Tag Archives: neil perkin

Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

19th October

1) Very interesting – How Google Works (slideshare by Eric Schmidt ) HT to @neilperkin.

2) Apple’s new iPads, thinner, faster…. and available in gold??

3) In Dylan Thomas’s centenary , the wonderful Richard Burton reads Under Milk Wood.

And why not? Whilst we are on a literary curve, here are 16 of Oscar Wilde’s best quotations ( and he’s got a few…).

….and if Dorothy Parker quips were motivational posters.

4) A very real and increasing worry , In The Atlantic, Catherine Buni and Soraya Chemaly show how social media has turned against women.

5) Extraordinary – 40 portraits over 40 years , with 4 sisters. A compelling labour of love.

6) From The Digital Filter blog this week. An essential element of creative thinking and the brainstorming process, but often neglected. The importance of The Geography of Ideas.

7) Spooky. Warped Photo Series Turns Abandoned Buildings Into 360° Panoramas.

8) Can’t remember what TV show you were watching on the evening of the 16th December, 1985? Well now you can -The Radio Times archive goes live – 1923 to 2009.

9) Brian Eno’s 20 Essential Books For Sustaining Civilisation.

10) A horse walks into a bar…? No, this time she walks into a police station.Happens all the time in Cheshire…..

The Geography of Ideas

15th October 2014

One of the most important areas in any creative thinking process, and one often ignored in brainstorm sessions, is The Geography of Ideas.

A definition of Geography is – ‘ the nature and relative arrangement of people and places’. With regards to brainstorming, the relative arrangement of people and how they interact in a creative thinking session, is fundamental to its success.

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Ten Stories We Have Enjoyed This Week

6th September

1) Is Modern Life Making Us Dumber ? 
We already know that we have smaller brains than our distant ancestors and more recently research has indicated that overall IQ’s are dropping.Apparently the rot set in when we stopped hunting and started farming. 

This is not a solution but it can help limit the damage – Why Walking Helps Us Think. 

2) The Brighton Digital conference is on this month and kicked of with the standout Dots : Connecting Ideas event ( #dotsconf ) which featured such innovation luminaries as @neilperkin, @faris and @herdmister. If you did not manage to make it you can find all speeches on here. 

My favourite quote from the day – You are a mash up of everything you let in your life HT Hugh Garry (@huey) 

In the same vein , from @brainpickings this week – On Why Dot Connecting is The Key to Creativity. 

3) A rather ‘time sensitive’ travel and information guide – 33 things to Eat, Drink, See and Do , before climate change ruins everything. Some of the highlights include – Cherries, Las Vegas, Oysters and of course – The North Pole. 

4) From Frederic Filloux – Legacy Media: The Lost Decade In Six simple Charts. 

5) So Apple may have had a data breach ( or not? ) Who then is at risk now? 

But this is more interesting – Our moral perspective on different kinds of leaks and how inconsistent we are. 

Slate’s Amanda Hess takes on commentators who have shared advice such as “don’t take nude selfies” that appear to be blaming the victim: “These messages instruct women that they are to blame for being sexually exploited because they dared to express themselves sexually in private and in consensual contexts. (When hackers steal credit card information, the public isn’t blamed for daring to shop.) As Lena Dunham succinctly put it, “The ‘don’t take naked pics if you don’t want them online’ argument is the ‘she was wearing a short skirt’ of the web.'” Hess brings up a lot of important points. But there is a difference between blaming the victim and reminding everyone of the inherent risks built into the network. We shouldn’t blame someone who had their personal photos hacked any more than we should blame a victim of credit card theft. But we should advise both to assume that if it’s on the Internet, it’s not safe. 

6) The Digital Revolution Exhibition finishes next week. Definitely worth a visit if you haven’t been. 

At the exhibition, City of Drones allows players to pilot virtual crafts through a ‘generative geometric environment’. City of Drones charts “the story of a lost drone drifting through an abstract cityscape,” in which, “players pilot a virtual craft to explore an infinite urban landscape.” It looks great and you can get an indication of how it works here. 

7) Interesting piece on why we always like to hear bad news and positive thinking and optimism come less naturally. 

8) Worth checking this out ,weekly from MIT – Recommended From Around The Web – Including : There is no hope for Amazon’s Fire Phone, Ferguson reveals a Twitter loop, Three things you didn’t know about Arachnids that live on your face…. 

