Pre-Ramble:  It’s been a couple of days since the State of the Union address … enough time for partaisan factions to hold court and the gestalt of the evening to soak in. Enough time to consider and confirm my initial reaction — “underwhelmed.” 

I am generally a big fan of President Obama … a dip into the K. blog archives will more than ratify that. He is smart, strategic, plucky (in a good way), and a brilliant communicator. Obama has set a very high bar for himself. We’ve seen him deliver highly articulate, moving, even artful speeches on the campaign trail and on numerous occasions since he’s been in office. We KNOW he can clear that mark. This is what makes the other night’s performance so disappointing. The message, delivery and even his wardrobe, fell short.

Message – The concepts and words were all there … … characterization of the American legacy and people as “exceptional”  … some Kumbaya around the bipartisan campfire … a carefully laid out (tedious laundry list) agenda … a couple pom-pom-worthy rallies around the old Sputnik watering hole … and a fist-pumping shout-out to ”Win the Future!!”  On paper, all of this stuff probably looked really good.

• Bring it!  Sorry, but the “Win the Future” tagline is lame and inflammatory. Messaging around the concept of “winning” sets up the very type of contentious binary contest that I thought we were trying to extinguish – both in our polarizing political rhetoric and on the volatile  international stage.  Instead of courting supremacy by striving to “win the future,” how about if we ”Lead the Future” instead? 
• “Exceptional” … this part was exceptionally good. I’d rather be part of Team Exceptional, a generous and gracious effort moving boldly forward into a prosperous future, than engaged in some contrived cage match where one group “wins” and the others are all losers.  This isn’t Gladiator.
• Z-Z-Z-z-z-z … Sputnik was the wake-up call for 53 years ago. All that talk about the need to step-up expectations around math and science education … to grow innovation to be competitive in the global marketplace — we’ve been reciting those lines while punching the snooze button for 30 years. It’s time to jettison that tired, toothless battle cry and DO-SOMETHING-nik.

Delivery – Maybe it was an off-day, … maybe the planets weren’t lined up quite right … but I just didn’t feel the energy and conviction behind the words that I’ve come to expect. You’d think Barack could work up a little more spark and fervor around the inherently peppy concepts of creativity and innovation. Even Speaker Boehner’s golden-toasty laser-focused silence projected more umpf.

NOTE: several folks appeared to be dozing off  …  their eyes closed … heads down. Actually, these diligent sorts were reading along in their programs as the President spoke his speech aloud. One gal, however, (the woman in the burgundy suit with her head flopped to the side  … you know who you are) was clearly NOT reading along. … If you can’t stay awake for an hour-and-a-half to listen to the Leader of the Free World talk about the state of life as we know it, give me your seat and go take your fricking nap out in the hall.

Wardrobe - Ok, the State of the Union isn’t a fashion show, but what was up with that fade-me-into-the-background, monochromatic blue/grayness that the Commander-in-Chief had going on up at the podium? I’m not advocating anything neon, or even flag-y, … But B-Dog — you’re a young, hip, naturally stylish guy, … and you’re THE PRESIDENT.  We know you’ve got other stuff in your closet — give us something!?

The Take-Away:  Except for the part where he was urging young people to become the kind of steady and inspiring teacher-leaders we need in the 21st Century classroom, the President’s 2011 State of the Union speech reluctantly gets a B-.

We know you can do better, young man.  See me after class and we’ll talk about some things you can do to earn extra credit … (we’ll start with the military budget … )

Post-Note:  Notice how everything sounds a little edgier with “nik” tacked onto the end of it-nik?

Pre-Ramble:  Among the many characterizations of the mechanisms behind creative thought, creative thinker and author of the book “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Steven Berlin Johnson suggests that a necessary pre-condition to innovation – one presumably born out of a creative process – is trafficking in the high potential waters of “the adjacent possible.” 

Who’d a thunk it? According to Johnson, at any given point in time, the environment or surrounding landscape becomes synergistic … which is to say that certain thoughts or breakthrough ideas become thinkable/come to light at certain points in time, depending on what has been thought or done prior to and in proximity to it.  When lots of ideas and discoveries in lots of different realms (science, sociology, technology, … ) are being thrown out into the common pool of  “the known,” these seemingly random variables shift and bump into each other in new ways.

