Clarity

Our standard process should resolve the current situation as soon as we make the necessary changes in human nature, the laws of physics, and the basic tenets of economics.

To change things you have to understand them. One of the best tools for a Heretic is a clear articulation of the environment. Here are two excellent explanations: Seb Paquet’s article on the life cycle of institutions and Jay Rosen's description of wicked problems.

Playful

While walking along a stream, I spotted a river otter, a rare sight in Fairfield County, Connecticut. I was reminded of the line from Richard Bach: "We humans are the otters of the universe." It's true: we are designed to play. It is how we learn the patterns of our world, and therefore it is how we survive. We play to try and fail so that we can find the solutions that work for us. But our society devalues play. Everything has to be perfect. Failure is not an option. 

In this picture, I collected my sketches of a cartoon otter character. I didn't know how to draw it, so I needed to draw it badly again and again until it evolved into what I was looking for. We need to re-learn to play like this in all aspects of our lives.

As a heretic introducing something new into the world, you need to let go of getting it perfect. It isn't possible to make something that never existed before perfectly. You need to play with your idea until it evolves into what is needed.

The Heretic Describes his Ideas

The Heretic was explaining his latest ideas to Analyn. The way that his mind works is that he has to process the abstract structure of ideas before he can even look at the concrete details. Analyn’s mind works exactly opposite of that and so when he finished she said “I’m sorry, Sweetheart, but I don’t really understand what you are saying.”

The next day, the Heretic took out a large piece of paper and drew out his ideas for Analyn. Each component was represented by an icon and all the connections between the components was drawn out in perspective. Analyn said “Well this does help me to understand what you are saying but I still don’t really get why this is so important.”

The next day, the Heretic cleared off a table and setup found objects and folded paper sculptures and used them to describe his ideas with passion. “Analyn said “OK, so now I get why this is important but I need to see how it plays out in real life.”

The next day, the Heretic made a video on his smart phone where he told the story of how he came up with the idea and what his vision was of how the idea could be used in real life. When Analyn saw the video, she kissed him and said “That was great! Why didn’t you just do that in the first place?” The Heretic explained that he needed to go through that process in order to make sense of his idea.

The next day, he created an online presentation of his idea organized by the abstract structure, illustrated by scans of his drawings and photos of his sculptures with the videos embedded in the pages.

The Stereoscope Anomoly

Because of the limitations of our ability to perceive our surroundings we have built up a system of coded patters to get through daily life. If those codes are disrupted, we go into instant problem solving adrenalin mode in order to find new patterns of meaning to latch onto. Therefore, creating these disruptions is a good tool for creativity. The easiest disruptions are ones that take advantage of our limited visual perception, similar to the tricks of a magician. A Stereoscope takes advantage of errors in our binocular vision to make duplicated photos look 3d. We can take the same device to disrupt our binocular vision patterns, and thereby sparking our imaginations.

Above: My design for stereoscopic fisheye glasses.

Real Simple

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is an important tool. Though it is simple, ubiquitous and older than dirt (in internet time), I’ll bet there are a lot of people who don’t get it (It took me a while). I’d like to describe how to use RSS as a heretic. If you already know the deal, I’ll catch you next week.

If you want to act on your heretical ideas, you will need the help of a community of people who champion your cause. You can begin to build that community online by sharing other people’s ideas. Other people’s ideas are spelled out in blogs. If you find the handful of bloggers who really speak to your vision, are you going to scour their sites for updates every day? Imagine if you could meet your favorite bloggers for coffee every morning. That is what RSS is for. It provides you with updates from websites and blogs as they are posted.

Here’s how it works. Blogs have a functionality called subscribe. Here subscriptions refers to the ability for a reader to get updates via a feed. The feed is a file with the latest version of the blog. The updates are sent to you  via an RSS Reader application. I recommend Google Reader. You read the updates just like your email. You can even get a smart phone app that connects to your reader. I use Byline. This process is called Syndication.

Here are your steps to get started:

• Create an account on Google Reader
• Download and setup an RSS App for your smart phone or tablet that supports Google Reader.
• Go to your social media tool of choice (this will probably work best with Twitter)
• Read the posts of the top 5 people you admire and follow their links to blog posts.
• Find the top 5 blogs that you like and find the subscribe option  (If you can’t find it may be in your browser’s toolbar).
• Follow the directions to subscribe to the feed for that blog using Google Reader.
• Set aside time to read Google Reader. Don’t try to read everything. Remove the feeds you lose interest in or that haven’t had recent updates.
• Share articles of interest to you with your community on your social media tool of choice.

Wash Away

When you get frustrated as all Heretics inevitably do, find a body of water like a stream or the ocean and stand by it and imagine that the water is rising up into your body and when it flows out, it washes away all of your turmoil and angst, leaving you clean and open.

Out of the Box

The Heretic invited a group of people to an Experientity that he had planned for a small open space downtown. The group gathered at the appropriate time and the Heretic showed up with a large box. From the box he pulled out several small boxes and gave one to each of the participants. On the outside of the box was a QR code. You couldn’t tell but each one was unique.

“Oh,” said Kathy, “I think I have a QR reader app on my iPhone!” She pulled out her phone, opened the app and focused it on the QR code. This brought up a web page with instructions. The rest of the participants followed suit. James had to ask for help to download the app.

