Progress Through Creativity

This year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, celebrating the best “in the business of creativity,” begins today and runs virtually all week. The launch films for the festival, variations of the same script narrated by various creatives, were an additional shot of creative caffeine to get me going this week.

The Health Benefits of Coffee

While I consume coffee in what I sometimes describe as a coffee bowl, rather than a coffee mug, Jane E. Brody, in the Personal Health column of The New York Times, shares some very promising findings about the health benefits of coffee:

The latest assessments of the health effects of coffee and caffeine, its main active ingredient, are reassuring indeed. Their consumption has been linked to a reduced risk of all kinds of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, gallstones, depression, suicide, cirrhosis, liver cancer, melanoma and prostate cancer.

In fact, in numerous studies conducted throughout the world, consuming four or five eight-ounce cups of coffee (or about 400 milligrams of caffeine) a day has been associated with reduced death rates. In a study of more than 200,000 participants followed for up to 30 years, those who drank three to five cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, were 15 percent less likely to die earlyfrom all causes than were people who shunned coffee. Perhaps most dramatic was a 50 percent reduction in the risk of suicideamong both men and women who were moderate coffee drinkers, perhaps by boosting production of brain chemicals that have antidepressant effects.

As a report published last summer by a research team at the Harvard School of Public Health concluded, although current evidence may not warrant recommending coffee or caffeine to prevent disease, for most people drinking coffee in moderation “can be part of a healthy lifestyle.”

To all my family, friends and my colleagues, peers, collaborators for whom ‘it’s coffee time’ is a real and perhaps even essential part of who they are, this is fantastic news.

Building the next computing user interface

Craig Grannell, writing for Wired UK, delves into Apple’s announcements during the recently concluded World Wide Developer Conference and what role they may have in making audio the next big user interface:

This infatuation with audio is also a refreshing change in a world routinely obsessed with what you see rather than what you hear. We’re so often informed about innovations in AR and VR, dazzling environments and visual immersion. But voice UI and audio are just as important –and, in some ways, more so when you consider Apple’s reasoning regarding focus and clarity.

Much of what you can glean from AR you can get from audio, and with fewer distractions. An always-on AR overlay can be disruptive and in your face. It changes how you experience and interact with the world, in a not necessarily positive fashion. Audio input, by contrast, is fleeting and focused. It enhances the concept of mindful and meaningful tech use, in context, unlike equipping all humans with a heads-up display. Bose tried something similar with its Frames audio glasses, but couldn’t stay the course.

A counterpoint argument is that Apple Glasses are long-rumoured and may appear in the near future. But, even then, it’s the union of the senses combined with the foundations Apple is laying that will make them all the more powerful. Apple is being considered about the audio layer to the point than if visuals are added, the company will have a big advantage over rivals trying to do everything at once – or, worse, multiple organisations attempting to combine fragmented resources to achieve the same goal. Plus, importantly, Apple has that sense of focus.

While Grannell focused on audio, the work Apple is doing for accessibility across all their devices and operating systems is what resonates with me. In a special 10 minute session titled Accessibility by design: An Apple Watch for everyone Apple engineers and designers highlight their approach to accessible design, iteration and community engagement.

I suggest you watch the whole session, but if you prefer you can jump ahead to around the 6 minute mark, where you can see the Apple Watch team addressing this question ‘could we create a completely gesture-based human-to-computer interaction?’ and see what they achieved using four very simple hand gestures to fully control the watch, which feels like an evolved version of hand tracking for head mounted displays.

That pursuit of “gesture-based human-to-computer interactions” sounds very much like the development of a new user interface. Between the accessibility features on AirPods Pro with spatial audio and the accessibility features on Apple Watch and the many years of accessibility design work, Apple appears to be introducing features that are helpful to many right now, while simultaneously getting everyone used to those features and how they work. In the process creating the human interface for spatial computing.

Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper: The best career path isn't always a straight line

Conventional wisdom frames the ideal career path as a linear one -- a ladder to be climbed with a single-minded focus to get to the top. In this TED Talk career development consultants Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper invite you to replace this outdated and limiting model with "squiggly" careers: dynamic, open-ended growth paths tailor-made for your individual needs, talents and ambitions. A radical rethink for anyone who feels restricted and defined by the limits of the corporate ladder.

