Provocations

"You are working in an organization for the last 5 years. You sometime
think about switching your job or starting your own business but dismiss
it immediately considering all the risks associated with it. One day,
your boss gets infuriated on some petty issue and threatens to fire you
from job. This episode is repeated next day too. Suddenly your brain
starts working and you no longer consider the idea of switching your job
or starting your own business (or changing your job) too risky."

"Some old friend of yours visits you and tells you how easily he was
able to setup an internet based business which allowed him to get rid of
his lousy 9-to-5 job (which is actually at least 8-to-6). He
enthusiastically discusses his newly got freedom, shows off his new car
and invites you to his new apartment. Suddenly you start thinking that
perhaps starting your own venture is worth the effort and risk."

"Your cough is not getting better even after a 3 months treatment by a
specialist doctor. You start thinking about alternate medicine and
treatment (acupuncture, herbal, homeopathy, yoga etc.)"

"Your star employee who is handling a key business function in your
organization stops performing and starts behaving strangely.This
triggers a thought in your mind to outsource that business function."

These are all examples of provocations which immediately make you think
in new possible ways your never thought. These are all chance or
(sometimes) unpleasant provocations.

With lateral thinking it is possible to sit down and setup provocations
for yourself with the sole purpose of leading you to new and better
ideas of doing anything. We shall explore this method in future posts.

QUOTE: Simplicity

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
Leonardo Da Vinci

LINK: History of advertising industry and its future

From the article:

"By the mid-1920s agency copywriters had already figured out how to appeal to the more psychologically complex aspects of consumer choice: print ads began to prey on the individual’s fear of social failure, and radio announcers told tales of how their competitors’ products would lead to illness. Unchecked by any sort of regulatory body, advertising agencies had the freedom to pitch whatever worked best. Over the span of just a few years, advertisers successfully convinced the great unwashed to brush their teeth regularly, rinse with mouthwash and smoke as many cigarettes as humanly possible."

"Ad agencies had mastered the ability to sell the American consumer products that they had never heard of and had no real need for. This was the cunning genius of advertising."

"Consider the sheer superfluity of certain kinds of goods which this forcing of turnover entails. We are deluged with things which we do not wear, which we lose, which go out of style, which make unwelcome presents for our friends, which disappear anyhow – fountain pens, cigar lighters, cheap jewelry, patent pencils, mouth washes, key rings, Mahjong sets, automobile accessories – endless jiggers and doodads and contrivances. Here the advertiser plays on the essential monkey within us, and uses up mountains of good iron ore and countless sturdy horse power to fill – a few months later – the wagon of the junk man."

Read full article here: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/84/pop_nihilism_adverting_eats_itself.html

iPhone price slash

According to Yahoo news, Apple has drastically reducd the prices of iPhones. Now:

• 8 GB iphone is $99
• 16 GB iphone is $199
• 32 GB iphone is $299
  

Though Apples' iPhone is not available officially in Pakistan, people here have been using it after getting it unlocked by creative phone vendors at Hall road and Hafeez Center, Lahore.

For those people who still don't know about iPhone, it is a mobile phone with email, internet and other computer applications. Its gesture based interface has been one of the reasons for its popularity. A large number of software applications are available on internet which can be downloaded and run on iPhone.

Elite school systems

I went to a mediocre public school. These schools have been built for "masses" and differ primarily on medium of teaching which is Urdu verses the English in elite schools. I also had the opportunity of observing an elite school closely while working there as a consultant.

Due to my "connection" (if there is any) with that particular elite school, people often ask me for information/process about getting their kids there. Though I avoid it but sometimes I cannot resist my urge to ask them "why they want their kids go there?". The usual answer is that they want to give the "best" possible education to their kids. If you ask they cannot define the "best".

Some people are honest with themselves and say that this school will help their kids build right kind of contacts. Yes, contacts and not the education. They want their kids to get rich and not interested in helping them become thinkers, philosophers or inventors. All these people are already rich people and they can "afford" to make their kids thinkers, philosophers, inventors etc.

William Deresiewicz taught for 10 years at Yale University, an elite educational institute in US and has written a detailed article on the disadvantages of elite education.

Few quotes from his article:
"The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you."

"The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth. Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value. It’s been said that what those tests really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. "

"Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more."

"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed."

"Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade."

"The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have."

(Emphasis added by me)

Read the full article here.

QUOTE: Teaching

When you teach, be brief, that your readers' minds may readily comprehend and faithfully retain your words. Horace.

Need for some lateral thinking

The aluminum-glass doors of the accounts office in Aitchison college, I was sitting in yesterday, swung open and closed with a big bang without any apparent cause. After few minutes investigations it turned out that this was not some black magic but a powerful bomb blast resulting from a suicide attack in Lahore at Rescue 15/ISI buildings.

Issues like terrorism are the ones which badly need some fresh thinking using lateral thinking tools. These issues are so much complicated that our right/wrong logic cannot help us solve these issues. Sadly there is nothing in sight which suggests this is going to happen.