James L Adams—People and Products

More Changes in Creativity/Innovation in the last 50 years

In my last post I mentioned the recent talk I gave concerning changes in  creativity/innovation  over the last 50 years.  In particular I talked a bit about the increasing knowledge about brain chemistry and brain activity that shed light on the process .  But I discussed several other factors that have changed the nature of creativity and innovation in my talk, and I mention them here.

 Improved knowledge of creativity and innovation in groups and organizations — a great deal of research and writing has been done in this area partly spurred by the success of the Japanese in the 1970’s, and 80’s and partly by increased specialization requiring more emphasis on team work.

 Recognition of the cyclical nature of interest in creativity and innovation as a function of the economy (it rises when the economy is down), national goals (go to the moon), and breakthroughs in science and technology (digital electronics and genetic engineering)—It is so high now it resembles a management fad.  What will the future look like?

 The computer/internet explosion— An obvious aid in access to information, solving problems, communicating, providing new tools (CAD/CAM), and a source of new business opportunities.  But it is a work in progress, demands much time and energy, and may seduce people away from complex ventures and the type of  innovation involved in major projects—upgrading the infrastructure in the U.S. is a larger and more important venture and requires much more investment and effort than that required to come up with an internet startup that can make a few people some money.

 Globalization—A positive factor.  Provides increased competition and markets, demolishes stereotypes, results in more attention paid to intellectual property, and requires more knowledge of other cultures.

 Increasing population — approaches to solving problems that used to work  (automobiles in cities —disposable items) become less effective  and desirable as population increases and resources become more scarce, requiring increased and larger scale creativity/innovation and recognition of the increasing role of politics in the process.

 Dawning realization that ever increasing pressure for short term profits and fast growth can be detrimental to creativity and innovation, and in particular to product quality.

Creativity, the Mind, and the Brain

David Brooks, one of my favorite columnists in the New York Times, wrote a column in the June 18^th edition concerning the present tendency to use neuroscience to explain the human condition. It was entitled "Beyond the Brain", and emphasized that the brain is not the same as the mind.  The two words do have different meanings to most people, in that “brain” usually  implies the 3 pounds or so of rather ugly meat inside our skull, and “mind” our more difficult to understand consciousness, cognitive output, and feelings. But we will continue to study the brain and its processes because we are curious and because new tools make it possible to learn more and more about it.  And I think we all agree that the brain is necessary for the mind.  But there are people (sometimes I am one) who believe that it may take something more powerful than human brains to totally understand the human mind, and computers are not it.

 

But I thought of this question last week, as  I was asked to give a talk on the past 50 years of creativity to the  50^th anniversary party of the Product Design program at Stanford University.  I had been a part of this program from its beginning until my retirement and had been quite involved in reading, teaching, consulting about and working on problems involving creativity, so I found this an interesting assignment. 

 

One major change has occurred in the nature-nurture debate, which can sometimes bring up the brain-mind topic.  Fifty years ago, we (or at least those of us around universities) were taught to view people as being formed primarily by nurture – their upbringing, their culture, their friends, and perhaps their schooling.  Certainly people did not totally accept this, but it was politically correct to espouse it.  Since that time, due to research in the social sciences and our preoccupation with genetics, this view has shifted.  I have never seen a figure as to how much, but I would say that we give two thirds credit to what we have learned, and one third to our genes (brain), and the genetics argument continues to charge ahead.

 An example of such thinking is a nicely written book written by Peter Whybrow in 2005 entitled American Mania: When More is Not Enough (W. W. Norton, NY—click on icon at the right for more information).  At the time he was director of the Semel Institute for NeuroScience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Judson Braun Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine.  In his book Professor Whybrow discusses the reasons that so many of us U.S. citizens seem to drive ourselves to acquire more than we need, whether it be money, possessions, food, or whatever, at the expense of time and energy that we could use to better improve our satisfaction with our lives , and the welfare of our families and communities. 

