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9/7/18, 11:41 AM

Just yesterday, I discovered Orchestration is an aesthetic engineering historical existence theorem, to add to architecture, industrial design and digital content development. Orchestration has a technical definition in computer science, and an artistic definition in music, the one of greater interest here. One succinct definition: Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (Wikipedia). Orchestration is an advanced part of the study of Composition, one that is also a branch of aesthetic engineering, where Aesthetic Engineering, AE is defined as integrating emotional engagement with logistical robustness.

The reason this matters a great deal, and to more than musicians, composers, and listeners is our society is becoming increasing transaction and consumption based, and as such more quantifiably oriented. Unfortunately, anything longer than short term happiness is more based upon quality than upon quantity. Aesthetics, originality, creativity, curiosity and innovation all contribute mightily to meaning and well being, but are not for the most part quantifiable. Although many publish findings attempting to quantify these intangibles, to my mind are of questionable scientific validity because they are often lacking repeatability and specificity, the two basic tenets of good science. 

Culture and the emotional relevancy required for emotional engagement for example, are more based upon intangibles than quantifiables. This is where aesthetic engineering integrates and balances between the logistically quantifiable and emotionally relevant qualitatively intangibles. 

This balancing act has been going on for millennia, although AE has begun to be taught in the 21st century.  In 2000, when first teaching Aesthetic Engineering at Cogswell Polytechnical College, it was was defined as combining the emotional relevance of the arts, with the technical robustness of engineering. I introduced this topic because web-based content was not very emotionally relevant. It tended to be either emotionally engaging or not crashing, but not both, causing me to search for historical examples where engineering and art were successfully coupled. I found two strong compelling existence theorems, Architecture and Industrial Design. 

It appeared Ancient Architects discovered how to design beautiful buildings that did not fall down when it rained, and European Sports Car Industrial Designers managed to bring to market, extremely high performance motor vehicles that were also gorgeous. I wondered why the Internet had not spawned similar marriages by 2000, but have since realized that the internet was a relative youngster then, and these things can take a lot of time.  At that time, while advancing from lecturer to dean, I was able to convince the then college president, that we should offer Aesthetic Engineering as a core requirement in a digital arts degree program. This was a one year survey course for seniors. Now almost 20 years late the web has become far more emotionally engaging and technically robust, which is important as without emotional engagement, there is no emotional relevancy.  Most of the world does not care much about intellectual relevancy, only about emotional relevancy.  

Aesthetic Engineering has been addressed through several SVII programs and postings:

Innovators’ Showcase! – July 18th 2012: 

Recap: High Tech x High Fashion (SV’s New Collection!) December 5th 2012

Innovation Vitality to deliver critical innovation initiatives?) December 4th 2013

Liberal Arts in a Digital Age via Entrepreneurial & Engineering Thinking  October 25, 2015

Aesthetic Engineering July 26, 2017

As innovation advocates, try to balance meaning with money and relevancy with quantity, You may even find that participating in making your offerings more emotionally relevant to your customers results in more stable long term quantifiable results as well.

All of us talk to ourselves more than others talk to us. It is the ultimate multitasking activity at times providing encouragement, other times criticism, and often simply a running commentary. If you can quiet your mind – congratulations you can now focus on what you are doing instead of having a meta-conversation about the conversation you are having with someone else at the same time.

Seriously, talking to ourselves, or hopefully with ourselves is a fact of life and a big one because we become what we do, and hopefully we often do what we think . This means, for most of us, our life is extremely impacted by the conversations we have, and if the most frequent conversation we have is with ourselves, than our self-talk is the dominant input to our system.

This is especially true of creative innovative inventive people, for they spend a lot of their time alone, not because they are losers, but because creation requires gestation. And innovation requires very deep dives in order to transcend more easily available superficial activities. 

