Beyond Creativity

Two Quotations - Radiation Risks

“I have no doubt in my mind that at the present time, the greatest polluting element in the earth’s environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. I consider that to be far greater on a global scale, than warming, and the increase in chemical elements in the environment.’’

- Dr Robert O. Becker – twice nominated for the Nobel Prize

"The notion that non-ionizing radiation is harmless – the assumption of innocence – is no longer tenable. Research findings suggest that radiofrequency exposures are potentially carcinogenic and have other health effects. Therefore, prudent avoidance of unneeded exposures is recommended as a precautionary measure."

- The Late John R. Goldsmith, M.D., M.P.H.

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I welcome you to take a look at following two German inititiatives:

Mobilfunk Ärzteappell Allgäu-Bodensee-Oberschwaben (2006)

Bamberger Ärzteappell (2004)

+ Check the radiation level versus symptoms table.

When will the doctors in Nordic countries wake up?

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Update 30th April 2008: My personal experience is closer than I ever would like to witness. I wrote an opinion piece "Radiation risks under control" for the University of Tampere Aikalainen magazine. This opinion "Säteilyriskit hallinnassa?" is written in Finnish , but the additional base station / cell tower related information might interest some of you?!

Red Orchestra - a Great Game or Just a Toy?

In my country, the Independence Day means remembering the wars we fought 60 years ago... Additionally, 80 % of Finnish men have served in the military, voluntarily. 

No wonder, we are so keen on playing military simulators of the 2nd world war era. One good example is Red Orchestra:

What makes this game so special? It has a fast Unreal-engine behind it, gameplay is well designed and it is realistic. I find it addictive and I sometimes play it with my friends. However, the game includes brutal scenes  and therefore I recommend to adults, only. Earlier I took a look at another military simulator, a mod called Finnish Defence Forces - Operation Flashpoint.

Still, isn't it a bit dumb to play games like that? In comparison, you should check the following paintball video from American woods. (Thanks again, Ari (Heinola) for this excellent tip).

BTW, What is the difference between boys and men?    

Bigger and more expensive toys ;-)

Architectural innovation - Simple things save money and environment

Architectural Innovation is often a re-configuration of existing  components.

Question: What is the most efficient way to save energy (and money) in houses with electrical heating in Nordic countries?

Answer: 2 components are needed for this:

A Heat Pump

Soapstone fireplace/oven.

Explanation: Soapstone is one of the best materials to trap heat. Heat pumps are used to circulate energy from outside and from the soapstone fireplace. So elegant and simple ;-)

View Larger Map

Good to know: One of the largest soapstone deposit in the world is visible on the map. This deposit is close to village Melalahti, Paltamo county, Finland. It extends 10 km north and 1 km south from the road 22.  Additionally, this deposit it unopened, next to railway(!), waiting for Tulikivi or some mining company to figure it out ;-)

Digital Television and Creative Thinking Skills

"Volunteers are needed to provide digital television for all. People without digital television will be left out of society", announced by TV companies and national broadcasting companies.

Incredible! One of the largest voluntary movement is taking place in Europe. Volunteers are sought to install digital TV for those that do not have it yet.

Why is there no such activity to provide support for elderly people in their daily activities? Why aren't there large volunteers programs to help handicapped people? Why is the digital television so special and important? Is it an instrument of control and entertainment at the same time? Would those people, old or young, be more active, creative and in better shape without television?

Some research results about creativity and TV watching:

- Television watching and radio listening did not improve creativity according to Mark Runko and Kathy Pezdek.

- The skill of producing novel responses was better in a group listening to radio than  in a group watching a television.

- What people watch on TV has a meaning. "Children watching dramatic shows increased in creative performance, while those watching cartoons and, surprisingly, educational programs had depressed creative scores. ":

- According to Christina Ting Fong, Emotionally engaging tasks and work has a positive effect on creativity, This one is not related to TV but explains emotional factors.