 

Whybrow  argues partly from an evolutionary standpoint—through most of our evolution we have lived in scarcity, and have developed strong signals to inform us when our needs (food?) are not being met, but weaker signals when we have enough (the cause of obesity?).  He also argues as a psychiatrist (“mania; a dysfunctional state of mind that begins with a joyous sense of excitement and high productivity, but escalates into reckless pursuit, irritability, and confusion, before cycling down into depression” —sound familiar?) and finally as a neuroscientist, explaining the purposes and functions of various parts and processes of the mind, and how they can cause us to lose the balance of our lives.  He believes that genetics is a strong influence on this, and uses immigrants as a class of people that obviously pursue risk and uncertainty, and whose descendants do likewise.

 

It is a good read, and will get you thinking.  And it speaks to both mind and brain.

 

 

 

War and the Products of Industry

The last few posts I have written have been on this topic. I veered in this direction because I do not think that people think hard enough about the tremendous impact that Defense Department activities have on not only products for the military, but on civilian products and the overall economy. 

 But considering the military side, it seems to me that an interesting thing has happened, in that the availability of consistent and high funding over many years has resulted in technology and resulting products that have invalidated the classic western Clauswitz theory of total war —massive armies and navies slugging it out as in World War II.  So-called weapons of mass destruction (nuclear bombs, bio-chemical weapons) have made the potential cost in property and lives of civilian as well as members of the military ridiculously high on both sides of any conflict in which they are used.  It is possible to make treaties banning their use in conflicts between nations, but there is always a risk of desperate usage by dictatorial governments or fanatics under attack.

 Wars (or “police actions”) in which the U.S. has been involved since World War II have remained limited, and have not result in the hoped for “victories”.  And they have often veered toward more eastern theory of wars (read Sun Tsu), which recognize the effectiveness of such things as surprise (Pearl Harbor), ambush,  deception, patience (Mao and Ho Chi Minh}, and avoiding un-winnable battles.  And the nature of battle itself has been drastically changed by the use of air, modern transportation and communication, night vision capability, improved personal arms and armor, observation satellites, computers, and the global positioning satellite system.

 And in the U.S., at least, there is a growing antipathy toward what is euphemistically called collateral damage, as well as military casualties, and it is about time, since the civilian casualty count in modern wars is often larger than that of the military, and the civilians are in a sense innocent by-standers.  The present uproar about drone attacks, in which relatively few people are killed is a symptom of this antipathy.  Though the casualties are relatively few, they seem to violate our sense of fairness.  They are the opposite of Gary Cooper and the one-on-one duel in the classic movie High Noon.

 I certainly do not claim to know the answer to this.  The Cold War period was a period of relative peace, but high anxiety.  I understand the desire of nations to possess nuclear weapons, since for better or worse, they definitely help in becoming recognized as a power to be reckoned with (North Korea?).  The League of Nations failed, and the U.N. and the world court seem to have only limited power.  And leaders of nations, even though they deny it, seem to like to fight. Do we need a new type of war?   Now there is an opportunity for creativity.    

Good Products? Bad Products? The Gun, Explosives, and War

Along about the year 900, the Chinese invented gunpowder.  It is a fairly simple substance, consisting of 65 to 75 percent potassium nitrate (saltpeter), 15-20 percent charcoal, and 10 to 15 percent sulfur – common materials, but interesting that someone would think of combining them.  The result burns fiercely, and if confined, explodes.  It was initially used for fireworks.  But eventually changed war, and the world.

 A hundred years later the Chinese were using gunpowder to propel spears and various materials from a tube.  A gun perhaps.  By the 14^th century, the Chinese were making so-called hand cannons, and the secrets had followed the silk road to Europe.  The Ottomans were providing their infantry with crude, single-shot muzzle loaded guns by the year 1500.  Guns were heavy in those days, but ships were less concerned with weight, so cannons had taken their place in naval warfare.  And of course, since then guns have continued to decrease in weight and increase in power and speed of firing, until now we have operational multi - barrel machine guns capable of 6,000 to 10,000 rounds per minute. 

 And chemical power in other forms has led to such things as increasingly powerful explosives, supersonic aircraft, and indirectly, intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying nuclear “warheads”. (I put the word in quotes, because there is a strong school of thought that such things should actually be called nuclear bargaining chips, since if anyone uses them, they will be permanently ostracized).