Now, if the greatest input to our system is ourselves, we had better be careful about what we are saying. If we mostly beat ourselves up with our self-talk words and thoughts, than we will be mostly beat up. And if we are continually supportive of ourselves, than we will feel continually supported. This sounds simple and it is, but as many other simple insights about simple actions, simple does not mean easy. Repeated practice makes all actions easier, which is why musicians and fireman drill. Rapid execution demands the pre-knowledge which comes from having practiced many times. Therefore be vigilant about what you tell yourself, because it becomes habituated as we are involved in self talk so much of the time.

Habit is a short way to say automatic behavior which is excellent for musicians, fireman and other emergency responders. Your heart and lungs execute automatically without thought because without a beating heart and breathing lungs you die.

Self talk is also pretty automatic or habituated and greatly contributes to having a consistent self model, necessary to interact with others, who understandably become confused by inconsistent behavior and inconsistent thoughts. Negative self-talk undermines achieving potential.

Make your self-talk more consciously positive. Simple but not easy if you have made automatic self disqualifying statements. One of the most straight forward and simplest actions any person can make is to make sure they are being supportive of themselves instead of tearing themselves down. Simple but not always easy. If you can not support yourself, because you do not like yourself or your actions, change your behavior to something you can support. Your self talk will automatically naturally change from negative to positive. Simple but not very easy. 

In case you are wondering what this has to do with innovation, who would you rather collaborate with? Ms Up or Mr. Down?  You have to raise friends before you raise money.

The single most important friend you have to raise, the one you talk to the most, is on the critical path to accomplishing anything new requiring change.

You did say you were an innovation advocate right? 

9/5/18, 7:26 AM

Perhaps the STEM folks among you have heard of transforms? Mathematical Transforms are kind of like transformers – the same components can be reassembled into very different forms. And yes electrical transformers also do this to a fashion trading off current and voltage. Writers sometimes talk about points of view in similar terms – the same underlying reality can look quite different depending upon perspective.  Yes, perspective seems be a very powerful and useful concept for it allows us to realize that things can look very different depending upon ones vantage point. Note that look very different, is not the same thing, as being very different – it simply means changing our vantage point can change the way we think about what is happening.

Back to STEM for a second – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics seem to be a perspective society is badly in need of to get ahead, especially in comparison to the rest of the world who seem to be investing more energy in this type of educational curriculum. Three quarters of university STEM graduates in american institutions are not american. Although we may still have the best graduate schools in the world, our population is not the primary beneficiary, because our american students are less inclined to do the extra homework.

Back to the Hare to Turtle Transform, one that is not in any engineering textbook, but as one gets older or more experienced, seems to be worth investigating do to its universality. Some of you have heard of the FFT, Fast Fourier Transform used for spectral analysis, or the Laplace and Z Transforms useful in moving between analog and digital systems, or the Hilbert Transform  relating phase to amplitude. 

What is fantastic about transforms, is they are precise perspective manipulators which reveal different aspects of systems far more easily in some domains than others. Unfortunately, they generally require an amount of math familiarity and ease, beyond those who are technically trained like STEM people. 

The HTT, Hare to Turtle Transform is a simple enough to not require rigorous mathematical treatment to be understood, making it useful to non specialized populations. It has the advantage of being universal, as people do have a tendency to slow down a bit when they age. Here is why that is useful to me and many like me.

Perhaps you were born with so much energy and curiosity, that you spent a significant portion of your life burning rubber, by definition not getting traction, like a race car with so much horsepower that tire friction can not contain them from spinning until they burn. Now it can be a lot of fun to burn rubber physically or intellectually, because it makes a big noise, and a smell and shows off the you have a very large engine under your hood. Unfortunately, it does not accomplish much else, nor contribute to winning races which is where the HTT Hare to Turtle Transform comes in, because remember the Tortoise wins the race!