To learn more read “The Squiggly Career: Ditch the Ladder, Embrace Opportunity and Carve Your Own Path Through the Squiggly World of Work”

Failure: The Week's Links

ALL THE LINKS POSTED ON SOCIAL NETWORKS:

• Good news: Mobile readers want more news, and want be to more loyal too buff.ly/2zna7I1

• Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media. But she also helped create it. buff.ly/2FCKaJU

• How Nature Impacts Your Creativity with Florence Williams buff.ly/2S8h0DA

• The Woman Who Reinvented the Moon: A MacArthur “genius grant” winner writes a new lunar origin story. buff.ly/2qYkcWO

• How To Find Your Calling, According to Psychology buff.ly/2Ae1Khn

• The Challenge of Eating Alone In Public buff.ly/2TuXCSO

• When the runway ends: Jana Kleitsch, CEO of Wanderlust Society, writes about the other F word—failure. buff.ly/2S28A0s

• The strange, surprisingly radical roots of the shopping mall buff.ly/2jmbVfs

• Behind Dense Discovery: creating a fully customised weekly newsletter buff.ly/2S5GH7R

• A Space of Their Own, a New Online Database, Will Feature Works by 600+ Overlooked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Centuries buff.ly/2AV9Qgc

• Hundreds of Wonderful Japanese Firework Designs from the Early-1900s: Digitized and Free to Download buff.ly/2DfXfGe

• 7 Tips From Ernest Hemingway on How to Write Fiction buff.ly/2B4Xr9w

• NASA Digitizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the Historic Apollo 11 Mission: Stream Them Free Online buff.ly/2zYdMuY

• Why Fashion Brands All Use the Same Style Font buff.ly/2S505Sm

• The latest Mars-bound craft arrives in a few days’ time buff.ly/2RbrToc

• 11 Creatives on Working Through Imposter Syndrome buff.ly/2TvFCrI

• How Data Drove Amazon Towards Two New HQs – Financial Times – Medium buff.ly/2T0rWol

• From Gene Editing to A.I., How Will Technology Transform Humanity? buff.ly/2A7XWOC

• Download 569 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art buff.ly/2A6X6BC

• The Columnists on Secrets: Leaders in the Arts, Entertainment and Other Fields Describe the Power of Secrets buff.ly/2AbQ1js

• David Chang’s Culinary Universe Is Still Growing buff.ly/2KlYQM6

• Nature, Nurture and the Art of Creation in Manual Cinema’s Astonishing ‘Frankenstein’ buff.ly/2TvcL6S

• How immersive technologies have sparked a theatrical revolution buff.ly/2Or4a67

• Has Augmented Reality Pioneer Magic Leap Fallen Off a Cliff? buff.ly/2zEV9vT

• The Designer's Responsibility to Keep Up with New Technologies buff.ly/2QVlLjX

• Motivating Your Most Creative Employees buff.ly/2qTo8rR

• What Stan Lee Knew About Managing Creative People buff.ly/2FqLgrU

• Your Drone Can Give Cops a Surprising Amount of Your Data buff.ly/2S1Eyu2)

• Kilogram Redefined. The Metric System Overhaul Is Complete buff.ly/2DMk3hN)

• How to Teach Artificial Intelligence Some Common Sense buff.ly/2DLQs8k)

• The Mad Science of Fermentation's Funky Flavors buff.ly/2S1kU1g)

• What Great Listeners Actually Do buff.ly/2zUStul

• Lost Art: when works disappear into private collections :Noah Charney shares the stories behind some of art history's most important works—those that we can no longer see buff.ly/2DJBfo1

• How to push past your biggest anxieties and act buff.ly/2Ka3jl3

• A Doctor Created A Human Anatomy Diagram In The Style Of A Subway Map And It's Friggin' Gorgeous buff.ly/2KbmBXf

• Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ buff.ly/2PXg3kn

• A librarian's case against overdue book fines buff.ly/2qQVise

• How a long-forgotten virus could help us solve the antibiotics crisis buff.ly/2qTrQBP

• 8 Tips On Becoming a Power Napping Expert buff.ly/2Kx3r1f

• How Ikea quietly tweaks its design around the world buff.ly/2A5fqLm

• How following a schedule improved my creativity buff.ly/2MiHvYw

• How To Be Productive According To Ancient Philosophy buff.ly/2zOZInB

• How did the internet take over our lives? buff.ly/2qQzOM5

• The Benefit of Analogies - The Book of Life buff.ly/2zrUE8A

• The Value of Reading Things We Disagree with - The Book of Life buff.ly/2Kampap

