Social Hallucinations

Empathic Civilisation

Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society. Must see...two things may surprise you: there is no empathy in heaven and Bible was right - we are descendants of Adam and Eve. 

Via Johnnie Moore

Some Thoughts on Social Media....

... by Marcus Brown who is awesome dude. Tune in to his Vimeo channel broadcasted directly from the toilet

 

 via Charles

The Art of Choosing the Right Chart

Useful and inspiring guide for choosing the right chart

Pic by @labnol

Via SwissMiss

How to Live to 100

This is definitely something one must share :) Great and not so surprising tips

 

via BabyCreative Blog

Color outside the lines

Being creative is what gives advantage today and allows to differentiate from the mass of me-too products and people. Creative meaning novelty and utility. Sometimes to get an attention you deserve you need to color outside the lines and find inspiration other places...Like this packages.

You have something what seems to be a carton of McDonald's chips on the right but is in fact celery and blueberries packaged as medicine. 

   
 

via BabyCreative blog

Dictractions foster creativity

It was good to read this article in Wired:'How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive' that breaks the army of voices who present how distracting Facebook and Twitter can be and how much loss they generate for companies. This is just a one side of story as "social networks are particularly well suited to stoking the creative mind"

 
From my own experienced being focused for 8 hours on power points slides or excel sheets doesn't take me really productive. On the contrary it imprisons me in the fast tracks of routine thinking. There is nothing more inspiring than sharing thoughts with other people, finding impulses from completely different and not really connected with the problem you are working on sources. Our minds need to be kept fit and challenged to work properly.So stay connected and never stop exploring, sharing and learning. Play. Create. Share.

Photo by Adrian Wallet

"little humor, many happiness"

Time flies, projects flows - strategies, ideas , solving problems...everything seems comples and then out of the sudden I stumble into something as simple as...

...grassy page marker

 

Moving from boring thing like a book marker into something that is not only functional but beautiful and adds value without being too pompous. Simplicity is what makes difference. 

"little humor, many happiness" 

Love it!

The 6 types of ideas

via Tom Fisburne 

Visualize People's Thoughts

It is such a great tool to play around with - Web Seer - and visualize what's going on in people's minds when they google and explore differences and similitude, stereotypes, ideas by comparing 'Google Suggest' results. Plenty of interesting insights to dig for. I love how info-graphics democratizes data and make them more understanding-friendly. 

 

 

Do We Really Have to Meet?

Meetings are nice but are all they really necessary? It is very valid question on Monday morning and calender full of meetings. Sitting in meetings is often a nice time - waster, break from work where you sit and...nothing really happens except of talking. 

How to change the meeting culture and cut down the unproductive hours of just sitting and talking. Here are a few tips from Seth Godin

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?

Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of real-time face time.

Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don't, kick them out.

Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I'm serious.

If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.

Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you're done. Not your fault, it's the timer's.

The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.

Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

If you're not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.

It is a good way to start the new year at work, the year that is about doing the meaningful things. 

via Tom Fishburne

We shall not flag or fail. We shall slow down in the office, and on the roads.

In times where politicians and different arts of gurus tell us we need to work harder, run faster and just give everything out of ourselves, The International Institute of Not Doing Much seems like an uplifting and fresh initiative. Running fast all the time will not bring the fruits we expect as we simply get tired and our performance will be weaken. Like every machine, humans need to take a break for servicing and refueling. On the website of The International Institute of Not Doing Much you can learn a lot about slowing down and not doing too much. What I liked the most is the advice to cultivate dreams not aspirations. 

 

Here is 10 tips on how to slow down:

1. Drink a cup of tea, put your feet up and stare idly out of the window. Warning: Do not attempt this while driving.

2. Do one thing at a time. Remember multitasking is a moral weakness (except for women who have superior brain function.)

3. Do not be pushed into answering questions. A response is not the same as an answer. Ponder, take your time.

4. Learn our Slow Manifesto.

5. Yawn often. Medical studies have shown lots of things, and possibly that yawning may be good for you.

6. Spend more time in bed. You have a better chance of cultivating your dreams (not your aspirations.)

7. Read the slow stories.

8. Spend more time in the bathtub. (See letter from Major Smythe-Blunder.)

9. Practice doing nothing. (Yes this is the difficult one.)

10. Avoid too much seriousness. Laugh, because you're live on earth for a limited time only.

via Crackunit

2010 - Another chance for doing meaningful things

31st December, the end of another year. 2009. The time of reflection. Something is ending, something is beginning. It's like we are getting another chance, so we make resolutions, promises we never keep...

My 2009 resolution was Make More from Less and I was very concerned about human greed, exploitation and consumption. I entered 2009 full of optimism and faith into humanity, change and the upcoming dominance of Good. Unfortunately some events moved my focus a bit. The new experiences that influenced me significantly and shaped me forever. 

I've said goodbye to one of the most important people in my life - the wisest, the most loving and the most beautiful woman I've known - my grandmother.

At the same time I faced my dad getting diagnosed cancer...so much suffering at the same time made my thoughts wander around the meaning of my life and things that are really important. Suddenly nothing else than my family mattered and things I used to be busy with, seemed so silly. I just definitively realized that life is fragile and while we chase the surrogates of it, we may lose people, things, moments that really matter. Suddenly Make More from Less got a new meaning for me: making more meaningful experiences and moments from the little time we have. I've  kept on repeating in my head the last words my grandmother said to me: "It's not scary to die when you know you spend your life on making things happen and when you are surrounded by such fantastic people. So go out there, find out what matters most to you and make things happen" 

And now when I am sitting here on 31st December, having my family around, hearing them laughing and looking at my grandmother's picture I think it's not about resolutions (those are rarely kept), but about defining what matters for you, your life and acting upon it. It is not so far away what I wrote precisely one year ago, there is just more meaning to it...It's still viable and we need to work more on Doing Meaningful Things to our lives, to our work, to the world. 

 

Happy New Year to you all! 

Don't make resolutions, just think about what matters to you and make it happen. It will not be easy but it will make us better in the end :)

We know so much about the supply chain and so little about 'the removal chain'

Trash Track is an awesome project that visualizes individual traces of trash objects. Everyday objects at some point in their life cycle are declared of no more use by their owners and cross the fine line between being a proudly owned utility item and a trash object. 

How the system works?

 
 

Data can be so beautiful and useful. 

via InfluxInsight

Technology and Us

Image via Wikipedia

Douglas Adams’ “rules that describe our reactions to technologies”:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.

Online takes your gifts offline

Fantastic postal service: SendSocial. I love the idea. It makes sending gifts so easy and hassle free. The only disadvantage of the service is that it is only available in the UK At the moment, but they are working on expanding into other territories.