By Teresa A. Martin
Frank Moss, director of the MIT Media Lab and keynoter at this week’s CCTC Annual Meeting & Dinner, showed lots of wonderful projects at this past Thursday’s event but what caught my imagination more than almost anything else was his challenge to rethink what it means to develop an innovation economy on the Cape.
What the MIT Media Lab does is rethink the way innovation happens. It throws together a lot of smart people from different disciplines with different ways of viewing the world and sets them to look at problems or questions without preconceived ideas.
You might call it the power of play.
Before we learn better, nothing is impossible. When we were five and we built sand cities on the beach with toy trucks and seaweed roadways, nothing was unsolvable. Before we knew the rules, we just charged ahead and made our own rules. Through the power of play, we created a reality that did what we needed it to do.
Play is a precious skill and not one that should be tossed away so easily. It is part of innovation. It’s a process of looking at possibilities and setting aside our notions of what won’t work.
The Media Lab has developed a new type of computer laptop. It features an extremely low energy screen (traditional vendors said it was impossible), it connects to other laptops via an almost self-building mesh network. It recharges itself. It was an impossibility but prototypes of the XO are running today.
Dream it. Do it. That's the power of play.
The little machine isn’t destined for your home, though. It is designed for the billion of people – kids, actually – in developing countries who are the last people you’d think about when you think about technology. One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is the nonprofit in business to sell millions of these to governments who will then distribute them to children across the country. Libya, Uruguay, Rwanda ... not exactly where you think of innovation happens, but each of these has committed to send XO laptops across the countryside.
But what’s really interesting is that no one is assuming what the kids will do with the computers. They are being designed with a variety of applications, but once again the power of play is being unleashed. By offering up a tool and an open door without preconceived expectations, no one is quite sure what will happen but there’s a pretty good chance that whatever happens will push the boundaries of what it means to use technology, and do so in a way that works in these environments.
Back at the Media Lab, breakthroughs in bio-computing are breaking out all over. By fusing computing and neuroscience and thinking without conforming to traditional ‘know rules’ the team has found ways to let the brain be the computer that drives the chip that moves the foot and is on its way to an artificial fully controllable leg and foot. It sounds like science fiction, it sounds like the dreams of children, but it represents what innovation, collaboration, and play can create.
So what does that mean on the Cape? Instead of trying to pound ourselves into known square boxes – for example, instead of saying ‘how do we recruit a company to locate here’ we need to come at the question of economic development a whole new way. Through the way of play.
What if anything were possible?
What do we have here that could be part of the mix, however farfetched it might seem?
What about creative thinkers? We have a lot people who fit that mold here. And I’m not just talking about “artists” – to survive on the Cape requires a way of viewing the world and stitching together a living within it. It takes an ability to be flexible. It takes a willingness to disregard convention sometimes.
And we have the ocean and the bay. And sand. And wind. And a fragile ecosystem that reinvents itself to survive. We struggle with issues of human-environment interaction, perhaps earlier and with more drama than other places.
Get rid of the word ‘impossible’ and begin to dream up crazy ways to harness the creativity. Look at the trends of the world, of virtualization, of links across geography, of well, of everything ...
I don’t what answers might emerge, but I love the notion of getting rid of our notions and spending a little time dreaming about wild what-ifs. The world is in phase of flux. Information technology and raw computational power are catalysts to changing the way we work and interact.
How cool would it be to play with these ideas and create an alternative future for our region and ourselves.
Sandbox, anyone?
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