- Consumer 2.0 needs user-created content. User input can be an essential feature of a supplied service also in the sphere of (TV) consumption. (Thanks Mika (Pantzar) for advancing my understanding about customer behaviour.

- [Addition] Digital Television: What, why and how. Thanks Pertti (Näränen) and David (Traub) for providing me insights about Digi-TV. As you can see I may have misinterpreted information ;-)

Some humour stuff :

- William H. Deitz: "The easiest way to reduce inactivity is to turn off the TV set. Almost anything else uses more energy than watching TV." An old study, still relevant. 

- 10 Steps to Boost Your Creativity, check the item number 7 ;-)

- "Digital television s...."

Afterword: I do watch (digital) television occasionally. I am not totally out of the TV world, although I prefer reading books instead. Still, Internet may make the digital television set(-top box) obsolete very fast ;-)  Let's see.

Ubuntu - Creation of a Large Community

In the 80's I worked as a programmer and got familiar with SCO Unix and Digital Unix. Working with Unix was complicated, endless command lines and everything needed to learn by heart. My first engagement with Unix was not a success. Actually, I disliked it.

Recenly, I have re-evaluated my opinions about Unix and especially about Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu - an African word, meaning "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are"

What is so impressive about Ubuntu:

• Smooth installation (really!)

• Graphical user interface (mimics Windows and OS X, can be customised in detail by downloading GNOME Art). Kubuntu includes a user-friendly KDE-desktop.

• Documentation (User's guide)

• Based on Linux (All Finns are so proud of Linus Torvalds :-)

• Massive, voluntary development effort around the globe. Enthusiastic, helpful user community.
  

• Speed, especially in server use

• UPDATE: LAMP (Linux) Apache MySql PHP installation is a breeze, it was also easy to install Tomcat, Ruby on Rails and OpenLaszlo. Graphical Add-on tools like MySQL Administrator were a bit tricky. With server software, a proper understanding of data security is needed with Ubuntu. I leave that part to experts.

• Synaptics Package Manager --> you do not need to download, unzip and install your software from command line any more.

• OpenOffice, included in the pack.

• Let's see what artists and musicians will say about Ubuntu Studio, when it is ready

• It is free, at least most of the distributions.

• Using open source can be part of organisation's business strategy (please, take a look at Brian Behlendorf's article and Brian Fitzgerald's Open Source 2.0 paper (the draft, the actual one).

• Update: For an organisation, it's a bit tricky to choose the Linux camp these days: Novell with SUSE Linux just made a deal with Microsoft, Red Hat is the original corporate Linux support provider and Ubuntu's commercial support is handled by Canonical. There is an interesting debate going on: Ubuntu vs. Red Hat , Novell SUSE vs. Red Hat.

For individuals and companies, Ubuntu is really a choice. Ubuntu even supports various smart phones and accessories through USB, Bluetooth and WLAN.

I don't see many reasons why you should get/update the resource-hungry and expensive Microsoft Windows Vista. Usability reasons through pen use, perhaps? Tablet PCs are the opportunity for Microsoft and for vendors like HP, Toshiba and Lenovo. (Did you know that HP "forgot" their best invention, TC 1X00 Tablet PC?) Note: Windows Vista's pen support is extensive, BUT it currently supports handwriting recognition only in English, in Chinese and in Korean. Am I the only one missing support in German, in Finnish, In Russian (Cyrillic) and in Swedish :-)

Hey, there is still Apple Macintosh, running BSD Unix in the background. Fast and sleek, even in the iPhone! If Ubuntu wants to conquer desktops, it should stop imitating Windows and OS X and .... create a look and feel of it's own :-)

Relocated:  Thanks to Tere (Vadén) my colleague and famous open source philosopher. I am also grateful to Timo (Väliharju), Tuomas (Lehtinen) and Kaisa (Huunonen) from Mediamaisteri Ltd, for advancing my business understanding of  open source software.