 Over time, advances in technology have made weapons both increasingly powerful and more rapidly and easily deliverable, and at the same time militaries have grown greatly. At the height of Napolean’s Grande Armie (the first great “citizen’s army”) in 1812, it contained some 600,000 soldiers.  In the U.S. Civil war, over two million people served in the Union army alone.  And both sides were plentifully equipped with cannons, rifles, and side arms.  The result, as you nay know, was 620,000 deaths which represents the highest death toll of U.S. citizens of any wars in which the U.S. has been involved to date.

 And the nature of battle  has changed. War has gone from the close combat necessary when weapons were limited in range by people and animal power, to massed firepower of muskets and volley fire, to the stable slaughter of World War I trenches and machine guns, to the wider open tank and airplane battle in Europe in World War II, to the present “irregular” wars going on in the world right now.  These wars, strangely enough, have certain resemblances to the U.S. Revolutionary War, except that in that war the U.S. were the irregulars, and the British the regulars.

 World War II, sometimes thought to be an extension of World War I, very much raised the bar in what is now called collateral damage, and in the importance of industrial production.  Wikipedia states estimates of civilians killed ranging from 38 to 55 million, and military dead from 22 to 25 million, and it is generally agreed that the allied win was based heavily on the ability to produce the weapons and other material necessary to conduct the war.  An interesting book is Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter, by Jiro Horikoshi, the chief designer of the aircraft (University of Washington Press, I think now out of print, but available on the used book market.)  It tells the tale of the Zero, originally undoubtedly the outstanding fighter in the world, but eventually doomed because of the production of large numbers of increasingly high-performing fighters by the U.S., while Japan was limited in industrial capability to compete (The U.S. produced 300,000 airplanes during the four years of World War II).

 But since World War II, wars have been more limited and localized, and the winner (if  any) more difficult to determine.  It could be that our technology has advanced to the point where total war, at least as defined by Clauswitz doesn’t work anymore.  Perhaps through historically heavily supporting the development of technology, the military has helped unlimited make war too potentially costly and all-encompassing to be used to solve international (or any other) disputes.  More about this next post and then we will leave the subject of war.

 As to whether weapons and other materials of war are good products or bad products, it obviously depends on whether the judgement is to be made by the deer or the hunter; the military sniper or the civilian pacifist;  the Lockheed program manager or the Buddhist Priest;  The question of the quality of a particular assault rifle is necessarily impacted by whether the person answering the question is strongly for or against the right of civilians to own them.

 But since we in the U.S. are spending such an incredible amount of time and money on weapons and wars, we should at least be thinking more about what quality means when applied to products of industry used by the military—and what their availability to civilians and other countries should be.  We are, after all, the world's leading exporter of arms.

Product Quality and Pre-gun War

Before the gun, technology was a major factor in increasing the deadliness and cost of war. Taking Europe as an example, the use of horses and chariots added greatly to the speed and violence of battle beginning in the early (3^rd millennium B.C.E.) days. Chariots were extremely sophisticated for their time—wooden vehicles weighing on the order of 75 pounds that allowed high speed and were capable of travel over rough ground.  Composite bows were another early development.  They were formed of a number of pieces of laminated wood steamed into a curve opposite to that it would assume when strung (re-curve). Strips of horn were then glued to the side that would eventually be in compression. and tendons were glued to the side that would be in tension when strung.  The bow was then left to cure for up to a year.  When finally strung, the force required to draw the bow ranged up to 150 pounds (compared to a tenth if that with primitive simple bows) and it could be made short enough to be used on horseback or from chariots.

 Along with improved offensive weapons, fortifications developed (large ones such as the Great Wall of China and the Walls of Jericho and many small ones).  But armies still primarily fought on foot on open ground. As an example, The Greek heavy infantrymen (Hoplites) sometimes fought in a  large formation called a phalanx, typically consisting of 16 rows of 16 men, and were equipped with sword, spear, and some 70 pounds of bronze armor including a large shield, helmet, and upper body and lower leg armor. Throwing spears were 7 to 10 feet long, but in formation, spears could reach 20 feet (the sarissa),and the formation could become fierce indeed, charging along with the front rows of spears being held horizontal, and rows toward the back being held vertically and lowered when the front ranks fell (see photo).