9) A must for all lovers of sophisticated writing – The Unlikely Rise, Fall, And Rise Again Of “Viz” Comic (spoiler alert – it’s not as funny as it used to be…..) 

10) Essential weekend viewing : Slow-mo skateboard tricks – Impressive and soothing. 

Finally – love the new delivery mechanism for the latest IKEA catalogue.Welcome to the ‘bookbook’. 

This Week’s Top Ten Stories

10th May 2014

1) Great piece from Alex Madrigal on the Things You Cannot Unsee (and What That Says About Your Brain). Some great ambiguous images here, including the one above.

2) ……and on the subject of alternative ways of thinking – here is an interesting perspective ( this via @neilperkin ) from Noah Brier on how Elon Musk approaches creativity – ‘I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there’ . For me this makes sense, in as much as it underlines the importance of investigating a problem or brief fully. But whilst analysis is important so is analogy – the ability to draw insights from other people and places, is at the heart of the creative thinking process.

3) Many will not have heard of it , but it is due to have it’s IPO imminently –Alibaba is China’s – and by some measures, the world’s – biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites – Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com – have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company

4) How rich is the Swede, Markus Persson – the man behind Minecraft? Very.

5) The latest U.S. Climate Report confirms what we already know. Climate change is happening and it’s effects are already severe.

6) The solution to the ageing issue? How do you reverse ageing in the muscles and brains of old mice? By giving them the blood of young mice.

7) Another great speed adjusted video from Adam Magyar. This one a slow motion recording at Seoul’s Sindorim Station, of people descending on stairs while changing from Line 1 to Line 2.

8) Interesting piece from Alain de Botton and easy introduction to The Philosophy of Nietzsche – Happy thoughts here from Friedreich – “To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the wretchedness of the vanquished.”

9) Animated info-graphic piece on How Americans Die – the changing causes of death across the last 40 years. Shows , in particular, the impact AIDS had on young adults in the 1980′s.

10) The annual ( and 400 year old ) Japanese Baby Crying Festival. Meant to be good for their health apparently…

This Week’s Top Ten Stories

10th May 2014
1) Great piece from Alex Madrigal on the Things You Cannot Unsee (and What That Says About Your Brain). Some great ambiguous images here, including the one above.2) ……and on the subject of alternative ways of thinking – here is an interesting perspective ( this via @neilperkin ) from Noah Brier on how Elon Musk approaches creativity – ‘I think it’s important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it’s like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there’ . For me this makes sense, in as much as it underlines the importance of investigating a problem or brief fully. But whilst analysis is important so is analogy – the ability to draw insights from other people and places, is at the heart of the creative thinking process.
3) Many will not have heard of it , but it is due to have it’s IPO imminently –Alibaba is China’s – and by some measures, the world’s – biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites – Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com – have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company
4) How rich is the Swede, Markus Persson – the man behind Minecraft? Very.
5) The latest U.S. Climate Report confirms what we already know. Climate change is happening and it’s effects are already severe.
6) The solution to the ageing issue? How do you reverse ageing in the muscles and brains of old mice? By giving them the blood of young mice.
7) Another great speed adjusted video from Adam Magyar. This one a slow motion recording at Seoul’s Sindorim Station, of people descending on stairs while changing from Line 1 to Line 2.
8) Interesting piece from Alain de Botton and easy introduction to The Philosophy of Nietzsche – Happy thoughts here from Friedreich – “To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the wretchedness of the vanquished.”
9) Animated info-graphic piece on How Americans Die – the changing causes of death across the last 40 years. Shows , in particular, the impact AIDS had on young adults in the 1980’s.
10) The annual ( and 400 year old ) Japanese Baby Crying Festival. Meant to be good for their health apparently…

‘The Age of Innovation is over’ – haven’t we heard this one before?

25th Jan 2013

There has been a lot of interesting debate recently, about current levels of innovation in the business world and whether, in spite of the whiz of the web and digital technology, we are actually living in a time of low innovation.  John Winsor’s piece Is Innovation Dead? makes the interesting point that in organisations, innovation has historically taken place near the edges of companies – where it can plough it’s own individual furrow and where it does not affect the direction and composure of the mothership organisation.

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