Very cool spotlight on innovation across the US: Fast Cities 2011 | Fast Company

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"The city is humanity's laboratory, where people flock to dream, create, build, and rebuild. In his book Triumph of the City, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser observes that to stroll through the world's great cities is "to study nothing less than human progress." Each year, we spotlight the building blocks of that progress -- bold ideas that promise to enrich our cities and economies. You'll find plenty in diverse, surprisingly creative Houston, our 2011 CITY OF THE YEAR which urban theorist Joel Kotkin tips as "one of the world's next great cities."...

An Interview With Olafur Eliasson, On Crossing Between Art And Architecture | Co.Design

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Excerpt:

"...Do you think that some architects could be described as artists?

No, I don’t.

Architects are much too sophisticated to be artists.

Why?

That is a question that should remain unanswered. But I don’t think architects are artists. I think architects are much too sophisticated to be artists, and they are trained in the great art of making compromises to keep the client happy. This I think, of course, is totally unfair to the architects, but I can assure that I have the highest respect for the art of actually succeeding -- to succeed under the conditions of which the architect has to work to create great architecture, with a client, with a city, with city regulations. I mean, that is really a challenge, an incredible challenge. I’m surprised to see that occasionally a rather nice building actually pops up somewhere. I’m totally surprised, because being an architect today is the worst thing you can possibly imagine to be...."

Why Cities Keep Growing, Corporations And People Always Die, And Life Gets Faster | Geoffrey West interview

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This is in complete contrast to companies. The Google boys in the back garage so to speak with ideas of the search engine, were no doubt promoting all kinds of crazy ideas and maybe having even crazy people around them.

Well, Google is a bit of an exception, because it still tolerates some of that. But most companies start out probably with some of that buzz. But the data indicates that at about 50 employees to a hundred that buzz starts to stop. A company that was more multi dimensional, more evolved, becomes uni dimensional. It closes down.

Indeed, if you go to General Motors or you go to American Airlines or you go to Goldman Sachs, you don't see crazy people. Crazy people are fired. Well, to speak of crazy people, is taking the extreme. But maverick people are often fired.

It's not surprising to learn that when manufacturing companies are on a down turn, they decrease research and development, and in fact in some cases, do actually get rid of it, thinking this is "oh, we can get that back in two years we'll be back on track."

Well, this kind of thinking kills them. This is part of the killing, and this is part of the change from superlinear to sublinear, namely companies allow themselves to be dominated by bureaucracy and administration over creativity and innovation, and unfortunately, it's necessary. You cannot run a company without administrative. Someone has got to take care of the taxes and the bills and the cleaning the floors and the maintenance of the building and all the rest of that stuff. You need it. And the question is, “can you do it without it dominating the company?” The data suggests that you can't.

The question is, as a scientist, can we take these ideas and do what we did in biology, at least based on... [+]

read the full post & watch the video here:

http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey-west

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling (I know what my fave is!)

25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling (AKA, "Why I Love Stories")

  • 1. Stories Have Power

    Outside the air we breathe and the blood in our bodies, the one thing that connects us modern humans today with the shamans and emperors and serfs and alien astronauts of our past is a heritage — a lineage — of stories. Stories move the world at the same time they explain our place in it. They help us understand ourselves and those near to us. Never treat a story as a shallow, wan little thing. A good story is as powerful as the bullet fired from an assassin’s gun.

    2. Effect Above Entertainment

    We love to be entertained. Bread and circuses! Clowns and monkeys! Decapitations and ice cream! A good story entertains but a great story knows that it has in its arsenal the ability to do so much more. The best stories make us feel something. They fuck with our emotions. They make us give a flying fuck about characters and places and concepts that don’t exist and won’t ever exist. The way a story stabs us with sadness, harangues us with happiness, runs us through the gauntlet of rage and jealousy and denial and underoo-shellacking lust and fear (together, lust and fear may stir a “scaredy-boner”) is parallel to none. Anybody can entertain. A juggler entertains. A storyteller makes us feel something. Makes us give a shit when we have no good reason to do so. Fun is not the last stop on the story train. The storyteller is master manipulator. The storyteller is cackling puppetmaster.

    3. A Good Story Is A Good Story Regardless Of Genre Or Form

    Segmentation. Checking off little boxes. Putting stories in the appropriate story slots and narrative cubby-holes. Is it a sci-fi TV show? A fantasy novel? A superhero comic? A video game about duck hunting? An ARG about the unicorn sex trade? We like to think that the walls we throw up matter. But they’re practically insubstantial, and once you get them in your mouth they’re like cotton candy, melting away to a meaningless slurry. Good story is good story. Those who cleave to genre and form — whether as teller or as audience — limit the truth and joy the tale can present. Cast wide and find great stories everywhere.

    4. That’s Not To Say Form Doesn’t Matter

    Story is also not a square peg jammed in a circle hole. Every tale has an organic fit. The medium matters in that it lets you operate within known walls and described boundaries.

read the full post:

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/06/01/25-things-you-should-know-about-st...