time and I was very link/content focused. But the more I build and use these tools, the more I see the value in the history and the trails of the data set – especially when you consider that we are all living in a more asynchronous world then ever before thanks to things like blogs, Tivo, Hulu, iTunes, and other media-on-demand stuff. I don’t think it’s really so much about ‘what are you doing right now’ as it is ‘what have you done that’s interesting to me right now?’… and I think you get that by aggregating and analyzing.”

What have you done that’s interesting to me right now? – bingo. Until now we haven’t had enough data to be able to answer questions like that, but it is quickly becoming available to everyone. One of Google’s major advantages in the market so far has been the sheer amount of data they have access to, and that has given them a huge head start in this space – but now everyone else is rapidly catching up and that means very good things are ahead for users.

The answers are coming.

Solving the problem at heart

Ross Hill — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 10:48:39 +0000

At the lean meetup in Melbourne recently there was a discussion about how to deal with feedback – from visitors, customers, investors, and the product team. The discussion turned to Apple and how it would appear from the outside to be run by what Steve Jobs believes to be the right thing to do. But how about another perspective on that?

Steve Jobs has commented on their connection with the consumer:

“We did iTunes because we all love music. We made what we thought was the best jukebox in iTunes. Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard. And the reason that they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. You know? I mean, the first few hundred customers were us.”

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.

“So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me “A faster horse.” ‘ “

And on the iPod’s cultural impact vs Microsoft’s Zune:

QUESTION: Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?

ANSWER: In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

One of the keys to lean thinking is that you are asking the customer how they want you to solve their problems, you ask them what the problem is and how much they would pay to solve it – then you go and solve it in the most effective way you can.

Apple took something very complex and made it simple, and it was a massive success.

Your mobile phone as the chief communications device

Ross Hill — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:57:20 +0000

Since writing about The Tablet / iPad I have been bouncing around some ideas on how my behaviour would change by trying to replace my MacBook Pro with the iPad. One avenue of thought is how mobile phone interactions evolve when all these devices are part of the web.

One of the most important details is that like the iPhone the iPad will run one application at a time – many people see this as a fatal flaw but I see it as a potentially quite positive constraint. People talk about the inefficiency of multitasking and how single-tasking is the way to go, but most of us still go on to run 20 applications at once on our computers!

But what about using multiple single-task devices, like we used to? You will rarely be carrying around just the iPad by itself, as Steve Wozniak touches on in a recent interview:

Q: What’s your favorite phone?
A: The iPhone, because of the apps. By the way, I solved the problem of battery life and [the lack of] multitasking on the iPhone.

Q: Really?
A: Yeah. I just have two iPhones, so if the battery runs down on the first one, I can use the other. And if I’m talking on one, I can use the other one to look something up. You would not believe how much use I get out of that.

You are always going to have your iPhone with you when using your iPad, and it is already a phone but then you add in the Facebook app, the Skype app, the Twitter app, and it becomes the natural communications device. This is how I have been using it recently and it works really well. Anthony Volodkin from Hype Machine has a similar experience:

“One interesting way I started dealing with this is that I don’t have email open on my computer, but I keep my iPhone on my desk, glance at the phone to see what kind of emails I have. Because it’s a phone, your brain processes it in a different way, so, for whatever reason, it’s not as distracting. I’ll pick up the phone to make sure that it doesn’t have any of those 5% ones.”

The underlying technology that makes this sort of setup possible is realtime cloudification – ensuring that any change I make on one device is instantly replicated all over the web to all of my other devices. This shift has been coming for a long time and in the communications space it is finally here.

Have you tried using your phone as your main communications device?

Reworking business with Jason Fried

Ross Hill — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:14:59 +0000

Jason Fried just spoke at SXSWi about his new book, REWORK. He reminds me of the simple reason I enjoy running The Hive entrepreneurial networking group - it is really refreshing to see people talk passionately and authentically about how they do things.

Watch this video:

Jason Fried is somebody I have been following since the days he ran a group that did usability consulting and workshops. Since then they have transformed into a company that has released four major applications and three books while maintaining a popular blog and releasing the popular web framework Ruby on Rails.

The evolution in the way Jason runs 37signals has been really fascinating to watch as it becomes more and more complex, while appearing simpler. Jason questions the way traditional businesses are run and the ideas that people have about business in ‘the real world’ before actually trying new adaptations to see if he can find a better way of doing things. Over time this has compounded and the progression really shows in the books they have published:

Defensive Design for the web – shows their thought process around web user interfaces and how they consider the various elements on a page in relation to the user.
Getting Real – a collection of really opinionated ideas on how they run the company very differently to most software groups.
Rework – shows the distilled version of the most foundational elements of Getting Real.

Some of my favourite concepts are: Meetings are toxic, Start at the epicentre, Focus on what won’t change, Make tiny decisions and Drug dealers get it right.

Once you have seen the video, do yourself a favour and go buy a copy of Rework.