New Open Content & Open Innovation Research Project

Last Wednesday (15th June 2006), two projects:
Gamespace (Mobile Game Evaluation) and Parteco (Particatory Content
Creation and Open Innovation) were accepted by Tekes (http://www.tekes.fi). This was a happy day for my research unit, the Hypermedia Laboratory - University of Tampere :-)

This Tekes-decision enables me to work as a researcher next 20 months in the Parteco project. Some continuity! My project duties will include innovation management IT research, idea market research, group creativity research and global expert Delphi interviews on open innovation.

I will be back in open innovation research topics in my future posts.

" There are too many ideas held by people who don't work for you to ignore "
(Chesbrough, 2003)

Tablet PCs and Creativity

(Warning: This message includes geek stuff :-)

Never tried to tease your brain by using mouse and pen with both hands?

Doctor, Nobel-prize winner Roger W. Sperry and his colleagues demonstrated in the 60s and 70s that the left and right hemispheres do not process the same information. In our brains the left hemisphere is responsible for convergent thinking and the right hemisphere for divergent thinking. And guess what, our hands are cross-linked with our hemispheres.

I started experimenting first with different pointing devices. 3 years ago I picked up the first Tablet PC and I find it rather ergonomical way of working. You may use it with a pen, you can type with the built-in keyboard or you can attach it to a port replicator and use external display, mouse and keyboard. And of course change daily the pen/mouse from right hind to left hand or other way round ;-)

One great usability addition is the support for a pen. Using your computer with a pen is important for elderly people, handicaped, artists and all people walking with their computers (including road warriors and absent-minded researchers ;-)

I lo-o-o-v-e to draw and make sketches with a pen. Reading on screen is a habit of Tablet PC users. Some folks talk about aesthetic pleasure, which may be true.

The OneNote software is not a  dream come true companion, but I can live with that. It allows me to store my sketches and notes and even use it as a recorder. What I  am still missing, is sophisticated metadata support, true hypertext and export functionality. Perhaps GoBinder could do things better than OneNote?

The handwrite recognition in Windows XP Tablet Edition is excellent in English, but it could cover other widely used languages like Finnish and Russian (Cyrillic) ;-) Please, note: Tablet PC is not only a Microsoft-related fixation, also Apple takes pen and usability questions seriously: http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/05/10.18.shtml . Apple's Newton was a remarkable concept and let's hope that Apple will some day launch a Tablet Mac. The Tablet PC/Mac is still unfamililiar to the large audience, I wish the Apple can make it fly :-/

In the meanwhile, I am looking for a replacement for my HP TC1000, a Tablet PC powered by a Transmeta Crusoe processor. The functionality, design and usability of this old device is still remarkable, but Crusoe is s-o-o-o slow. The best replacement I have found (so far) is Acer c200 (Review). Which Tablet PC requirements come to my mind?

+ Easily foldable, so that the mode (laptop/tablet) can be easily changed
+ Fast processor with lot's of memory to run office tools + OneNote +  Music-players + even web-servers and programming tools simultaneously
+ 12" screen, wide enough to browse PDFs, still portable
+ Nvidia or ATI for advanced graphics
+ Silent, the fan should operate without noise
+ Cool, neat design of course ;-) but especially the machine should stay cool in your hands/lap
+ HiFi-quality audio, it is a MP3-player!
+ long battery time
+ long-lasting, sturdy design
 
Some device specific requirements: TabletBuzz Forums.

Productivity tips: ZDNet and Student Tablet PC.

It would nice to hear comments about Tablet PCs and how people use them to support their creativity.

Seeking Resources in Smart Systems - Flow in Coding?

In Seinäjoki, Finland, there will be the Smart Systems 2006 / ICMA 2006 conference + Innovation Fair. I will present there my research, software prototype and business proposition. My presentation topic is called "Creativity support for innovation process - method and information system ".               

Software development is time consuming and even expensive. Therefore, I have taken this step (coding has even caused some delays in my dissertation work and related pilots ;-) So, I am looking for some extra funding and resources for my mobile prototype and related server platform. Don't get me wrong, I still see coaching and mentoring important within creativity development and innovation management.

