Recently I set my policy students the task of picking five ways of thinking to structure an ill-defined policy. One of those ways I chose was the ‘picturing’ technique which visualises a problem and it’s relationships. In essence, nobody really picked that option out of 38 students. In a more recent event I asked one of my students to think systemically about a problem. She said she couldn’t do it because it took her out of comfort zone. I had never been confronted with a problem like this before so I was unsure how to handle it. I showed her a basic mapping technique (concept mapping) and she was ok after that. It did get me thinking though… why do people have a hard time visualising concepts?

My argument: people have abandoned pictures in western education

I have watched my eldest daughter draw inventive pictures and create masterpieces only to have that ‘educated’ out of her by the end of grade three. When asked to visualise anything she really struggles now compared with several years ago. Further, the inability of people to apply their imagination to problems, offering new and innovative solutions is somehow linked to the ability to picture things.  During school I felt myself drifting out the window imagining something else while the teacher was talking. I often remember being interrupted by the teacher who would say something like, “Luke stop daydreaming and focus on your work.” Ahh but what great adventures I had staring out that window. I fought crime, solved problems and created new and better realities. Alas, it’s take then best part of 25 years to realise that those methods instilled in me at such an early age have limited my capacity to imagine.

Restoring the capacity to imagine

Reading dulls the mind. Already by now most of you have stopped at this point in the article. Which makes that last sentence somewhat redundant. Let me give you a little test. Imagine you are sitting as a passenger in your car. Can you see the glove box? What about the windscreen? What’s happening as you imagine yourself in this setting? If you can’t do this then you were like me you had lost your capacity to imagine. Here’s a snippet from something I wrote (from this site which I never get time to update) a while ago:

Eunice looked into the small room where her sleeping daughter lay tightly strapped to a bed. Given that she had lost her husband to schizophrenia, she wondered why she hadn’t seen this coming.

Now you are doing it. You are seeing a girl strapped to a bed. You are picturing a mental ward… whatever YOUR perception of that is likely to be. You have seen clothing, pictures on the wall, the room and so on. Why can’t we apply this same thinking to our problems, businesses or other stuff?

My challenge to you

I want you to do something.  I am going to do this too so don’t worry.  Woah man… no it’s not like that.  Take a specific area of your life and begin to apply your imagination to it.  See what you come up with.  Let me finish with the story I began at the start of this post.  The student in question still looked a little puzzled after I used the concept mapping technique so I asked her to use her imagination.  I asked her to think what would it be like IF she could think this way?  How would it feel? What connections would you see?  What steps would you take?  This got her passed the “can’t do it bit” and she actually did a very good job in the end.

The imagination is probably the most underrated part of our brains.  It can take us places our logic can only follow… it can picture for us new realities and if you believe in positive (intentional) spirituality it can even effect reality!  So why not give it a go and let me know how it works out?

I have had my fair share of back stabbings in my short life… more than I would want to count.  Given that I am typing… I can’t count and I too overweight to see my toes.  It has been my experience that the road to hell is not paved with good intentions… it’s paved with people trying to steal my stuff.  People trying to take my job… (get off it’s mine!) and people undermining me at every turn.  People murdering other people and so on and so on. Where is the good intention in that I tell you!  Sure, this saying has merit.  Many a good deed does actually backfire and create hell for the intended.  But most of the time my dear friends you find people are, as the great Nick Cave postulates, just no good.  The good intentions people may have had usually end up in something that has small consequences even though sometimes it does not.

We live in a world where ambition rules over love, good taste is blinded by mass appeal and people like Ghandi are shot in the street.  This world leaves a taste so foul in your mouth at times that you want to surgically remove your tongue so at least it can be clean.  Sure, I am ranting and sure it’s late.  But you know what I find myself shortchanged more often by people who mean me harm as opposed to people who’s heart is in the right place. I could labour this but you know what I think I made my point.

I have been working steadily on next week’s lecture and thought I might just check if the 30 seconds Simpsons videos I was using in my lectures are still on youtube.  No they are not.  I got a message from the company in question saying for violation of copyright the videos have been shut down.   Last time I checked copyright law this was fair use!

So what have I done instead.  Well thankfully I have found a few De Bono videos and this one from shoemoney about yahoo and if it matters.  The lecture is about policy and strategic assumptions - the satire of The Simpsons is picture perfect.  Shoemoney is good too and a good replacement but C’MON why did you have to take those videos off the frickin’ internet!  It made my otherwise BORING lectures somewhat interesting.  I am really mad!  Now I can’t entertain myself while I lecture anymore thanks to the overfed legal beast that sucks on the teats of the Fox Corporation.  I hope whoever thought it was a GOOD idea to take the videos off the internet remembers the little guy (me) next time they pull them off the web.

