Letter in the newspapers last week from a Doctor Robin Hendy who worked on the safety of food additives for 12 years. He has an interest in foods that aid dream production. He confirms the existence of “cheese dreams” but goes on to add fresh strawberries, tartare sauce and raspberries. I wonder what would happen if you had a meal using such ingredients in an architectural space that also aided thinking?
Having recovered from spending almost £500 on a train ticket from London to Liverpool last week I jumped on another train today from London to Swindon. A comparative bargain at £64 return. Whilst I was standing on the platform an elderly women asked if I’d like to fill in a National Rail Passenger Survey. Normally I’d rather pull my own fingernails out than do such a thing but seeing she was having difficulty getting anyone to agree to it I said yes.
There were 61 questions in all, most of which seemed to relate to cleanliness and security. But there was one question that caught my eye. Question 36. Travel time use. “How did you spend your time on the train?” “Tick all that apply” and “tick one spent most time on.” I thought this would be good and indeed it was.
The form wanted to know whether I…
Slept/snoozed
Read for leisure
Worked/studied (reading/writing/thinking)
Talked to other passengers
Window gazed/people watched
Listened to music/podcast
Watched a film/video
Text messaged/phone calls (work)
Text messaged/phone calls (personal)
Checked emails
Browsed the internet
Accessed social networks
Ate/drank
Cared for someone travelling with me
Played games (electronic or otherwise)
Became bored
Become anxious about the journey
Planned an onward or return journey
In short, did I make worthwhile use of my time whilst on the train?
What I liked (disliked actually) most about this question was that implicit within it is the thought that a train journey should produce a measurable result beyond simply getting from one place to another. That time spent travelling on a train should be filled with something concrete.
I was encouraged to see the word “think” buried in one of the possible answers, although this related only to work/study. Thinking outside these areas is clearly not an option. However, one was given the option of “Being bored.”
I think this is a wasted opportunity on all fronts. As Rory Sutherland pointed out in the Spectator magazine many months ago, a train journey gives you something almost unique in the modern world: the chance to simply sit, uninterrupted, to read, watch, write and above all to think. That’s assuming, of course, that the person sitting next to you isn’t doing “all of the above”.
PS – Book update. It’s out this Thursday, and yes there’s a bit on the benefits of boredom.
I was sitting on a train yesterday, reading a newspaper, when I noticed an advertisement for FaceTime video calling on the new iPhone 4. The idea of the videophone has been around for as long as I can remember, for at least thirty years, and here it finally is. Fantastic. But I foresee a potential problem.
If you add video to audio you are adding another level of communication. Another layer cognitive processing you might argue. Thus, whilst it is wonderful to see the person you are talking to on the other end of the phone, surely the depth of our listening or understanding will suffer?
This reminds me slightly of a project I worked on alongside Mckinsey & Company about ten years ago. It was for United News & Media as they were then called (a FTSE 100 company). The brief was working out what to do with Express Group Newspapers, which they owned at the time.
To cut a long story short, I asked someone called Theodore Zeldin if he’d like to get involved, not least because he knew the editor and I was convinced that there was a connection between newspapers and conversation, which was (and still is) a big theme of his. However, Theodore was really busy and couldn’t make it up to London to share with us his thinking. So he telephoned into a meeting instead. And this is where it gets good.
Most big meetings involve written material or some kind of a visual presentation such as Power Point – all of which are another level of distraction. Because Theodore couldn’t make it (and because the iPhone 4 had yet to be invented) we were all forced to listen very carefully (he’s softly spoken too) to his voice on the telephone. I can remember almost every word he said to this day.
If you are wondering what exactly he said I’m not going to tell you but I can share with you the fact that he more or less invented the idea of user generated content years before anyone like OhMyNews came up with the same idea.
According to Ronald Burt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, there are “structural holes” inside organisations. For example, a study by Mr Burt inside Raytheon (a defence company) found that not only did those managers with wider social networks come up with the best ideas but also that people who talked to close colleagues about their ideas tended not to develop their ideas whereas those that went outside work for a discussion tended to get much further. In other words, homogeneity kills creativity at some level whereas serendipity encourages it. This makes perfect sense to me although perhaps someone should tell those individuals frantically widening their social networks on sites such as Facebook and Linked in because Burt’s observation suggests that such networks tend towards more of the same. Sites such as these seem to be predicated upon the belief that the more people you know the better off (in all senses) you will be. But these sites inevitably attract like-minded individuals and information and experience tends to narrow. Mr Burt is not against social networks as far as I can tell but be does seem to be saying that one should pursue hybrid networks that have no apparent social structure.