 Since the Greeks were a sea-faring people, naval warfare also developed, involving large galleys with bronze rams used to sink and/or board the enemy.  The largest was the trireme, which employed three banks of oars .  Incidentally, the Greeks did not spend most of their time sitting around in white robes discussing philosophy.  They were warlike people, whether fighting in wars between city states, or in wars  against other states.

 The Roman empire added full-time professional service (modern standing armies) and even more brutal hand to hand combat to war.  Many earlier “conquerors”, such as Alexander the Great, ranged through long distances winning their battles, but seemed to be most interested in displaying their power, rather than controlling the territory they claimed.  The Romans definitely governed their empire through their soldiers, whose legions moved their locations from point to point to make sure that their citizens were behaving and protected from Rome’s enemies.  Their soldiers fought with similar body armor to the Greeks, and carried a throwing spear and a traditional spear to use against the enemy during the charge, but their chief weapon was a short sword  which they used on contact.

 From the time that the Romans were overcome by various eastern tribes until the coming of the gun, warfare grew toward the feudal system, in which heads of state would give holdings to lords, who in turn would let the land out to serfs who would farm it for their livelihood.  In return the lord took a portion of their crop and the serfs  were expected to serve in the army of their particular lord, perhaps in service to the king, perhaps to settle a beef with another lord.   This in turn led to armies of a few wealthy and well equipped mounted wealthy fighters (knights), and a large number of soldiers on foot with minimal armor carrying such things as lances and battle axes.  The age of iron and steel had arrived, and as you have seen in museums, the wealth of the knights and heads of state resulted in weapons and armor with extraordinarily controlled and beautiful detailing.

But guns were going to wreck the knights, make war much more costly, and require more and more involvement of industry and mass production. 

Fighting, Primitive War, and Weapons

People (especially men) fight physically for many reasons – different beliefs, status,  basic needs, entertainment, historical disagreements, and so on.  As long as technology is minimal, the damage to the species seems to be tolerable.  In fact, anthropologists have long studied what is often called primitive war, and have even outlined some advantages.

 Primitive war still occurs in isolated tribes, such as the Marings of Papua New Guinea.  Maring wars occur every ten or twelve years (the time it takes pigs to mature and fatten  for sacrifices and feasts) and involve hundreds of people equipped with simple bows and arrows, spears, and clubs.  The intent is to re-establish power and influence and re-allocate resources, women, and sometimes land.  Killing people is not a goal, and in fact, apparently the weapons are less lethal than those used to hunt animals for food, and the wars are often interrupted to work on gardens, or simply rest.  If someone is killed, the war may be halted, and the warriors seldom end up in hand- to -hand fighting. 

 Many primitive wars were more lethal, such as those involving the Maoris and the Aztecs, but were also limited as the Maoris developed fortifications that would withstand attack, and the Aztecs fought to capture people to be sacrificed to their gods, rather than for  spoils.  Such wars did not imperil the existence of  the people fighting them— no weapons of mass destruction.

 But even though our wars are now “modern” and involve nations, many more people, and tremendously sophisticated and destructive weapons that can be used over huge distances, we still fight in more primitive ways. If you are interested in more about this type of fighting, or the history of war in general, read “A History of Warfare”, by John Keegan, a terrific writer and senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, described in recommended readings at the right. For more on the Marings, click here.

 A good example of primitive fighting with few weapons and no major casualties were the predictable large inter school fights after football games in my high school, which became so wide spread that my friends started a so-called car club to proclaim our toughness (complete with jackets proclaiming ourselves Sultans of Berdoo) as a defensive mechanism to escape them.  In fact American football might be considered a ceremonial type of warfare.  The photo at the left shows a modern gladiator (www.reddit.com).  Sports often have many elements of ceremonial warfare, and even though they may be highly regulated, the fans are not always so. The photo at the right is a shot of the start of a riot at a Birmingham United soccer match. For more on this topic see Football Hooliganism here.