I will leave you with some thoughts on piracy:

I work in a university teaching people about computers (mainly) and policy.  The stuff dreams are made of.  Every semester there is always one student that irks me more than most and the kind that just wants the answers.  Their version of life is to simply have the “facts” and that is that.  Well I can tell you that if you really want to learn about life there is a world outside the facts you need to consider.

Having the answer… isn’t the same as the answer itself.

My way of learning is not to just get the answers… it’s to work out how I can get to the answer. Say, for instance, you are into affiliate marketing. The information you need is not how do I get sales BUT how do I actually become a competent affiliate marketer. What’s the difference? The process of selling and learning how to market things will teach you how to get sales. If I tell you this is how I get sales there will be important information missing. Stuff like, what is your budget, demographic, what is the marketing environment and so on. If I just told you what to do without giving you the chance to learn… you would not remember a bloody thing.

You must learn the way and then innovate it as you go along… not collect facts

Nothing gets under my skins faster than students who couldn’t be bothered to learn the skills I teach. I mean it’s really easy to show you the answer but the way there is lost on someone like that. That’s not teaching it’s programming robots. I am not into AI so I am dealing with humans. To rephrase a popular saying, “I can give you the fish or I can teach you how to catch them yourself.” If you are smart you will go through some pain to get there and build something with it. If not, you will be amongst the growing ant population that populate the cubes of the EVIL corporate beast. But I digress…

If this is you… don’t be an ass. Decide to begin learning the way by trying. I know your parents probably bailed you out up to this point or you are as lazy as I used to be. Don’t be like that! Once you know something you have power and you can use this power to dominate the world destroy the UN go back in time better yourself. If you don’t then you will be a GRADE A moron in my books.

* Note: the previous blog post may not resemble coherent thought.

Yesterday I went to target with my kids to buy some stuff and I went to look at the book section like I always do.  To my horror I was amazed… shocked… surprised when I couldn’t find one science fiction tome on the shelves?  I have a theory but my guess is that people just don’t read popular science fiction anymore?   If they do… I guess they don’t buy it at target.

Angus and Robertson had no more love either

I left target and went to a dedicated ‘book’ store to look for science fiction because I thought what the hell is going on?  One, maybe two shelves in the science fiction section and the rest was fantasy?  I mean really what’s going on here.  You know things are bad when the shelves are littered with Mills and Boon and there is no science fiction.    What gives?

Science fiction slowly but surely disappearing of our television sets

It’s a great irony that Australians made Farscape pretty much and we never watched it.   Now, Stargate’s disappearing, Red Dwarf can’t get any more love from the BBC… it’s a global conspiracy I tell you.

What can we do about it

Ultimately we have the power, people who made the Farscape miniseries possible (you know who you are).  We must do something about this.  I don’t what but surely there has to be an answer to the vaporisation of science fiction of our time dilated portals… I mean television sets and bookstores.

I was sent this article from local news site Brisbane times. In short it says the government is going to tax us more when we buy a car to make us pay less ‘mortgage duty’ when we buy a house. The article points out that people will save $500 initially on taxing on houses and later on $1000. Ok, so I am not rubbishing the journalist here but what the hell?

So tell me state government: what am supposed to do to save up the whopping 10% of $320,000? Last time I checked the only place I can buy a house for that price is in the middle of bloody nowhere, miles away from work, oh and did I mention that I am only eligible for a loan 1/3 of that? I suppose I could buy 32 houses? Give me a break.

So here we are in the middle of a housing crisis where people are living on the street and all we can do is give tax breaks to people who need it the least. I have to be totally honest here and say this is the least helpful idea in the crisis so far. I like Rudd’s sliding scale concept, but I can’t save with rising food and accommodation costs can I? Here’s a concept: work on making something different so more people can afford to buy a house. Wow! What a concept!

To be fair I think the idea has merit because of extending tax options for investors (thus making more rentals available…I hope) BUT this sounds like an attempt to bait investors to me NOT an answer to getting a house for the first home buyer. It does not sound (perhaps as it’s framed in the article) as an attempt to work towards a meaningful solution to the nations affordability problems. Now, I am all for making money and success but what happens when people keep getting rich on one end and the majority miss out? Poverty and rises in homelessness that’s what.

I have discussed these things previously and judging by a comment I received in that post this morning I am not alone here.  This has made me seriously rethink the whole renting versus buying thing. As I have already said before, I am not sure it’s sound investment as many say it is. I would just like to add my voice to the growing discontent of how this situation is being handled. It’s like the people in charge of this thing are asleep at the wheel. So why am I whining about this? Well, it’s a classic case of looking at a problem from a purely economic point of view. Shallow, narrow minded and at best a poor solution to a problem that is growing rapidly out of control.