By the way, what has creativity to do with software development?  I have earlier discussed about flow and it's elements (in a strange context!). Coding can be immersive and some researchers claim that the flow phenomenon takes place during the programming phase. Please, take a look at the interesting results and the article by Benno Luthiger. His article is called "Fun and Software Development". I liked it a lot. Still, the results are somewhat confusing: "The more deadlines are felt during project work, the more likely the software developers experience flow"! Hey, Luthiger is talking about open source projects.

To me programming is hard work where your back starts aching and sleepless nights make you look like a Zombie next morning :-\  Maybe I should twist some parts of my software prototype to SourceForge-project and start enjoying coding with like-minded people  ?!  Let's see...  My colleague, open source expert Niklas Vainio just wrote about this dilemma in his blog and evaluated Karl Fogel's 'Producing Open Source Software'. Worth reading!

 

Does Technology Prevent Creativity?

    
Thanks to Lowell Monke, I am getting rather critical about tools and technology supporting creativity. In many cases technology distracts our concentration, causes problems to our social network and interferes with our natural rhythm of life. Monke's "Breaking Down the Digital Walls" is an interesting book and I am looking forward to read the forthcoming book. In the meanwhile, please take a look at his thought-provoking article "The Human Touch" . Just to give you an example of Monke's thinking: "What 'Information Age' values tempt us to forget is that all of the information gushing through our electronic networks is abstract; that is, it is all representations, one or more symbolic steps removed from any concrete object or personal experience".   

Another wake-up call came, when I read an interesting report from National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop about Creativity Support Tools. There were some guidelines for these Creativity Support Tools introduced . To me they are like from an HCI manual and similar to Shneiderman's  "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies"  - you remember those 4-phases: Collect - Relate - Create - Donate.

What bothers me is the concept "Social Creativity" described the report. This concept and the related research is to me very inconsistent, it is mostly based on communities-of-practice research, not creativity research. I noticed it already when I participated a social creativity session in the HCI International (UAHCI) conference in Las Vegas.

What is missing from those guidelines? Maybe time management, off-line working and reflection support?! Guidelines could also emphasize when n-o-t to use electronic tools (:| Being social in the Internet is valuable, but what we need is perhaps time to think and have personal experiences, not artificial ;-)

Hey, I am still researching creativity support tools. No doubt about that :-)

Blogs connecting small worlds

Do you ever feel like being a speaker who looses the contact to audience after a succesful and interactive presentation?

I have had that kind of feeling several times. You are invited as a speaker to an exotic location, during and after the presentation you have many interesting conversations and you exchange business cards. BUT, keeping contact to those interesting people is a pain, it is delayed and sometimes you even forget the whole thing.

I have not been very systematic in my (people) networking strategies. Therefore, the article by Uzzi and Dunlap in the recent HBR was an eye-opener to me. It helped me to map my contact network and deficiencies in my networking strategies. It also brought valuable insights to my research and artefact building. I have earlier written about Technology Brokering and had interesting discussions with Andrew Hargadon. This brokering process is not always simple in a chaotic business/research world, therefore we had also discussions about teams and their time management. Techology Brokering is very much about utilising people networks as a source of new ideas. Similarly, Peter Denning wrote about Social Life of Innovation and his "Personal Foundational Practices of Innovation" may provide a functional networking strategy?!

Are there technological solutions to ease this (people) networking process? How about:

- Your blog would answer those questions that were left unanswered in in your keynote

- The recorded session of your presentation in the organisations's video database would include your  blog trackback and latest posts. (My thanks to Conor Vibert, who is an expert in this area and who helped me see the big picture :-)

- Pod-casting  would enable you to comment directly to those people who are in the listening mode

- Your blog reader would enable you to read and comment blog messages offline.

- All this would minimise your stay-in-touch efforts and let you work without extra e-mail and phone call burdens.

I may be too (techno-)optimistic here ;-)