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Ben Fry, creator of Processing (or Proce55ing for those that remember) and data viz guru at MIT, has an absolutely fascinating visualization of how Darwin changed the text of “The Evolution of Species” in the thirteen years following its publication.

The labels across the top are chapter numbers, the dashes underneath represent text from the book which you can see on mouse-over. The color bars indicate the different editions.

I called it fascinating on first look, but should probably be more measured or specific. I hate when we fail to distinguish between fact illustration (making a single thing visual) and data visualization (revealing previously unseen stories through a rich visual worth looking at several times). This falls somewhere in between. The final state of the chart, after the 6th, and lengthiest, revision does tell a story:

The most obvious part of the narrative is the addition of an entire section and extensive revisions to the final section in the 6th edition, indicating a structural bolstering of the argument and possibly responses to ten years of critique. The speckle patterns, small bits of color, show a lot of tinkering/revising in the first three editions. These all support Fry’s introductory point:

We often think of scientific ideas, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, as fixed notions that are accepted as finished. In fact, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species evolved over the course of several editions he wrote, edited, and updated during his lifetime

I’m wondering, though, whether this illustration tells the story better than the text?

What does make it fascinating overall is the ability to mouse over the sections (the small gray and colored stripes) and read the text underneath. Might be a better tool (if the stripes were a little bit bigger and easier to mouse over) than it is a data viz.

Two links today, one old, one new, highlighting how over-use, mis-use, mindless-use of the word has robbed of it meaning and impact:

From the presumably soon to be renamed “Innovate on Purpose”, a nice line about the cost of setting overstated goals: “By placing too much emphasis or spotlighting events that aren’t really innovation, we place a lot of good work at risk.” There’s another nice line that hits on the idea that innovation is a habit, “consider innovation as a repeatable, sustainable process rather than a quick brainstorm or two and one somewhat interesting product”

Scott Berkun is the author of the other, older post where he makes the ballsy statement: “Just be good. That’s hard enough.” Not only is it hard, it’s actually often innovative, better than what’s out there.

Nice cartoon by Tom Fishburne:

Featured in his bid to speak at SxSW this year.

There are lots of articles, tools, books, exercises out there about how to generate ideas and all of them deal in one way or another with brainstorms. Over the years, we’ve all read about the various faultlines: how many people, how is it structured, what kind of people, rules of engagement, handling evaluation of ideas, facilitation, how much and what kind of prep prior, follow-through after, fresh eyes vs already immersed.

Inevitably, over the course of long dialogs about how, whether, and why brainstorm, someone points out that the final ideas almost never come out of brainstorms, leading to a conclusion of ‘why bother’, ‘rethink it (once again) from scratch’, or ‘keep doing them, but don’t put too much energy into them.’

I’ve always valued brainstorms for things other than (or in addition to) the actual ideas they bring. After a brainstorm, people, especially those who are leading the project or will stay with it for a while, leave with certain things:

Fans of Carl Sagan or viewers of the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation are familiar with the phrase “primordial soup.” It’s a rich collection of proteins, amino acids, and highly active and interactive materials out of which the material of life can emerge. It is not life, it is not the beginning of evolution. Rather, it’s the source material from which organic matter/lifestuff will emerge. All it needs is an infusion of energy, some random mutations, conditions which are hostile enough to challenge but supportive enough to engage and then life begins, mutates, and evolves.

Brainstorms should be viewed, and maybe conducted, in this way — they generate the basic molecules and proteins of the creative process but are not the creative output itself.

Tim OReilly (@timoreilly) tweeted that an attendee of his talk did visual notes of his presentation.

The notes were “taken”/drawn by @jonnygoldstein. More here.

Reading and thoroughly digging Steven Johnson’s Invention of Air and seeing an overlap with discussions about planning and innovation (clunky intro, but accurate).

Early in Johnson’s book, he tells the story of how we discovered the Gulf Stream. It was a convergence of vaguely, not immediately apparently, connected things. In the 1760s there were several things being observed by people engaged in undirected, scientific observation. Joseph Priestley was using the new Fahrenheit thermometer to measure ocean water temperatures at different depths and locations. He had no idea if it would add up to something, but was simply curious and observant. Benjamin Franklin had notices that there were “gulph weeds” present along certain lines of sight in the ocean, lines which had little connection to landmass or shorelines. Sailors were informally logging certain places where sailing was smoother and faster. There was also a fascination with and fear of waterspouts.

All of these things were unconnected or loosely connected, until a question about the postal system emerged: why does it take longer for letters to travel from Europe to America than it does for letters to travel in the opposite direction?