• The Task of Turning Vague Thoughts into More Precise Ones - The Book of Life buff.ly/2BaJmYq

• Inside the New Industrial Revolution buff.ly/2FjyV8P

• The rare form of machine learning that can spot hackers who have already broken in buff.ly/2TfqDBU

• The IoT Needs a New Set of Eyes: Cameras for the Internet of Things will have to be fast, cheap, and powerful—and might not look like cameras at all buff.ly/2A7J56X

• How 'miniature suns' could provide cheap, clean energy buff.ly/2PwwXGY

• Survey reveals designers' favourite typefaces - Creative Review buff.ly/2zSwSCO

• How Europe’s Smartest Agencies Are ‘Rewiring the Creative Machine’ buff.ly/2zZ5Yco

• These 5 questions kill creativity buff.ly/2qWqxlX

• Fei-Fei Li's Quest to Make Machines Better for Humanity buff.ly/2FrSThP)

• Earwax reveals how humans have changed whales’ lives buff.ly/2QLVzbc

• How The Wall Street Journal is preparing its journalists to detect deepfakes niemanlab.org/2018/11/how-th…

• Why you should always thank your barista buff.ly/2PYglqW

• 6 Biases Holding You Back From Rational Thinking – Robert Greene buff.ly/2Prf8Jj

• Is marketing evil? – Seth Godin buff.ly/2B63Npe

• How Alphonse Mucha’s Iconic Posters Came to Define Art Nouveau buff.ly/2FmaLKV

• Jason Romeyko on the Magic of ÜberCreativity and AI buff.ly/2Tc9JEh

• A Brief History of Clip Art - Sam Solomon buff.ly/2FocDTp

• Secrets of the Creative Brain buff.ly/2NhkYY9

• The slow death of purposeless walking buff.ly/2PpuGgO

• David Hockney's Famed Pool Scene Sells for $90.3 M. at Christie's, New Record for Work by Living Artist at Auction - buff.ly/2A3OlrZ

• Oliver Sacks on the Three Essential Elements of Creativity buff.ly/2hpT2U9

• 43 Minutes Before Curtain With A Very Tense Mike Birbiglia buff.ly/2Fm2cQd

• This Chemical Is So Hot It Destroys Nerve Fibers—in a Good Way buff.ly/2zRxSHb

• A Creative Director's Inside Look at the Future of Mixed Reality buff.ly/2Fld15i

• The British Army is carrying out a massive test of military robots and drones buff.ly/2PshcAE

• Finally some good news: TV dramas are getting shorter buff.ly/2qKBarW

• The 7 Craziest Ways CRISPR Is Being Used Right Now buff.ly/2zp7cxr

• Watch Beatboxers Break It Down Inside an M.R.I. Scanner buff.ly/2B4XiTE

• Everything you need to know about Digital Humans buff.ly/2QJW8CE

• My journey to thank all the people responsible for my morning coffee buff.ly/2FhsmUb

• Motivating Your Most Creative Employees buff.ly/2T6FUFf

• Welcome to the Age of the Hour-Long YouTube Video buff.ly/2qEcyRi

• Do Creative Ideas Work Better than Data-Driven Ones? buff.ly/2zAk8AG

• How (And Why) ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ Made Contemporary Dance The Climax Of Its Finale buff.ly/2PnfqAV

• Meet Yabin Wang, The Coolest Chinese Choreographer You've Never Heard Of buff.ly/2Fjo3YN

• Listening to your materials buff.ly/2RFfcBN

• The New York Times is digitizing more than 5 million photos dating back to the 1800s buff.ly/2B0YTKk

• 5 words that don’t mean what they used to mean buff.ly/2B0PYbM

• When People Would Rather Work with Competent Jerks Than Likable Fools buff.ly/2Fn2KFs

• Better “nowcasting” can reveal what weather is about to hit within 500 meters buff.ly/2qHyZVP

• If You Want to Get Better at Something, Ask Yourself These Two Questions buff.ly/2qDUPJY

• Wallace & Gromit producers hand stake in business to staff buff.ly/2DxvQk5

• Value Soars for Leonardo da Vinci Drawing After ‘Salvator Mundi’ buff.ly/2RRtnUK

• The Secret Tools Magicians Use to Fool You buff.ly/2QCex3U)

• What the Boston School Bus Schedule Can Teach Us About AI buff.ly/2QBefdH)