a different concept about connecting to people

Many of us have emails, facebook contacts, twitter accounts, delicious bookmarks... All of these tools are important, and they help order our lives in significant ways.

But I would think that these emails, facebook contacts, etc.. should be thought of as prostheses - things that help us connect to the wider world out there, and help us connect to other people. But when we do connect with other people, we are connecting with the emails, and facebook profiles of other people, not to the people per se. What we are, when we link to emails and all, is that we are linking a prostheses to another prostheses, one degree removed from the reality of the person that we are connecting to.

I would like to think that there could be another way about looking at the social connectivity that we have across the web. I would re-imagine that we are connecting to people, not to prostheses, and a whole suite of applications could be conceptualised based on that ideal. We connect to people, and its just that people are enveloped in our own webs of applications and devices, and we need to recognise that fact. It would be so much better, if we could organise our contacts in a people-centric sort of way, and linking emails and facebook profiles to that person, instead of the other way around.

A possible application could be like this...
(name1)
(gmail)
(msn)
(facebook)
(blog)

(name2)
(gmail)
(facebook)
(blog)
(twitter)
(delicious)
...

and so on... instead of

(email)
(name)
...

Would it be possible?

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elaboration of tweets

Academic subject unimportance and labeling. Knowledge, nt parochial. Depth AND spread. multidisciplinary is only a fluff term if you don't know the disciplines in depth...

I hit on this idea after I realise that all this talk about multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary is all fluff and that talk like that only make sense when people are able to get the different perspectives. I can imagine how that might look like for say, someone doing psycho-neurological research. That person would have to do BOTH psychology and neurology, and only after that, bringing those two perspectives into something more interesting.

Which brings me to the idea that the naming of fields of studies might be commutative, meaning AB is equal to BA. It wouldn't matter if its psycho-neurology or neuro-psychology, both are practically the same.

The unimportance of labels: move past ideology. Its not this ideo vs that ideo. Nowadays, it seems more like, this ideo is nice, combined with that component of another ideo... and then mash things up...

Here I am talking about labels and ideologies, and I'm not sure about all these philosophies, but I'm getting the sense that all of these labels fade away, and the thing that truly matters are the words that compose the labels in the first place, to examine details in every philosophies, and really understand what they mean. Its no longer liberalism vs conservatism, or or pragmatism vs idealism... all these -isms confuse people. And why should people get so stuck on their ideas? Yes, there are some fundamentals that should stay where they are, but after that, argument goes.
Design IS tech! You can't have good design without good technology (note: good, not BEST tech. very different things.)

People dont want tech! People want experience afforded by tech. Apple has been first mover, but MS catching up! Experience is design powered by technology! People DON'T want to know the technology behind their gadgets, they WANT the EXPERIENCE - and that can only be provided by DESIGN!

The two tweets are the result of realising that design itself is technology. Good design has to come from good tech, and there is no one without the other. You can have good tech with bad design though, but that just makes people turned off from the tech.

You have to differentiate between good tech and best tech. best tech refers to the technical advances that have made the performance exceptional. Good tech might refer to optimal performance, one that might not be performing exceptionally, but rather is compatible with the design and user requirements. Good tech also has this sense of optimising for the whole of the product, while best tech usually is about the sheer performance of something in a single indicator rather than throughout the entire product.

And of course, the aim of tech, in a very human-centred way, is to provide an experience. People want the experience of an easy-to-use touch screen, hence the iPhone. People might not necessarily want a device full of functions they don't use... So DESIGN is key!

Should have published this long ago...

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the idea that i've been having about singapore...

I guess I never really revealed the bigger picture that I've been having for a long time in my head. I talk about environmental change, social change, education, Singapore, external challenges and all, but I've always done it in bit pieces - every topic in isolation, without regard for its context with respect to many other things. A few days ago I had this epiphany that it would be simpler for my life and others, if I'd just tell them what is exactly on my mind. So here it is:

I am afraid for Singapore.