Following the first instructions, they removed the contents of the box. Each box contained a small object and an accessory to wear like a hat or a scarf. The participants were to play characters in a story. The next instruction was for each participant to seek out another participant with a particular object. They then needed to interact with that object in a particular way: Jane read Tim’s map; John used Mary’s wrench to fold a piece of paper; and so on. Through this interaction, the participants begin to understand the beginning of a story.

The last instruction is to go and meet in another open space where the heretic will have a new box and the process will start all over again, and the participants will get the conclusion of the story. James, who has been involved extensively in storytelling said “I’ve never seen anyone tell a story like this. It really involves you.”

Resources
A Fluxus Boxes
QR Code Generator
QR Code Ideas

Learn About Technology from Low-tech Magazine

Thanks to one of my favorite sites, Cool Tools for the link to this site, Low-tech Magazine, dedicated to finding low tech answers to todays problems by examining the history of tools and the illogic of our current use of technology. Counter-intuitively, from this examination you can get a lot of ideas on how to use technology in new and more powerful ways.

Above is my idea for a battery/wind/human powered vehicle, inspired by reading the articles. (Full disclosure: the image of the man riding the bicycle is from clip art. The rest is mine.)

The Dance?

Bring a pole held puppet dragon to a plaza and randomly ask passersby to hold the poles. Then walk away.

On each pole is a note:

“You don’t have to do anything. You could just stand there or you could leave the pole on the ground. But you could also dance. What would happen if you did? Would the others join you? Would you have fun? Would you be embarrassed? I’ll be embarrassed if everyone just lays their poles down. You don’t have to be like that. You could take a chance. You’re not alone. You have nothing to lose.”

Real Life Heretic: Chase Randell

In the process of working out how to teach young people how to live in society, Chase Randell began to question society's assumptions. He decided to take them on starting with the assumption that only qualified professionals can build things of value. He committed himself to building an underground house on a patch of woods in upstate New York. He then looked for people to help him learn how to do it. The result was not only an underground house but a beautiful underground house with a wall of bluestone, intricate stone walls, high timber ceilings as well as doors and stain glass windows found in junkyards. If he had gone to the "qualified professionals" with his idea the costs would have been enormous. His heretical idea is to teach other people how to do this so they can be more self sufficient.

Fluxite:

Find something that you want to do but won't because you are not "qualified"

Commit yourself to doing it anyway.

Once you've committed to it, find a way to make it happen. Ask for help. Change the parameters.

Think about all the times you assessed whether something was possible before you committed to doing it.

Resources:

Chase's ideas on education are influenced by reading John Dewey

Chase's rejection of consumerism is similar to these eloquent essayists

Chase assertion that people can make there own stuff is mirrored in the Maker movement.

Advantages of underground houses.

Cacoolaboration

While researching tools for my course on Cloud Computing for Entrepreneurs, I came across this nice collaborative diagramming tool called Cacoo. One of my points in the course was that Cloud services that included the ability to collaborate were the most valuable. Recently my friend Phil was asking about a diagramming tool and I figured it would be fun to try it out. Here is the diagram we worked on. Try it yourself. Sign in to Cacoo (it's free) and invite someone you've always wanted to work with to brainstorm with you on new ideas.

Problem Solving aka Doodling

Storylet:

Analyn invited the Heretic to one of her social action group meetings. Throughout the meeting he drew in his sketchbook and she noticed that he was doodling. She was furious until towards the end of the meeting he looked up and asked a question that cut right to the core issue that the committee was trying to resolve. He then gave a simple but perfect suggestion and went back to his doodling.

Drawing is always about problem solving. Therefore drawings by their nature are problematic. If you’ve created the perfect rendering then it is not a drawing. Even a doodle is addressing a problem: How to get the goop out of your subconscious and into a tangible state that can be used to find meaning. The answer? Draw something meaningless and evolve it into something unexpected.

Sunni Brown’s Doodle Revolution Toolkit and TED talk

Fluxite:

Turn a doodle into a treasured object at Shapeways
or turn it into a commodity at Cafepress

Real Life Heretics: The Hexayurt Project

Vinay Gupta and his friends at the Hexayurt Project wanted to attack the problem of providing cheap easy to access shelter for crisis locations. They asked "Why not use locally accessible materials? How would we reduce waste to make it a viable solution?"  They took the lowly plywood sheet and flipped it to create the Hexayurt, named after the Mongolian round tent. They tried it at Burning Man, and then brought them to Haiti and other places around the world. Most importantly, they used the Open Design concept to make sure that the idea was accessible to anyone anywhere.

Miscelaziness

Fluxite:

Rip some paper and put it in a small plastic container. Label the container “Ripped Paper.” Put the container in a larger container along with a bent paper clip and label that container “Miscellaneous.” Put the container in a larger container and label that container “Small Objects.”

By using the Miscellaneous category you have devalued the contents of the two smaller containers and you have degraded the relationship between the “Small Objects” category and the “Ripped Paper” category. Most of all, you have demonstrated the inherent problem of Hierarchical Categorization. To be fair, you can’t blame Miscellaneous. That’s just a stop-gap of last resort on a flawed system. You will find Miscellaneous categories everywhere.

Hierarchy is extremely valuable for understanding frameworks but it is really only a particular kind of relationship. Connecting things with relationships is much more effective than dividing things with categories. This is especially true with people.