Rapid Prototyping with Tom Chi

Tom Chi (of Google Glasses fame) is in Kuala Lumpur and I attended one of his talks.

Here are my notes:

Talk 1

• it’s not about the people, time or resources
• create a first step towards a trajectory of a goal (glass, contact lens, etc -> what if google was in your brain?)
• there’s the moonshot itself, and there’s the concept of the trajectory
• meetings per linear foot (too many meetings and politics) -> no time to build stuff
• from a political environment to an environment of makers
• guessathons -> nobody knows the answer, so everyone guesses (most persuasive or the person with the highest rank)
• no special respect for authority
• just build the thing and try it out by living it
• smart people will always come up with smart reasons for their guesses; that still makes their guess is still a guess
• guesses will land us nowhere (don’t spend so much time debating guesses)
• reason with the real world, not with guesses and conjectures
• something needs to happen in time space and matter, otherwise it’s just talk
• people don’t have energy about things that don’t concern them at all, but when you say something that concerns them it either hurts or brings joy
• energy -> what really matters?
• move out of the conceptual space into the actual living space (no slides required)
• “let’s try things out”
• it’s been historically cheaper to guess than to make
• failure is not a event; it is an attitude towards an event
• is there anything that we learned? what worked (even it’s only the 10% that worked)
• connect different disciplines (e.g. dance + architecture)
• research: maximize rate of learning; development: drive efficiency and quality
• narrow and deep vs broad and shallow
• technology is always wielded at the level of the society consciousness that it exists at
• best ai in the world: serving ads and trading stocks
• myth of separation, the deficit of connectedness
• we are more defined by our tragedies than by our triumphs (when you struggle, that’s when you have the biggest breakthroughs)
• why did i want all that? -> break apart, then you find out why
• see from another’s point of view
• embodied empathy (what if i was you) (pov) journalism?
• a day in the life of (pov)
• TDD is development, doesn’t work with research *(just a passing thought)
• make innovation a default mode, then minimize the length of time to maximize learning
• it’s not about information, it’s about coherence
• changing your mind is not rare; commitment to do something/skill are rare
• the illusion of choice is that we should participate in all of those choices
• achievement is different from mastery

Talk 2

Climate Change conservation:

• self driving cars (what you need when you need it)
• what’s the level of thinking we need to be at to solve issues?
• the category of solutions are on a different magnitude
• don’t just feel horrible (and sign petitions), do something about it
• we have to go for the stuff that will have a comparable effect with the problem we’re trying to solve
• understand scale
• start small but aim to invent something that alters the fundamentals
• stick with it long enough to catalyze change
• keep learning!
• focus on a game changing element even when starting small
• new perspectives can lead to new outcomes, but make sure it works