But in the third millennium B.C.E., “modern” war began with the coming of states such as Egypt and Sumer and took the direction of acquiring, land, wealth, and power.  The same weapons were used as in primitive war (bows and arrows, spears, clubs, axes, knives, swords) but the materials and designs continued to improve.  More people were involved and wars ranged more widely.  About 2340 B.C.E., Sargon become ruler of Mesopotania, and with an army of over 5000 and bronze weapons, conquered an empire roughly the size of present day Iraq. Modern war had arrived , and increasingly sophisticated technology was  to cause casualties to mount.

Product Quality, Military Influence, and Products of War

  If you did not instantly recognize it, the photo is of an AK 47 assault rifle.  More of them have been produced in the world than all other assault rifles combined.  Is it a good product, or a bad product?  It must have some advantages, and in fact is reliable, easily manufactured, cheap, effective, easy to acquire in many (most?) countries, and symbolic of revolution. It does not instantly impress one as being beautifully made and precise. It is designed to kill people in combat, not for hunting deer or target shooting.  That alone might cause  many people to consider it a bad product.  To a Taliban soldier, that might cause it to be thought a good product.  Many people would prefer not to think about this issue too hard, or perhaps I should say that the issue is too hard for many people to think about.  And assault rifles have rightly become symbolic in the argument about civilian gun ownership.

 I am always amazed at how many people prefer not to think deeply about war and technology.  We humans have apparently had wars through all of recorded history, technology and industry have certainly been a large factor during the past few hundred years, and wars are interesting because people act in totally illogical ways— for instance allowing themselves to be brutalized by drill sergeants and volunteering to act in ways in which the probability of being killed is very high.  And as president Eisenhower warned many years ago, the U.S. does probably have an industrial-military complex.

 As an example of this avoidance, I was once president of a museum start-up intended to celebrate the technological accomplishments of Silicon Valley.  The board consisted of a number of high level industry and political people.  The industry people were in general from electronics companies, and often founders. To my amazement, the board refused to consider members from businesses such as Lockheed Missiles and Space, F.M.C., Raytheon, and other powerful and successful companies that were primarily working on military products.  Even though located in Silicon Valley, apparently they weren’t part of the club.  As another example, for most of my tenure at Stanford, over half of the research funding in the Engineering School has come from the Department of Defense—a fact that seldom shows up in PR documents, even though none of the work is directly on weapons. We  don’t brag that our research activities are heavily dependent on DOD. 

 This is very weird, because in my memory, the U.S. is often involved in war. And we are proud of our industrial ability to help us do so (we remember that in the four years we were involved in World War II we manufactured over 300,000 military airplanes).  But we are ambivalent.  Even though the War Department was re-named the Department of Defense after World War II, we have only been actually attacked by one nation (Japan) in my memory, and have entered  conflicts in other countries many times.  But I’ll bet we are not going to re-name the Department of Defense the Department of Offense. 

 We like to think of ourselves as a peace-loving people, but are we?  The Defense Department budget is unclear at this point because of sequester cuts, but it is certainly above $650 billion dollars, and that does not include development and support of nuclear weapons (in the Department of Energy), the Veteran’s Administration, and other war-related costs.  In terms of battle fleet tonnage, the U.S. navy is larger than the next 13 navies combined, and as I remember, 11 of  these we consider to be our allies.

 Our “civilian” products are certainly influenced —and sometimes originated—by the military.  After all, it has brought us the internet —initially the ARPA net.  It brought us and maintains the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system.  It backed the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs, and the Computer (the one at the Institute of Advanced Studies headed by John Von Neuman needed originally to simulate such things as the explosion of the hydrogen bomb}.  It was a powerful lobby for space exploration, and brought us the Boeing 707 (evolved from a prototype for the very successful aerial refueling tanker called the KC 135).

 At a perhaps lower level, think of such things as clothing (cargo pants, epaulets on overcoats, camouflage), toys (guns, miniature vehicles, models), and entertainment (war movies and books, computer games, paint ball, air-soft weapons).  And I find it interesting that now we label  well-meaning movements as wars (war on drugs, war on poverty, war on cancer).  I clearly remember that when I arrived at Stanford, women active in the feminist movement seemed to prefer fatigues and other military clothing.