The American social commentator and satirist H.L. Mencken once said that nobody has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. This was possibly true at the time but is it still? Surely we’re now living in an era of mass intelligence, an era characterized by the rapid dissemination of information and ideas? An era such as that summed up by Clay Shirky in his new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.
For example, not so long ago the Royal Opera House production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni in London was sold out to readers of Britain’s top-selling tabloid newspaper, The Sun. (Headline: Well Don, My Sun). Similarly, museum attendance has gone through the roof. In 1999/2000 there were 24 million museum visits in Britain but in 2007/8 this had risen to 40 million visits. This can be partly attributed to the change to free admission but not wholly because the trend is also evident with fee-paying museums and exhibitions too. In Paris more people visit the Louvre than the Eiffel Tower and the LA Times newspaper has suggested that we are living in a golden age for television drama and even sales of difficult books are booming (or people will buy them even if they never read them).
Other evidence of cultural expansion and mass intelligence includes the success of public lectures and debates, such as those held by the Institute of Ideas and Intelligence Squared, Classic FM (a UK classical music station with a weekly audience of 6 million) and The School of Life, which calls itself a ‘one stop shop for the mind’.
But this expansion of culture is not necessarily reflective of a rise in general intelligence. The reason for the growth in cultural products may just reflect economic growth, population increases or better marketing. Moreover, much of this culture is consumed passively. More people listening to classical music is hardly evidence of a flowering of intelligence. It may simply be linked to demographics. There are now more older people and they would prefer to listen to Mozart than Katy Perry.
Overall there seems to be little evidence for a blossoming of originality of thought. Science and technology are doing great things but where is the great art? We’ve had 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan so where’s the new Guerinca? The explanation I like for all this is that we are getting smarter and more stupid at the same time. We are getting better at thinking quickly but worse at thinking things through properly. We are getting better at fast and thin but worse at slow and deep. We are getting better at adaptive works but true originality has flown out of the window.
Something else from the cutting room floor…. I know, I just can’t let go.
Perhaps one of the reasons that people avoid deep thinking is that deep thinking opens our eyes to what is going on in the wider world and in some instances this can be quite terrifying. The science-fiction writer Arthur C Clarke once remarked that one of the most fundamental questions relating to human existence was whether or not there is anyone else out there (in deep space). There are two possible answers to this question, yes or no. Each offers frightening prospects. But both answers also open our eyes to the thought that we should take much greater care of each other while we are alive here on Earth.
Swiss researchers have found that different countries may have different collective memories. How could this be? The answer is that there is a gene that encodes memory and this gene comes in two types, one of which is better at the formation of memory than the other. Moreover, the ‘good’ memory gene appears to be more common in some countries than others. So certain countries could, in theory, be better at remembering than others.
Here’s a good joke. I’m a dyslexic agnostic. I don’t believe in dog. Why am I telling you this? Because there’s a statistic in The Economist saying that 35% of US entrepreneurs are dyslexics compared with only 1% of US corporate managers. Perhaps corporations can’t handle people who think differently? For the record, here’s a quick list of a few dyslexics.
I like this. I am using an edited version of this quote in my new book, Future Minds, but I rather like this longer version. It reminds me of a guy at IBM that I once did some work for. He was a smoker and talked about his “thinking sticks.” Only problem is he’s not really allowed to use them anymore (or at least the places where he can “think” are being restricted).
This is a quote from Charles Constable, Director of Strategy at Channel Five Television (thanks Charles).
“Often the ‘spark’ comes when I am not supposed to be thinking. I’m afraid I am a smoker – now sentenced to pursue this awful habit outside. I think smoking is about relaxing (for me at least) – so I let my mind stop being boxed in by whatever I was doing before hand. That’s when it gets to work on its own, and that’s when it works most laterally – both in terms of what it ‘chooses’ to decide to mull on and in terms of connections it makes between things. I sometimes find it hard to retain the thoughts when having to get back to the day job of the next immediate challenge – usually have to write it down or say it to someone. This works particularly well late at night or when it’s quiet. Or alternatively – in the bath… …a bit of a cliché but true…I think the other time I think well is when I am stealing ideas from others! People say things, which lead you to make good, new connections – to see things in ways you had not previously. I’ve often said that the best ideas I have came from someone else. This is where ‘sparks’ can be molded into something more concrete that you can really do something with. So at work I like to think with 1 or (no more than) 2 people through an iterative thought process. Two brains are often better than one for really good constructive thinking. Too many brains and the process gets tough.”
Good quote from the writer Sebastian Faulks: “The more easily accessible information is, the less people feel the need to know anything. So they’ve lost the ability to think for themselves.”