Five for Friday - edition no. 3

So, I'm back again. I was traveling and had limited time where my fingers could be on an electronic device long enough to pen anything beyond a quick text or note. That's an important lesson though in our hyper-connected lives. Sometimes you have to just go live and have experiences worth coming back and talking about. So I've been storing up adventures like a squirrel preparing for a long winter. This week I'll tell you a little bit about:

1. Why I don't care if The Martian is scientifically accurate
2. Pffft, your generation would have done it too
3. Big love for Big Magic
4. Looking in my magic 8 ball about gamification
5. Speaking of permission slips

1. Why I don't care if The Martian is scientifically accurate

Full disclosure: Ridley Scott directed one of my all-time favorite movies, Blade Runner, so there was a better than average chance I would like The Martian. I also come from the movie critique camp that judges a movie based on what is in the four corners of the screen. It is the director's choice what we see. I don't slam a movie if it doesn't follow the book exactly or makes decisions about how to tell the story as long as it works within the story that the movie is telling. So, while I am a science lover, I don't care if all of the science in The Martian was accurate. I care that it had several cool lessons.

Mark Watney: In the face of overwhelming odds, I'm left with only one option, I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this.

First, it's about trying things, solving problems, and keeping at it. You won't always get the right answer, but you can learn a lot along the way. It's important to look for the questions, not just the solutions. If you don't keep asking, and pushing, and probing, you will never know what is really possible. Hey, what are you gonna "science the shit" out of?

Mark Watney: None of this matters at all if I can't find a way to make contact with NASA.

Second, each individual can do amazing things. OK, we may not colonize a planet, but we can all leave a mark. However, there is always the need for collaboration. Matt Damon's character never once assume he would get off of Mars alone. He needed to do what he had to do to survive until help could get there. As Clay Shirky wrote in Cognitive Surplus: "Humans are fundamentally individual, but we are also fundamentally social."

Teddy Sanders: Every time something goes wrong, the world forgets why we fly.

And finally, although there could be a host of other lessons I could talk about, there was the harsh reality that even when you do it all right, you follow the rules, you try really hard, it may still not work out. But we have to keep moving forward. We can't forget why we fly.

2. Pffft, your generation would have done it too

Hey, let's go back to Clay Shirky's book for a minute. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connect Age is about five years old now, but still a solid read. I returned to it this week because I recalled it had some ideas that were reignited in my head after seeing the story of the young women who were made fun of for taking selfies at the baseball game. Aside from the fact that they had been encouraged to do so because they were participating in a contest intended to spur fan engagement, they were exploring an opportunity made available by the connected age. Opportunity is the key work here. As Shirky points out: 

Generations do differ, but less because people differ than because opportunities do. Human nature changes slowly by includes an incredible range of mechanisms for adapting to our surroundings.

I have no doubt that young people of my generation would have selfied the heck out of everything if we had had the opportunity to do so. So before you say, kids these days, think about the human motivations they are acting out. 

Behavior is motivation that has been filtered through opportunity.

Are they really so different that kids those days? 

The people surprised at our new behaviors assume that behavior is a stable category, but it isn’t. Human motivations change little over the years, but opportunity can change a little or a lot, depending on the social environment. In a world where opportunity changes little, behavior will change little, but when opportunity changes a lot, behavior will as well, so long as the opportunities appeal to real human motivations.

There's a whole lot of other discussion possible here about making more opportunities available to more people. But one final reminder from the book is about how poorly we can predict how new technological opportunities will play out.

Study after study in the 1990s asked potential users what they would do with the internet if they got access to it, and the commonest answers always clustered around “I’ll use it to find information,” “I’ll use it to help me with my schoolwork,” and so on. Whenever a poll asked people already online what they actually did, the answers were quite different. “Keeping up with friends and family,” “sharing photos with others,” “talking with people who share my interests,” and the like appeared near the top of every list. Because we’re so lousy at predicting what we will do with new communications tools before we try them, this particular revolution, like the print revolution, is being driven by overlapping experiments whose ramifications are never clear at first.

3. Big love for Big Magic

I loved this book start to finish. Elizabeth Gilbert talks to readers like we are adults, like we are her girlfriends having coffee together, and like that tough sports coach or Gibbs from NCIS that has to smack you on the back of the head to wake you up figuratively, emotionally, and creatively. To pick out my favorite parts of the book was like asking me to pick out my favorite piece of pepperoni on a pizza. I couldn't do it. But in the spirit of not over-indulging, I included five short, but sweet quotes in the hopes that you will go and read more.

when I refer to “creative living,” I am speaking more broadly. I’m talking about living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.

Basically, your fear is like a mall cop who thinks he’s a Navy SEAL: He hasn’t slept in days, he’s all hopped up on Red Bull, and he’s liable to shoot at his own shadow in an absurd effort to keep everyone “safe.”

Or if you do worry that you need a permission slip—THERE, I just gave it to you. I just wrote it on the back of an old shopping list. Consider yourself fully accredited. Now go make something.

Even if you have only fifteen minutes a day in a stairwell alone with your creativity, take it. Go hide in that stairwell and make out with your art!

Guys, please don’t mistake your creative work for a human child, okay?

4. Looking in my magic 8 ball about gamification

(photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ursonate/)

I was asked for some thoughts on gamification in learning as part of an upcoming ebook (details to come) and one of the questions was about the most plausible future of gamification. The following was my response.

I hope that the future is for there to be more collaboration across areas of expertise. Game designers don't know how to create learning. Instructional designers don't design games. Gamification designers and researchers are drawing from even other areas of expertise in behavioral economics, psychology, marketing, and more. We all have pieces of the puzzle and I think some organizations are doing a really good job of combining those skills. Not every venture into gamification will be successful but I think there are enough success stories that it is here to stay in some form. The novelty has worn off and now we can start to see some really creative, innovative, and effective approaches.

Much of the success of gamification is tied to the power of social. I think that as we create more and better gamification options in learning we will move away from the elements like external rewards and leaderboards (which still give it a bad name) and will focus more on the affordances for collaboration and personal development. Its integration into learning events seems a natural companion to the increase in social media and mobile applications for learning. Gamification is so fused with informal and social learning that I hope we will be able to stop talking about it like it is a whole separate creature and realize that it is all part of the blending of tools and techniques. Just as better UX design has helped learning technology get out of the way of learning by focusing on the people using the technology, I think gameful learning can create ever better designs because it is learner-centric and focuses not only on what learners want and need to know but why and how they want to experience the learning.

5. Speaking of permissions slips

Yes, this week is a lot about stuff I've been reading and writing, but it's good stuff. Important stuff. And my final piece of wisdom for the week comes from Seth Godin whose book What to Do When its Your Turn (and its Always Your Turn) was a perfect companion read to Big Magic. Didn't like Gilbert's permission slip? Left it at home? Dog ate it? Well, here's a second one. Godin's book is a call to action and a call to share, which he made really easy since he sent extra copies of the book I purchased for the sole purpose of sharing the ideas. So, it's your turn. What are you going to do with your turn? Leave me a comment and I'll put all responders' names in a hat, or bowl, or some suitable vessel and pick one to receive a free copy of the book.