LinkedIn Just Made a Savvy Business Move and Nobody Noticed
John Nemo, Inc., 2016/05/10

LinkedIn has been moving in this direction for several years, and as the Inc. article notes, "Modeled after popular 'freelancer-for-hire' sites such as Fiverr and Upwork, LinkedIn's ProFinder matches customers looking for a specific type of product or service with a qualified professional." It gives rise to a new type of business model on the other end: a commercial entity with few full-time staff employing dozens of professionals on a contract basis. Ah, but here's the rub: what is to prevent a race to the bottom as individual contractors compete against each other?

[Link] [Comment]

The brain in your pocket
Daniel Willingham, 2016/05/10

Daniel Willingham has two tried-and-true tools he goes back to again and again: the unproven theory, and the artificial example. In this post he combines them to suggests that the internet weakens our cognitive powers. The theory in this case is 'cognitive miserliness', suggesting that "we think when we feel we have to, and otherwise avoid it." And computers in our pocket give us a new way to avoid thinking, leading to (he says) poorer results on some 'analytical problems' such as the artificial example he provides. I think the sort of study he proposes would be substantially misleading, because as our technology changes, the nature of the problems (and the thinking we have to do) changes as well, rendering moot the artificial examples Willingham uses so frequently.

[Link] [Comment]

Free Artificial Intelligence (AI) software for your PC
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet, 2016/05/10

The 'artificial intelligence' part of Braina (I keep wanting to pronounce it 'bran ah') lies mostly in the voice recognition software and in its ability to interpret natural language requests. "It isn't just like a chat-bot; its priority is to be super functional and to help you in doing tasks. You can either type commands or speak to it and Braina will understand what you want to do." According to the review, "Braina is very utilitarian, practical, and actually very functional." I haven't tried it myself (I'm afraid to overload my laptop so I'll wait until I'm in the office). No matter how it functions, something like this application will provide a lot more support for personal productivity and support some time in the near future. Via Doug Peterson.

[Link] [Comment]

I fly 747s for a living. Here are the amazing things I see every day.
Mark Vanhoenacker, Vox, 2016/05/10

I read this a couple days ago while I was in Malaysia. Now I'm in my kitchen in Ontario, typing this out. This is an obvious point, but it's deep and important: "Everywhere is going on at once... All this would still be going on if I hadn't flown here. And that's equally true of London, and of all the other cities I passed in the long night, that I saw only the lights of. For everyone, and every place, it's the present." It applies equally well to my next door neighbours as to Tatevik in Armenia, Viplav in India, Dave in PEI and Doug in the UK.

[Link] [Comment]

Unlearning and Other Jedi Mind Tricks – Finding the (Creative) Force
Amy Burvall, AmusED, 2016/05/10

Creativity isn't something you have to have a special talent for. It is something that results from paying attention, following your own interests, and most of all, hard work. This is the gist of the message offered by Amy Burvall as she prefaces a list of 'Jedi mind tricks' to promote creativity (quoted and lightly edited (my own take in italics)):

• a sense of wonder.... is to be mindful of one’s surroundings and all the things your senses are taking in (I get this from travel, the beauty of everyday life, from animals and from people).
• hone your skills of observation... be curious, stay in the question longer, take in different perspectives of things as well as people and processes (I use photography for this).
• challenge assumptions - learn the rules so you can break them - and don’t take things at face value (not just rules - patterns, expectations, order and organizations...). 
• the best way to complain is to make things - so after you’ve deconstructed or assessed something, it’s important to move on (for me, making things usually means coding, though sometimes it means carpentry).
• an incubation period is also necessary - this is when you step away from the creative endeavor and chill out or do something mundane (for me, this is things like cycling)
• chefs of creativity must have a variety of tools at hand - it’s important to achieve fluency with your creativity (and this requires practice with your tools, even for no purpose).
• being able to learn, unlearn, and re-learn anew will be imperative (just ask anyone who does web development). 
• creativity inherently involves remix and connecting the dots - dot-connecting takes practice. It’s a balance of curating (“dot collection”), finding, sense-making, and associating (this is the work I do with OLDaily, an essential part of my creative exercise).
• having a creative mentor is so important – even if it’s not someone in your real life (these, to me, are the people who struggle with genuine enquiry - David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig Wittgenstein - and  not those who simply see it as a game). 
• while we don’t want something to be overprescribed - we can thrive on conditions - rules - challenges (This isn't me so much - I don't like people telling me what to do, or not to do).
• creativity should be scheduled (OLDaily first thing in the morning at at 4:00 p.m., morning time for priority tasks, afternoon for routine, evenings and weekends for me).
• Focus will yield flow - Let all the extraneous stuff whiz by – at least for a little while – while you are intent (yes) 
• it’s key to have other, more tedious aspects of the creative task at hand that you can tackle when the big work is difficult (like doing email, reading the RSS feeds, some paperwork, cleaning and sorting).
• we want our work to touch people- We need people to work with us and spark us on – a creative posse (I've thought about this a lot - mostly I just need someone to tell me I've done good).
• if you are hating you are not creating (I need to work on this).

P.S. the list format here, which would work well on slides, is especially for Amy. :) Via Doug Belshaw, who also recommends this Tilt Brush video. See also Amy Burvall, Everybody is an Artist.

[Link] [Comment]