Working with the iPad

Ross Hill — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:48:20 +0000

Apple have revealed the iPad and in doing so shown their vision for their native tablet ecosystem. Touch as standard and web as standard – the device to replace the laptop.

It is important to realise that the iPad is not being aimed at the professional artist or the hardcore tech guy, but for most people. That means that you are not going to need a manual to use it, and it also means that the guys at the spec-oriented end of the commentary spectrum are not going to have much to talk about! Like Dr. Ernest Prabhakar who managed Apple’s Mac OS X open source strategy at Apple wrote – reducing the iPad to a list of features “is like reducing the experience of eating chocolate to a list of chemicals.”

It’s not about the hardware, it’s about the applications – so that is what I will focus on here.

Browsing the web, doing email, photos, video, music, casual games.

It is not about running your iPhone apps on a bigger screen – these activities all look very different when you apply them to the touch environment. Think back to when you were young and you had to choose between using a paint brush and using your fingers when painting a picture. Using your fingers always felt much more natural and that is why we love to zoom, tap and scroll around a screen – free of the limitations a mouse imposes on our movement.

The Apple team demonstrated the touch version of iWork that they have been working on for the past year. These applications look very different to their desktop partners and for good reason – many of the old metaphors don’t make sense now! It is going to be interesting to see what developers build in this space when they too have had a year to work on it.

It would have been easy for Apple to install their regular Mac OSX onto tablet hardware but what really separates the iPad from the other guys is that Apple have been training developers on how to develop their applications for a touch-native environment for the past two years, through the iPhone, and they will launch the iPad with over 140,000 apps.

Designing for touch means completely rethinking the typical user interface widgets that work really well with a mouse – hot spots towards corners, long thin scroll bars, manipulating objects by using buttons at their edges, having buttons at all… these elements don’t make as much sense when you are using your fingers. We are more likely to want to navigate and move around chunks of content by touching and gesturing the blocks. This fundamental conceptual shift will continue to challenge designers to think about the Minority Report situation while giving them a mass-market platform that exists today, to build it on.

But the importance that is placed on applications does not mean that Apple has put themselves at the mercy of developers. Apple build their products to satisfy customers first:

The operating system was for Macs, not for every computer ever.
The music store was for iPod owners, not music distributers.
The phone was for people, not carriers.
The app platform is for people, not developers.

The constraints that have been placed on developers are really interesting to follow because most people don’t need background processes, most people don’t need a file system and most people don’t mind using a single store to buy everything. Like they have done in other markets, Apple bring their loyal customer base of over 125m credit card enabled iStore accounts to the table and this demand means there is a void to fill – so developers have released over 140,000 apps that have led to a combined 12 billion iStore product downloads so far.

It is interesting that nobody ever complained about the lack of multi-tasking before. Your camera takes photos, and nothing more. Your GPS only gives you directions. Your DVD player only plays movies. Most devices single-task and when they need more they make it a seamless integration. Your oven has a clock in it. Apps can do the same thing. There is a much more technical discussion to be had but the decision to keep apps independent is a strong one.

It says a lot that during the announcement keynote Steve Jobs and his team sat down on the couch to demo the device, because if you can do things from your couch you can do them from almost anywhere. But it is not a phone, it is a tablet.

I am going to try to replace my MacBook Pro laptop with an iPad. I don’t see the constraint of running a single app at once to be a hurdle, because I will always have my iPhone with me and that is already where I run 80% of the things I do – my action list, my calendar, my email, twitter, skype, facebook, train timetables, maps, foursquare, the camera, last.fm and more.

The iPad will hopefully satisfy the remaining 20% of tasks that could be grouped as content and manipulation – the internet, filtering masses of data, writing lengthy emails, watching movies, producing documents. The internet is the main one – I really liked playing with the Google Chrome OS because it reminds you that computers are now largely a window to the web. Right now the iPhone with its touch interface and gestures is the closest you can get to holding the internet in your hands, and the iPad is going to be a much more intimate and natural scale for doing that. The web is most of what I do online.

I am certainly curious about how this combination will work – is enough of my life online to enable it? Will I have enough access to the information and files I need to work with? What new opportunities will it lead to?

I’m looking to the horizon.

Look to the horizon for your future

Ross Hill — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:19:29 +0000

If you look to the horizon you will see hints of what is to come. It is already here, you just need to be able to find it and then have the awareness to know what you are seeing in front of you.

William Gibson’s words keep replaying in my mind, when he said: “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.” As a collective we spend a lot of time thinking about the future, about what’s next. We make guesses about what is coming and what it will look like – but with the realisation that it is already here, we can go to the edges and we can find it.

What interesting ideas have you seen on the edges lately? Here are a few interesting things:

Accessible space flight with Virgin Galactic
1000 year old humans with Aubrey De Grey
Severe information overload, on social networks
Mobile phones as augmented reality portals
Spending vast amounts of time in virtual worlds
Minimalism as a way to transcend consumption habits
Games as tools to solve humanities problems
The internet enabling nomadic lifestyles

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

- Andre Gide