People born with “more” are somethings referred to as “gifted”.  Observing the membership of the Silicon Valley Innovation Institute and Society, this is both a blessing and a curse. Excess horsepower is much harder to manage for individuals and everyone around them. If one lasts long enough eventually available energy diminishes which is relativistic. If at age of 6, you had more energy than everyone in the schoolyard, this is also likely to be the case when 60, except  60 year olds do not play in the same school yards except occasionally if they are grandparents.

Slowing down on purpose not because you have to, provides more time to do what you are doing better, which generally gets better results. This is not the flip side of burning rubber, being paralyzed by perfectionism, as neither of these are useful. Instead of throwing yourself at the universe, and seeing what happens, be more deliberate than when you had more energy to waste. It is more rewarding to be slower and steadier, and get more done.

As one who has taken great pride in never following routines or listening to authority, slowing down, even when you have excess energy, is incredibly satisfying and productive. Great speed, generating great results is as illusory as the sole contributor solitary changing the world myth. It takes slowing down enough to collaborate not blaming others for not being you. 

Slow down and do just-in-time scoping and planning. It is not possible to plan more than a short time ahead. Ask any leader what percent of their plans work in the anticipated time frame. Do what makes sense every day, not by running as fast as you can, but running as steadily as you can. That means less dreams done more fully for focus, prioritization, flexibility and steady progress always outperforms the rabbits. The HTT, Hare to Tortoise Transform is a path toward getting more and better  results.

 

9/4/18, 7:26 AM

Continuing on from yesterday, for Content to truly become King what would have to happen? POV or Points of View

Lets begin with what does not need to happen.  We do not need to go from a large number of poor quality choices, to an even larger number of poor quality choices. Yes, choice does permit people more options to choose from, but this is not necessarily helpful, unless consumption is your main approach to life. If you want to be discriminating, desire more curated and better edited content, and to be acknowledged more in your interactions, than there are better paths to take. 

Historically, some companies succeeded without having much insight about what to offer customers by simply offering them an enormous number of choices and then observing what was purchased. However, this is an incredibly poor use of resources when compared with other companies who simply knew more clearly what to offer, and focused their attention on doing a great job at it. 

Wouldn’t you rather be exposed to terrific content, instead of having to spend a lot of time sorting through terrible content? One problem, is ones persons treasure can be another persons poison. Furthermore, what is highly regarded at some points in time, can be completely dismissed during others.   Audiences are not static, tastes change and moods change. And what can be offered changes over time as well.

An answer is adaptability and flexibility on the part of all parties involved in an exchange. Pretend you were more interested in an exchange of ideas, than simply consuming ones thrust at you. Okay, yes admittedly this puts you in the minority of society, because it means you have some ideas you want to share, and are able to share. 

Is happiness increased more by consumption or by creation? Well, it depends upon who you are and what mood you are in. Do you want to go out to eat or to cook a meal? Do you even know how to cook a meal?   The content world is like that as well, some create it, yet most consume it. What if content delivery and consumption, were more like a conversation with give and take, and with adjustment and iteration leading toward a better conversation? 

One opinion, is for content to truly become king it has to become increasingly flexible and adaptive. Availability of dramatically increased bandwidth permits this. Just as those with more bandwidth than others, can have greater ability to adapt conversations to achieve mutual benefit. 

Would you rather buy a car from a salesperson who seemed to understand and care who you were and what your needs are? Would you rather have a surgeon who was more concerned about your situation, than scheduling their next surgery to make a boat payment or put their kids through college?  Everyone prefers to be seen, heard and acknowledged, as these make your life have more meaning when you have an identity and are not an invisible entity just being hit up for money. 

Then, why can’t content behave more like a contemplative conversational partner, than a used car salesman? One reason was previously there was not enough bandwidth to permit adaptation.

Let me leave you with one thought for today – what if content permitted you to have and select a point of view? Would this experience be more like an in person interaction where you could choose what to focus your attention upon? Would that be more satisfying? 

Can’t you imagine ways to make content act in this way? Would this not permit different business models and create new opportunities? To be continued…