I hate that the only example I can think of right now is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups ads …

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, a series of commercials was run for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups featuring situations in which two people, one eating peanut butter and one eating chocolate, collided. One person would exclaim, “You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” and the other would exclaim, “You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” They would then sample the mixture and remark on the great new taste … “

Mash-up: So, in the “realm of the known” we have: 1) the heated debate spurred by Chinese ninja-parent, Amy Chua’s new book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,”  (If nothing else, the ensuing ruckus is a stroke of publishing genius … ); 2) the call from Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at a recent “Innovation Summit” to make the U.S. more competitive against the rising economic power of China and India by ”jumpstarting innovation”; and 3) an observation from NY Times columnist, David Brooks which turns out to be a point of intersection between #1 and #2.  

Adjacent impossible – So, … Chua brings her extreme, beyond-no-nonsense parenting style that preaches laser-focused academic rigors and take-no-prisoners perfection, while Klobuchar recites the now requisite (and misguided) strategies for bringing about innovation … more math, science and engineering for high school students … blah, blah, blah.  (How long have we been investing in that strategy?  Since Sputnik maybe?) … We’ve got desperate Americans ”soft” and in decline trying to compete with the hard lined practices of the Chinese education factory (e.g., Amy Chua “and a billion more parents just like her”) … heading for total domination of the global marketplace …  These two ideas may be swimming in the pool of “the known” at the same point in history, but tying a kid to a chair until they complete calculus equations while playing the violin is no guarantee of success or innovation and it is not the magic bullet to America’s education/innovation problem.

David Brooks to the rescue, raises two great and relevant points: First, he cites Chua’s critics who righteously claim that these over-controlled, socially stifled children may be skilled and compliant, but ”can’t possibly be happy or truly creative” … And second, he cites compelling  research which suggests that a highly functioning collaborative effort trumps singular, nose-to-the-grindstone slogging every time.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon have found that groups have a high collective intelligence when members of a group are skilled at reading the emotions of others, when they take turns speaking, when inputs of each member are managed fluidly, and when they are able to detect each other’s inclinations and strengths … This skill set is not taught formally, but is imparted through arduous experiences … exactly the kinds of experiences Chua [denies] her children by making them rush home to hit the books.

The Take-Away:  If being competitive with a highly-regimented, straight-A Chinese workforce is the goal, … and innovation is the strategy (?) … then creating an environment that fosters creative/innovative thinking is the solution. 

I think Steven is right.  If you want innovation to happen, you need to be actively dangling near the “adjacent possible.”  You have to create an environment that fosters dabbling around in the messy, non-linear playground of openness, communication and collaboration … where ambiguity, tinkering and making mistakes rule the day. I’m not saying we should be running with scissors, or forgoing challenging coursework in math, science and engineering, but there needs to be room to get our kids and/or ourselves out to the “edges” on a regular basis to troll for some random synergy. 

Post-Note: Personally, I exploit the “adjacent possible” as often as possible, particularly in writing the blog. Granted, what I have to say isn’t always well-reasoned or insightful, but it always comes out of a fun mash-up of thoughts, ideas and situations that I encounter on the edges of my sphere.

Pre-Ramble:  If I’m going to be shoveling them (again), I may as well do a little diligence. According to the experts at Wikipedia:

Snowflakes are conglomerations of frozen ice crystals which fall through the Earth’s atmosphere. They begin as two snow crystals which develop when microscopic supercooled cloud droplets freeze. Snowflakes come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Complex shapes emerge as the flake moves through differing temperature and humidity regimes. Individual snowflakes are nearly unique in structure.”

Apparently, a guy named Wilson Alwyn “Snowflake” Bentley (1865-1931) tried to find identical snowflakes and photographed thousands of them with a microscope to capture and catalog the different shapes.  I know how hard it is to get a good shot of my dog (not her below) for the Christmas card … I can only imagine how difficult it is to get a group of snowflakes to cooperate.

The Take-Away:  Buck up for another round of the white stuff … flurries scattered everywhere. Alas, this winter isn’t over yet.

Post-Note:  Is it just me, or are the weather forecasters and Hillary Clinton using the word “region” much more frequently than in the past??

Pre-Ramble:  “User Error” is currently at the top of my list of most hated words in the English language. In this era of ubiquitous technology, every man, woman and child has seen themselves in deep technological waters at one point or another.

Seriously — remember the first time you tried to ease the needle down on that glossy, twirling  Bobby Sherman album? Or, the first time you tried to slide a cassette into that slot in the dashboard? … Fast-forward to the thumb-tied act of sending your first text-message. There is definitely a learning curve on adapting to new technologies … only now, there are just so many more ways that you can screw up.