Johnson’s characterization of this intellectual convergence, says something about innovation and discovery:

[British authorities curious about this question] were lucky in another respect: the postmaster in question happened to be Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin would ultimately turn that postal mystery into one of the great scientific breakthroughs of his career: a turning point in our visualization of the macro patterns formed by ocean currents. Franklin was well-prepared for the task. As a twenty-year old, traveling back from his first voyage to London in 1726, he had recorded notes in his journal about the strange prevalence of “gulph weed” in the waters of the North Atlantic. In a letter written twenty years later, he had remarked on the slower passage westward across the Atlantic, though at the time he supposed it was attributable to the rotation of the earth.

There’s additional layers to this very compelling story (I just love Johnson’s books), but the key things of interest to me are the components of discovery and invention:

A theme that cuts across all of these is looseness of process connected to open-ness to the new. This is an occasional theme in innovation literature which talks about generosity of spirit, lateral inspiration and thinking, and the ability to quickly move in and out of modes of discourse, multiple configurations of ideas and data points.

(Image taken from http://www.benjaminfranklinhouse.org/)

Psyche! I finally made it to Maker Faire and it was every bit as fun, interesting, and inspiring as I hoped. It was big and massive with welded giants of art and smashery. It was cool and witty with installations that made you laugh and wonder how the hell they did it. It was people-focused, having a large number of things that required no power or revived old skills (from vaudeville to composting to a lotta lotta Victoriana). Most of all, though, it was smart and, I hate to use the word, empowering. Everything had wit and intelligence and everything was comprehensible with a little help from the presenters, who were psyched to explain what they were doing.

My favorite, and I kept going back over and over again, were the soldering areas. Both the MAKERShed (MAKE Magazine’s store at the Faire) and Sparkfun (my favorite purveyor of fine electronic goods) had large tables set up with soldering stations where people could take the kits they had just bought and put them together with the help of staff.

These tables were never less than half full and it looked like there was always a mix of adults/kids, noobs/pros, male/female (though the females were predominantly adult). Sparkfun and Make both did a nice job of putting out projects that were doable, but not simplistic. Some kits let you solder two wires coming out of a battery pack to a thing that’s already running. While you learn to make a decent connection, and you’re not likely to fry any parts, you don’t really learn much and it’s not all that energizing. These kits, involved matching resistors, getting polarities right, and required some precision. I love the intensity on everyone’s faces.

The only disappointment is that there wasn’t much around renewable, social, or eco-preneurial. The DIY ethos was strong — make rather than buy, fix rather than replace — but it seemed like they could have dialed some of that up more, without being over-earnest or taking the fun out of it. Example: they had several playground toys designed by MAKErs. They were fun, looked cool, and had some interesting story to them — one was bicycle powered, one worked like a swing and was powered by leaning and leaning back. It would have been cool, given the theme, to see some of the playground toys that generate electricity or pump water.

Still, it was awesomely fun. I bought my second arduino kit and I’m converting space into a little work area and unpacking my soldering iron and box of switches, pots, leds, resistors, caps, transistors, etc and getting back to work. My first goal is to work with the Peggy:

It’s a board that allows you to address a 25*25 grid of multi-color LEDs. Loads of possibilities, especially if they’re connected and working in synch.

More pictures and vids and more to be added to a set on my flickrstream.

From his Nobel talk slides:

The meaning of the first one was not immediately apparent to me, so I found a longer version of the rules, where Krugman explains: “Pay attention to what intelligent people are saying, even if they do not have your customs or speak your analytical language.”

Applies to many, many things.

White Roofs for a Green Planet | EcoGeek | Roofs, White, Enough, Heat, Buildings
“if the 100 biggest cities painted all their roofs white, and switched their road materials to lighter colors (concrete instead of asphalt) it would reflect enough light and heat back into space to entirely offset the warming of the last few decades.”

I’m almost afraid to promote this article. Bruce Nussbaum allows that innovation may be responsible for the current financial crisis:

I’m reminded of the criticism I heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January that innovation is responsible for this mess. A European banker came up to me and and said, “isn’t innovation at the root of all our problems?” “All those new financial instruments failed, right?”

He’s right. So what went wrong? I’ve talked to a lot of folks and the answer lies in the innovation process that took place on Wall Street.

He then goes on to make some interesting points about the lack of testing, the lack of iteration (the MFA really is the new MBA!), and the lack of transparency. All interesting points, and probably fair (what the hell do I know about financial instruments), but I can hear my wonky number-fetish friends now: see what happens when innovation isn’t tested? nothing should be launched until validated! hell, nothing should be conceived without prior testing!

My (totally ill-informed) thin slice assessment is that there are valid points about testing and transparency, though I would frame them up as “vetting” and “regulatory approval”. I’m not sure markets can be used for iterative testing, but surely there can be the equivalent of peer reviews within a company and it’s possible to force groups to reveal the mechanics and some of the thinking behind the instruments without creating competitive problems. Pharma might be an interesting model. Anyway, I do seriously love the idea of shaking innovation-fetishists by the lapels with this argument.

Nussbaum did get my kindle crackling this morning, with a book reco for Numerati. I’m sharing an image of it, cuz all my blog entries recently have been text.