Atlanta civic center Sept. 16, 2012 7pm
Joshua Klein
All leaps of human progress have occurred on the fringes, by people taking big chances and thinking differently.
an interview with joshua klein What do you do? I innovate – particularly around systems, across disciplines, and in ways that entrenched industries are too afraid to try. For example, I mixed new a new business model (free) with an old industry (publishing) and got a distribution deal for my novel with Amazon when nobody else would publish it. In another example, I took an established psychological method (operant conditioning) and a problematic ecological niche (crows) and combined them by making a vending machine from crows that trains them to fetch lost change for peanuts. More recently, I’ve been combining technology and fashion, public speaking with gastronomy, and robots with secretaries.
Why is it important?
you’ll have developed a solution to match. In being courageous enough to question the
All leaps of human progress have occurred
obvious and being willing to collaborate you’ll
on the fringes, by people taking big chances
be able to do something completely different
and thinking differently. Now, more than
and effective in a space where others take
ever, we need innovation that will take us
those problems for granted.
ahead of the problems we face. For example, the ecology is suffering from human kind’s inability to foresee the implications of our technology choices. Economically we’re unable to keep up with the rate of change in industry. There are all kinds of problems like this right now, all occurring at the same time as we’re seeing unbelievable advances in science and technology. Connecting the two – particularly across siloed disciplines – is both effective and important.
How do you do it? First off, you need to be passionate about something. I am passionate about technology, people and creating positive change within society. Then, you need to talk to a lot of different people about it and to learn a lot about it. In doing so you’ll get not just the established cannon of information on the discipline (or niche, or industry, or whatever), but also the problems and quirks of the systems that people inside it take for granted. Those are your entrance vectors to bring about radical change. Then, take the information and access that you can uniquely bring to the problem and start talking over your ideas for unusual solutions. Eventually you’ll meet the right team of folks who have the best mix of backgrounds and insights and
Why does this matter in the long run? I don’t do things “by the book.” And when you look around, most of the greatest inventions – penicillin, the internet or chocolate cake – didn’t come with instructions. Most people are used to the deeply-siloed, tautologically-divided way of doing things. I try to color outside of the lines and do things that haven’t been tried before because if you don’t take risks, you won’t succeed. Making a vending machine for crows, for example, or giving away your novel for free as a way to get it published. Sometimes, turning the expected view of things and turning it on its head gives way to radical new ways of suddenly evolving a formerly stagnant situation. As we all get increasing access to new and expert information doing this is just going to get more important; insight is only going to become more valuable.
How the vending machine works:
1
4
Build a vending machine for crows
Once they get used to that, the vending machine will only give them coins
2
Put coins and peanuts around the base of the machine
3
Crows will come by and the machine will dispense more coins and peanuts
The crows will eventually knock the coin into the machine, which will then give them a peanut
5
The machine stops doing anything
Eventually, a crow will figure out that to get the peanut, it needs to put one of the coins on the ground from the first stage in the machine
Email: hacking@josh.is Phone: (347) 709-6097 Website: www.josh.is Twitter: @joshuaklein