How much is 'smarter' worth?

Seth Godin: 

Smarter about the process, about the effects, about planning. Smarter about leadership, about management, about measurement.

How much is smarter worth?

In my experience, smarter is almost always a bargain, something you can buy for a lot less than it's worth.

At The Museum: Behind The Scenes At MoMA

See what it takes to run a modern museum in MoMA's documentary series, "At the Museum." Follow MoMA staff as exhibitions are designed, installed, and opened to the public. New episode premieres each Friday on YouTube.

As the Museum of Modern Art prepares to ship 200 masterworks by artists like Picasso, Cézanne, Rothko and de Kooning for a special exhibition at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, other MoMA staff begin to install a new line-up of exhibitions in New York.

MoMA curators Anne Umland and Starr Figura design a new exhibition of works by the artist Max Ernst. See what it takes to run a modern museum in our new documentary series: "At the Museum."

A number of decisions must be made quickly in advance of two exhibition openings, "Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait" and "Max Ernst: Beyond Painting." See what it takes to run a modern museum in our new documentary series: "At the Museum."

What does art say to you? MoMA staff and visitors reflect on the purposes of modern art-as an aide to clear your mind, symbols of societal change, or as abstract images that can form links between two complete strangers. See what it takes to run a modern museum in our new documentary series: "At the Museum."

Only four episodes left in our new documentary series, "At the Museum." See what's next in this week's sneak preview: MoMA curators recreate the 80's East Village scene with a little help from Club 57 regular Joey Arias, and artists Carolee Schneemann and Stephen Shore install two new comprehensive surveys of their work at MoMA and MoMA PS1.

Google X and the Science of Radical Creativity

The Atlantic has a great profile of Google X by Derek Thompson: "How the secretive Silicon Valley lab is trying to resurrect the lost art of invention." It begins: 

A snake-robot designer, a balloon scientist, a liquid-crystals technologist, an extradimensional physicist, a psychology geek, an electronic-materials wrangler, and a journalist walk into a room. The journalist turns to the assembled crowd and asks: Should we build houses on the ocean?

The setting is X, the so-called moonshot factory at Alphabet, the parent company of Google. And the scene is not the beginning of some elaborate joke. The people in this room have a particular talent: They dream up far-out answers to crucial problems. The dearth of housing in crowded and productive coastal cities is a crucial problem. Oceanic residences are, well, far-out. At the group’s invitation, I was proposing my own moonshot idea, despite deep fear that the group would mock it.

Like a think-tank panel with the instincts of an improv troupe, the group sprang into an interrogative frenzy. “What are the specific economic benefits of increasing housing supply?” the liquid-crystals guy asked. “Isn’t the real problem that transportation infrastructure is so expensive?” the balloon scientist said. “How sure are we that living in densely built cities makes us happier?” the extradimensional physicist wondered. Over the course of an hour, the conversation turned to the ergonomics of Tokyo’s high-speed trains and then to Americans’ cultural preference for suburbs. Members of the team discussed commonsense solutions to urban density, such as more money for transit, and eccentric ideas, such as acoustic technology to make apartments soundproof and self-driving housing units that could park on top of one another in a city center. At one point, teleportation enjoyed a brief hearing.

X is perhaps the only enterprise on the planet where regular investigation into the absurd is not just permitted but encouraged, and even required. X has quietly looked into space elevators and cold fusion. It has tried, and abandoned, projects to design hoverboards with magnetic levitation and to make affordable fuel from seawater. It has tried—and succeeded, in varying measures—to build self-driving cars, make drones that deliver aerodynamic packages, and design contact lenses that measure glucose levels in a diabetic person’s tears.

These ideas might sound too random to contain a unifying principle. But they do. Each X idea adheres to a simple three-part formula. First, it must address a huge problem; second, it must propose a radical solution; third, it must employ a relatively feasible technology. In other words, any idea can be a moonshot—unless it’s frivolous, small-bore, or impossible.

The whole profile is a must read. I am currently fascinated by X's work as their Project Loon is being used in Puerto Rico to assist with emergency communications in the Hurricane Maria ravaged island. From the profile: 

The idea struck more than a few people as ridiculous. “I thought I was going to be able to prove it impossible really quickly,” said Cliff L. Biffle, a computer scientist and Rapid Eval manager who has been at X for six years. “But I totally failed. It was really annoying.” Here was an idea, the team concluded, that could actually work: a network of balloons, equipped with computers powered by solar energy, floating 13 miles above the Earth, distributing internet to the world. The cause was huge; the solution was radical; the technology was feasible. They gave it a name: Project Loon.

Consumed by anxiety? Give it a day or two

Oliver Burkeman puts anxiety in perspective in his The Guardian column: 

The next time you’re consumed by anxiety – which, given the headlines, is probably this minute – you might borrow a tip from the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, author of the excellent new book How To Be A Stoic. In a recent podcast, Pigliucci described how he used Google Street View and Google Earth to create a slideshow that starts with an image of his own home, then zooms out, out and out, until it shows the whole planet. He consults it when feeling overwrought. You couldn’t hope for a more vivid illustration of the Stoic “dichotomy of control”, which urges us to restrict our attempts to change things to those actually in our power, instead of making ourselves miserable railing against those that aren’t. (See also the “serenity prayer”, popularised by Alcoholics Anonymous.) You are – not to be rude – a tiny part of the cosmos. That doesn’t make you powerless. But it does mean you’re almost certainly stressing about things that will, without doubt, remain majestically unaffected by your stress.

What Can Musicians Teach Us about Imagination?

Scientific American Beautiful Minds blog: 

What is the nature of music? What is imagination in music? What's the role of intuition in music? What motivates musicians? What makes a great musical performance? What creates transcendence in music? What is the role of the audience? What are some recommended approaches for increasing creativity in music teachers and music students? These are some of the fascinating questions that we discussed at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The participants included: Paul Bryan, Dean of Faculty and Students at the Curtis Institute; conductor; trombonist Dan Lerner, Faculty at New York University Gloria dePasquale, Cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra Yumi Kendall, Cellist in the Philadelphia Orchestra Georgia Shreve, Composer and writer Gene Scheer, Opera librettist Ashley Robillard, Opera Student at Curtis Institute Elizabeth Hyde, Research Specialist for the Imagination Institute Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute Martin Seligman, Executive Director of the Imagination Institute, Director of the Positive Psychology Center, and Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.