Opportunities to commit technical errors are all around us. ”User-interface” is what happens when you or I try to make our tech gadgets work. Legions of technology designers and developers are currently making careers out of building technological hardware and software that is “user-friendly.” User-friendly is code for anticipating the random stupidness of the average technology consumer. 

People who design and develop technology products are thinking about functional requirements … stuff like:

• navigation (how will the user move through a webpage or action?)
• content (do the words/concepts make sense?)
• visual clarity (can the user tell how this works just by looking at it?)
• how many clicks it takes to do something
• transaction time (how many seconds does it take to download/accomplish something)
• processing limitations (how much band-width is required to support the expression of the information or activity?)
• the integirty of the data  (is the user going to mistakenly enter a letter into the spaces where their phone number should be?)

Well, so – anyone who has read this blog for any period of time knows that I am something of a newbie when it comes to technology (just ask my website guy … ). At some point, I will share with you the depths of my tech-unsavviness, however, trust me when I tell you that when your computer prompts you to “update this” or “synch-up that” it’s a good idea to JUST DO THAT, rather than deleting it, relegating it to the “I’ll do that later” pile, or thinking that someone else will take care of it … (that “someone” is you).

Incoming … Code Red!  Why set yourself up for the humiliation of standing at the Genius Bar with an unresponsive phone only to have Tim the Tech Associate (shown above right) politely, but patronizingly ask if you’ve been updating your software and synching up with iTunes? (Lest you think that Tim’s left hand is casually resting on the counter, note that he is actually reaching for the security button as he sees me approach the tech support area.)

The Take-Away: I’m thinking that an informed, proactive, can-do approach to technology is a stance well worth taking and one that can be applied to other areas of our lives as well. We all know about brushing and flossing, diet and exercise, sunblock, bike helmets, a good night’s sleep and strategic hand-washing … I understand that multi-tasking is now on the skill-set-non-grata list, however, it wouldn’t hurt to floss a little while we’re waiting for the iPhone to synch up.

Pre-Ramble:  I have always loved words and as a person who uses them on a regular basis, a recent conversation between University of Minnesota faculty member Anatoly Liberman and MPR’s Kerri Miller about stand-out words from 2010 caught my ear. 

Fulbright Scholar, McKnight Fellow, BBC commentator and all-around wordy guy, Anatoly did his best to deliver a rollicking good take on word origins and usage, while steadfastly maintaining the requisite prim and bookish demeanor. As expected, his vocabulary was rich with varietals and his delivery impeccable.  You could hear his pinky extended from the teacup through the radio.

Refudiate.  Apparently, the folks over at the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) annually scan the 2 billion plus words flying around in our collective lexicon to select new ones to add to the dictionary’s roster of over 600,000 entries. More than 2,000 new items were added or revised this year   including “vuvuzela” (that long, super-annoying plastic horn wielded by fans at soccer tournaments) and “staycation” (lame, money-saving holiday spent at home). 

But wait — there’s more!  Clearly, the OED has made a conscious attempt to be more trendy and relevant.  A peek at their website reveals several new online features including topical word references, historically significant words, and even the uber techy-geeky “word cloud” …

Each month we offer an example of a new feature of the OED Online in action … This month we consider the changing language of ‘youth’, celebrate words served up at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, remember John F. Kennedy’s speech fifty years on, and count the change from 1000 years of banking and finance …

… the Historical Thesaurus of the OED, which provides a fascinating insight into how English has been used in the past, … charting the development of English over 1000 years … discover synonyms for individual words in the OED (and then trace their development over time), and chart the linguistic progress of a chosen object, concept or emotion, …  January’s word cloud is made up of historical synonyms for youth—from ‘frumberdling’ (c.1000) to ‘studmuffin’ (1986).

The Take-Away:  Let’s face it, words can be a ton of fun. I’m telling you, there is nothing more entertaining than listening to Professor Liberman respond to a caller on the entomology of the ”slangy expression” “junk.”  (Also discussed at length by Ben Zimmer in the NYT Magazine’s On Language column.) 

Post-Note:  FYI – there is even an alternate hip meaning for the word “word” … in street vernacular it means something like, “I hear you” … “I get it” … “Yup” … “Yo” … “I concur with your assessment” … It’s kind of a short verbal thumbs-up or fist bump.