 For the next few posts I am going to say some things about the influence of war and the military on industrial products and try to talk a bit about what quality means when applied to products intended for war.  I am certainly not pro-war, since it is a nasty business.  I did serve happily in the U.S. Air Force, but admit partly to avoid being drafted into the army.  But I recognize war as something humans have always done.

 I became so bothered by the  ability that most of us have to avoid thinking deeply about war that in the 1970’s I began teaching a course entitled War and Technology, which among other topics covered the historic eager support of technology by the military, which has resulted in developments such as nuclear weapons, chemical and biological agents, and remote weapons such as drones, which may in turn have lead us to the point where wars may no longer work as an mechanism to settle international, or even internal disputes.  Since it was perhaps my favorite course, I will throw in a tiny bit of history as we go.  And as I used to tell my students, don't let your political beliefs get in the way.  We are what we are.

 

 

 

 

 

Immortal Avatars—Bad Product Idea

The Sunday June 2 New York Times had an article in the Business Section entitled "This Man is Not a Cyborg. Yet."  I assume that it is the kind of an article that weekend newspapers run if nothing much of global interest is happening.  In brief, Dmitry Itskov, a wealthy 32 year old Russian, is devoting his life to pursing a dream, in which large numbers of cheap avatars will be manufactured and equipped with digital copies of our brains, complete with consciousness, personality, and undoubtedly memory.

There is a  belief entitled Technological Determinism, which is that if it is technologically feasible, it will happen.  This is not always good.  In fact, it is often bad.  Let us assume, although it will be difficult, that it will become technically possible to make cheap avatars and equip them with digital copies of our brain.  Mr. Itskov, believes this will lead to lifetimes of many hundreds, if not thousands of years, and we will be released from the petty worries of day to day living.  Incidentally, he is perhaps a bit extreme, but not alone among people of wealth, especially those associated with science and technology, who like the media are titillated by a potentially much longer life span.  Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and possessor of a net worth of many billions of dollars, is funding a foundation to do research on extending life, and many believe that he may be somewhat interested in his own.

 But supposing Mr. Itskov’s goal becomes feasible in 2045 (his schedule).  I can easily think up a few non-technical questions.

 1.     Who is going to maintain Mr. Itzkov’s avatar?.  Tax money?  Perhaps other avatars could, but if equipped with human minds, would they? He could probably endow  his avatar’s upkeep, but if this is to be the routine, will only wealthy people live thousands of years? In my opinion there are enough of them around already,  Where would avatars live?  I don’t want any in my neighborhood.

2.     How will Mr. Itskov decide when to fire up his avatar?  Will he do it when his avatar becomes available?  If he is on schedule he will be 64.  Or will he wait until he is feeling the onslaught of dementia to do so?  Will he use his wealth to download his brain into hundreds of avatars?  Will he turn off his flesh and blood body when his brain is downloaded? If not, what happens when it gets into an argument with his avatar?  Would he turn off his body if he was his present age?

3.     Most people I know love their parents, but when their parents die, after a time of mourning, there is a certain feeling of increased independence.  What would it be like to have avatar parents around for thousands of years?  Or an ex spouse?

4.     What rights will avatars have?  Will flesh and blood humans outrank them? When avatars are several hundred years old and still have brains fueled with ancient ideas will it be okay to remove their battery packs?  Or will that  be murder?  Will it be acceptable for avatars to download the brains of flesh and blood humans into an avatar and discard the human?

5.     What if cheap avatar bodies don’t work as well as flesh and blood ones?  Will the brain be frustrated with the body for thousand of years?  Sounds even worse than bad knees.

 Apparently many people think Mr. Itskov is insane.  I don’t think so.  I think that he is probably an idealistic  young guy with a lot of money who has not found a life yet.  Or maybe he likes to make a splash—after all, he was a media mogul.  In the interim, he will be popular with the “improve the human” set.

 I personally love life, have an infinite number of projects,  and do not want to die, and when the time comes I will fight it as well as I can in the traditional way.  But I do believe that it is our duty to get out of the way when we lose the fight, without inflicting ourselves on society for thousands of years. In particular, I would be even more of a pain over those thousands of  years if I were not diverted by the petty worries of day to day living.