Now why am I afraid? Simply because of India and China. Their growth will be THE story of our time, of the 21st century. But what will it mean for Singapore? It means a loss of relevance in the world, the loss of relevance to China and India. What happens, around 2050, when China and India become fully developed? What will happen to Singapore?

What's happening now.

Singapore is trying to position itself as a point of entry into China's markets. That is losing its point, because investors can just stream into China directly, bypassing Singapore totally. We are exporting public administration to Chinese government officials - but in time, they will establish their very own Zhu Rong Ji Institute of Public Policy, so even LKYSPP will lose its shine. We are using exporting our developing model for their industries and economy as a whole, but in time, they won't need it, when they're done learning our lessons. They will eventually find their own way, and we'll be left in the dust of their development.

The only hope then is that we would have moved on in our development.

But how?

The only way to do that is to INNOVATE, and I cannot emphasize itself. We need an education system and a society that encourages innovation, and does it by the truckload.

My friend, Shaun, and I agree, that Singapore is really good at being efficient and sometimes, adaptable. Because we are small, we can push through with projects faster than almost any other country. That is something we need to keep. Our education system is superb at churning efficient people - and that's a good thing too. We are very good at doing the things TODAY, but we suck seriously at innovating.

The main point is, we need visionaries - people who can see beyond today's situations and anticipate what lies ahead in the future, and create innovations for tomorrow - not just incremental changes, but something radical, even game changing, something disruptive, like the Internet, the wheel, the iPod, and more...

And more importantly, we need to link visionaries with the efficient people that we have today. We need to be fast at what we do, and at the same time, to be able to innovate something completely new. We need a society that can nurture visionaries and match them with the suitable efficient people to create innovations that will keep Singapore just that little bit ahead. If we start now, we will enjoy another say, 20 years of growth, before China and India match up with us again. Until then, what?

Thats for the next generation to think, and we have to prepare them for that moment. Meanwhile, we have challenges like sustainable growth, urban planning, and all... SIngapore needs to seriously innovate, and come up with sustainable models for future growth - how do we retrofit our buildings to become eco-friendly, cradle-to-cradle style...

and an idea that can help make the innovative, dynamic society into reality...

and an IDEA CAFE!!! now that would be great! a place where people could talk freely about their ideas, get together and discuss them, and maybe even come up with something...

forgot to add that the Ideas Cafe will be different, because when people are discussing, they will decide whether they want people to just come in and contribute to a discussion... and then hopefully, this will allow different people to meet each other and come up with immense synergy they can take to... whatever their dreams take them...???

then we can set up a community, where people can continue their discussions online and further develop their ideas into full-blown projects of potential social change - all these for changing the social landscape of singapore into something really more dynamic than what i have here.

It does not need a new cafe, any cafe today can implement these things if they want to...

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an epiphany 23rd jan

This whole idea just struck me as I was searching for the book, Stuff, The hidden lives of everyday Things. Then I found, Cradle to Cradle, a book by William McDonough, whose presentation about his development of 12 green cities in China was... simply... jaw-dropping. Then I found, Worldchanging: The User's guide to the 21st century.

Today, we are witnessing the intersection of politics, social technologies, and the environment. I believe that we are entering into another Enlightenment more enlightened than the previous one. I think today, we are in the Green Enlightenment. Our era will be defined by how we were able to tap on all of our technologies to solve issues of sustainability. Because I think, even the issue of climate change pales in comparison to the isse of sustainability. What must we do in order to survive this century and the next? Climate change is only part of the problem - there is this entire disaster that stems from our immense consumption of the resources of the planet...

I'm not Thomas Friedman, so I can't fly around the world asking for the opinion of TEDsters and other movers and shakers of the world. I do not believe that all these problems are too big to solve - it is rather, that the size of the problem should make us want to solve it even more. All the more we have to take this problem to the global level.

Just maybe, this is what our generation will have to do...

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