I was taking a class at Stanford’s d.school last week and the creative project we were working on had to do with airport security. We spent some time breaking down the entire process and discussing what were some of the feelings we might have of each. One of the things that struck me, is that most people are probably upset but the arbitrary nature of it all. We’d be happy to go through a little hardship if we felt it made a difference. But you know that it’s all just arbitrary. For every kid shaken down for a bottle of water they tried to take through, we can tell stories of someone who forgot they had the water in their bag and made it through.
What can one expect? One or two individuals, no matter how much training, are at the mercy of time, patience, etc.
Which made me think of all the press about the “wisdom of the crowds” and wondered if that might not fit here. How about the plane departure area for each flight be a large oval, with all of the passengers who’ve gone through the “screening” sitting around the edge, watching each new person come in. They all closely scrutinize each new person. The crowd gets to decide whether someone is allowed through (and onto the plane). The crowd decides whether someone has to take off their shoes, open their bags, etc.
That crowd should be better suited and capable of figuring out who needs to be given a closer look, no?
How about a website that lays an interface over the avalanche of books that allows people to create playlists of books and articles for people looking for exposure to a particular topic.
While that alone would be useful (to me), how about taking it a step further. Why not expose Pandora-like functionality where I enter a book I read/liked/was told to read and it would show me similar books. This list might be used for additional readings or perhaps readings which would be more appropriate.
How would that work? Well, say you’ve just read a Malcom Gladwell book and you want to read more on the subject, it might recommend you read Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer whom Gladwell drew from.
Or vice versa, suppose someone recommends you read about motivation and drive – they just read Drive by Daniel H. Pink, but it seems a little too difficult for reading on the beach (or bus), wouldn’t it be nice to know that reading Linchpin by Seth Godin might give you some of the same takeaways?
Or I guess in my case, when I have a stack of unread books on my nightstand and a megabyte (what’s the equivalent new term?) of ebooks on my Kindle, how do I know which to read next? I might not want to read two books that are very similar back to back, or I might want to read something lighter after plowing through a scientific treatise.
Who’s going to build it?
I’m in the middle of a year at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and for each course we get a very extensive course reader full of articles, cases and other stuff. This is in addition to or in place of a textbook.
Now, I might be an exception, but in how I learn and what I look to get out of a class, the bulk comes straight from reading everything in the course reader. While there are many classes I would not want to enroll in and sit through, there are many courses I would like to borrow/buy the course readers for.
But why be limited to classes here at the GSB or even Stanford, what if it was possible to get the course readers for any class in the world? That would be much more valuable to me than MIT putting all their classes online.
But why be limited to existing courses by existing “teachers”? Why couldn’t this be a new framework/structure for anyone to capture and advocate something people would want to learn. Build a course reader full of bits of your writings and those of others that lead people through a series of points you feel are valuable.
Just a thought.
I’m sitting there this morning realizing how ubiquitous my cell phone has become, and I realized that for all of the smarts it contains, it’s really not using much of it unless I ask it to. Why doesn’t it do more? Why isn’t it studying me and learning what I want it to do?
For example, it must know by now that at 1 o’clock each weekday afternoon, I either turn it to silent or check to make sure it is so. This is because I have class and a ringing device costs you $5. Couldn’t it watch my pattern for a week or two and then project that I will do today what I’ve done every Tuesday beforehand?
Or how about the feature Apple offers where you can go through .me and find your phone if it is lost. Why do YOU have to go do that? Doesn’t your phone have a pretty good idea when it’s lost? Let’s say I have the phone in my pocket every day I go out the door. Every day. Since forever. Might the fact that tomorrow, the phone is still sitting where it was left, unmoved for 36 hours straight give it the sense to know something is up? Might it not “call” my designated contact, or email someone to say “hey, where are you? Do you know where I am?”
How about security? We put so much into these phones, with the banking apps, passwords, etc. Aren’t we worried if someone gets there hands on our phone? Sure, but what can we do about it? Well, the phone should be pretty good about identifying its owner, no? We use it every day, and though we might not see it, we have some very subtle patterns of usage and behavior that can’t be duplicated that easily. Can’t the phone identify and track this, such that when someone else tries to use the phone, using it in an entirely different way, that it thinks that something might be amiss and emails for confirmation: “Hey Matte, am I still in your pocket? Should I really be letting you into your online bank account or let you post to WordPress?”
It might be weird to wake up one day to HAL in our pockets, but I think a device we encourage to be self-aware will do us less harm than a really smart device we continually expect to play dumb.
I had this idea back during the Internet bubble (before we knee it as such) when everyone was spending gross sums on super bowl ads. A startup that wanted to be noticed needed to spend most of their VC money on the ads.
But what about all of the startups and brands that couldn’t afford the money? What about a range of products and services that wouldn’t necessarily appeal to the entire super bowl audience?
So my idea was for a raft of companies to band together and buy commercial time and have an ad advertising the groups’ site. Once on that site, each of the companies could feature their ads.
One could amplify the number of companies and their creative that could reach the audience.
Now, would all those ads be funny? Who knows. A risk of the model.