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.

Showing Up

If you want to learn to use a tool as a leader you need to use it as a participant. Go to Meetup.com and find an event to attend. Show up early and help the organizer set up. Ask them what passion drove them to start this project. How did the meetup tool help make their vision come to life.

Alternatives to meet up are Eventbrite and Plancast.

Cool Tools

For a while I’ve been telling people: “Don’t focus on the tools; focus on the problem they are used to solve” and yet, I’ve created a site dedicated to tools and I’m giving you links like this one that randomly lists tools by virtue of their wow factor. (to be fair, the author is wowed by things that are actually useful): Cool Tools

Is it OK to look at tools without a problem in mind?

Yes.

When you are working on a problem wouldn’t it be good to have a database in your head of effective tools and the kinds of problems they can solve? (Having a list in Evernote would be even better.)

The Fling Itself

As a Performance artist, I used the tools from my father’s shop for absurd purposes to rail against the rigidity of business. When I was in business,  I told people to stop looking at tools and look at outcomes instead. Now that I’ve created a “performance-art-like” exploration of tools, I’m trying to expand my perspective.

In this clip from my favorite TV show of the eighties, Northern Exposure, Chris, the resident philosopher is using a trebuchet to fling a piano, and he explains that it is not the piano that is important but the flinging itself. So is he focused on the tool and not the outcome? When you see the reactions of the other characters, you realize that this absurd act actually had an effect on people. That is the outcome.

That was TV though. Let’s try it in real life on a smaller scale. Stack up some empty soda cans (don’t forget to recycle when you’re done) and find an adjustable wrench. There’s something familiar and gratifying about the weird center of gravity of an adjustable wrench. Think of the monkeys in 2001 Space Odyssey. Now fling the wrench at the soda cans.

Your brain released chemicals twice during that experiment: once when you felt the centrifugal force of the wrench leaving your hand, and once when you heard the uncomfortable racket of the crashing cans. Did those feeling have value? Do you think you could make use of that effect some day?

Note: this episode was my first exposure to a Trebuchet and inspired this post

Real Life Heretic: George Siemens

George Siemens, a major proponent of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), brought together 3 heretical ideas to begin changing education:

• Courses can be provided by academic institutions  to anyone in the world, free of charge.
• Courses can be offered to an unlimited number of people.
• The content of courses can be created by the learners themselves.

He uses whatever tools work and participants are encouraged to expand their use of tools to spread the reach of the course content. Here are some examples:

• Blackboard Collaborate for web conferencing
• Google Groups for managing registrations and communications
• Netvibes for aggregating content
• Moodle for discussion groups and assignments

Here is a review that I wrote of one of his courses that I attended.

Chasing Euclid

The Heretic had a friend with astigmatism who was afraid of hallways because he felt like they were closing in on him. To cure himself he decided to measure the walls of a hallway and prove that they were parallel. He knew the Heretic was good with the latest tools so he asked him to set up a mobile laser-based measuring device with mirrors and other optics and a system processor capable of producing the desired result. The Heretic got a piece of string and some chalk and proceeded to do the proof the way the ancient Greeks did it.

Instructions:

• Cut string #1 to width of hall
• Fold string #1 in half twice and mark the folds to establish 4 quarters of the length
• Cut string #2 to the length of string #1 + ¼
• Tie pencils or chalk to each end of sting #2
• Fold string #2 in half and mark the midpoint
• Layout string #2 at a diagonal from one wall to another
• Tape down or tack the midpoint on string #2
• Use each pencil to draw an arc on the wall
• For each arc, cut string #3 to length of the arc at the endpoints on the floor
• Tape down or tack one end of string #3
• Fold string # in half and tape down or tack the midpoint
• Rotate the free end of string across the arc. If the end of the string matches the line, the arc is a perfect semicircle, therefore the walls are parallel

Explanation

• By creating the arcs with string #2, you are creating double napped cones cut in half by the plane of the floor.
• A plane is perpendicular to the axis of the cones will intersect the cone to create a circle (as demonstrated by string #3).
• Two planes that are perpendicular to the same line (the axis of the cones) are parallel to each other.

                                              

The Greek mathematicians didn't need precise measuring tools. They had precise ideas.