Great Blog

“A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to their faith before they explore it”, says author and blogger Seth Godin in a great little video shot by Nic Askew. “…a curious person explores first and then considers whether they want to accept the ramifications.”

For anyone wondering about creativity and quality of work on personal, on organizational or on national level, the five minutes it takes to watch this video are well spent: “Curiosity”

It feels like 2008 will be a truly new year. New meaning different. So much ended in 2007 that a lot of new must be going on in 2008. The era of cheap money and cheap energy came to an end. The denial of the climate change came to an end. The era of George W. Bush started fading away. The the idea that there will be and era after Vladimir Putin faded away. In my change of the year column for the newspaper Aamulehti I listed seven things that will be different in 2008, or things that we will just see more of.

1. Quality. In the financial markets a phenomenon called flight to quality exists. During uncertainty investors want assets they understand and trust. Expanding on that we could think that, as energy and money get more expensive, the focus of global capitalism will start shifting from quantity to quality, from the cheapest to the best, from unnecessary crap to what is useful and solid.

2. Local. Rising energy costs and increasing carbon emissions will force us to rethink the travel and transport. Local will become trendy again.

3. Real. Whether it is luxury items, food or family time, things that are real, authentic, traceable, preferably man made or even self-made are making a comeback. In Finland this trend is partly enforced by parents worrying about the consequences of their children’s life on-line. Legos 1 - game consoles 0.

4. Small. The bigger the better. Outside of cell phones and some other electric devices this has been the mantra of the consumer society. Rising gasoline and electricity prices may well change that. Small will become chic, smart and affordable.

5. Teleconferencing. Big companies are cutting down on travel and installing expensive teleconferencing equipment. Individuals are finding iChat and Skype’s video calls.

6. Electronic ink. Amazon’s Kindle may have it’s flaws and be ugly but it is a step into an inevitable direction. In 2008 we will probably see many more paper newspapers die, but it is about time we saw an electronic newspaper emerge.

7. Nato. So far the Finnish public opinion has been against Nato membership. In the coming year there will be presidential elections both in Russia and in the US. Russia will probably get even more autocratic, while the US will hopefully move to a more democratic direction. This shift will probably make Nato look much more inviting to the Finns than it is today.

Happy New New Year!

It is not often that an official report creates a rush in your head, makes you see into the future and treates you with elegant and accessible language and with great quotes. The OECD report “Understanding the Brain: The Birth of a Learning Science” does that – and more. The project leader Bruno della Chiesa, a senior analyst at OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, and some of the brainiest people in brain research gathered in Helsinki yesterday for a seminar to mark the publication of the report and to discuss how it may change the way we approach teaching and learning.

It is no coincidence that this happened in Helsinki, Finland being the honor student of OECD’s PISA studies, and a major supporter of the project. Finns are also the first to discuss how the report’s findings will change life in the classrooms. To stay ahead you must think ahead.

The report, which, with a slight edit, could be a popular science bestseller, paves the way for an emerging field of study that combines educational studies, cognitive science and neuroscience. There is lot there that makes intuitive sense and is welcome like scientific support for lifelong learning and for the interdependence of body and mind and the emotional and the cognitive. There is also an interesting chapter on neuromyths. For example there is no scientific support for the claim that a person uses only 10% of his or her brain, or that there would be “left-brain” or “right-brain” persons.

There is also stuff that is quite wild and potentially frightening like brain meets machine research and performance enhancing drugs. One of the most thought-provoking exchanges at the seminar concerned the ethics of neuroscience. Mr della Chiesa told the audience that in their original version of the report they had taken a much stronger stand on ethical issues but had been kindly asked to dampen their views. One of the interesting question he raised was: “What happens when someone invents a pill that will make you smarter? Is it going to be available to millions for a few euros or to only a few for a million euros?” Who exactly asked the team not to discuss ethics, especially of drugs, too much, he would not say.

Later in the day, a new ethical and philosophical twist was introduced by Dr Hideaki Koizumi – who drives around Japan in a pink research truck that has the text “Exciting Brain Science” printed on it in screaming letters – when he turned the thinking around and talked about the neuroscience of ethics. In his closing remarks Mr della Chiesa admitted that occasionally he wakes up in the middle of the night asking himself: “What happens when we find out whether we are born equal when it comes to ethics. If we are, then there is a huge responsibility on the school system. If not, our philosophical fundamentals are going to change.”