engineering serendipity

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Engineering Serendipity By Tyler Kurlas July 31 st , 2015

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Page 1: engineering serendipity

Engineering Serendipity

By Tyler Kurlas July 31st, 2015

Page 2: engineering serendipity

Sometimes it's nice to have an easy model for complex topics, especially if it helps us understand where we're at and predict where the trendlines are going. Right or wrong, models get us thinking about what is, what's possible, and even what's desired. Take a moment and ask yourself -- how special do these times we're living in feel to you?

Photo taken from: The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity In A Time Of Brilliant Technologies

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If you're like most, no matter how much things have changed, we take them for granted at an incredibly fast pace. Comedian Louie CK pointed out how quickly we've gone from the act of flying being a miraculous and impossible feat which defies our natural abilities to our grudging about delayed flights, in-flight internet outages, and cramped seating. What if, on a daily basis, we've been grudging, instead of taking advantage of the true reality of the world we live in?

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Once upon a time, less than a century ago, the only music you could hear was played live. A few decades later, music could be recorded, and certain people began to aggregate collections. Fast forward and the radio enabled us to tune in to broadcasts, while advances in technology and declining prices allowed for personal music collections. Only in the last several years have we seen music from throughout time made available with a quick search, for free. Or if you prefer, listen to any person's playlists or radio station in the world, right from your personal phone, also for free. If that's not enough, make your own music in minutes, with free apps, beats, and musicians around the world willing to collaborate with you in realtime. Welcome to the On-Demand world, the wait is over. The trend in music was from scarcity to near over-abundance. If we truly have arrived into an On-Demand world, two questions should be asked at this point. How might we think differently, and where are we going from here? (Diagram Showing Option Count: 1 10 100 1000+ ???)  Limited Local Limited Recorded Limited Broadcast On-Demand (Unlimited Local, Recorded & Broadcast) ???

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If you guessed that the On-Demand world doesn't just apply to music, you are right. In entertainment, we have thousands of channels to tune into, and an internet full of movies, news, performances, and home videos covering virtually every interest. In education, we have books, apps, tutorials, and lectures… searchable by our exact interests. We can now learn and enjoy faster, cheaper, and easier than ever before. Even in relationships, sites such as Meetup.com, dating services, and other social media make it possible to find people with shared interests, to carve out the life experiences we wish to have. In business, millions of jobs are posted daily, crowd-funding has made personal financing easier than ever, and logistics like marketing, sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution have been streamlined to the point that small teams with the right products and services can positively affect more people than ever before. It might be considered the biggest limitations we have in this age are our capacities to imagine, motivation to act, and proper guidance.

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Instead of taking this world for granted, like we've done with the act of flying, what if we spent more of our time and energy using the tools we’ve created to build the lives we each desire? Instead of thinking we've reached the end of innovation, or settle for the fact that the iPhone was the biggest invention in our lifetimes, what if we extrapolate the trend we've seen in music, and become part of creating the next logical step in the evolution of reality?

Virtual world, co-created by engineers and players of Sim City

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Many of us are not quite fully living in the On-Demand world yet, or at the very least, are not acting like it. But perhaps it's still not too soon to think about what's next. There are no signs the exponential increases in data and technologies are going to screech to a sudden halt. In fact, the evidence points to the contrary. Technology will continue to network our world’s data, and become faster, cheaper, and more useful. It's easy to argue against technology drastically changing our lives, probably because our lives still aren't all that different than our parents' were, and because we've been promised so much for so long. But, let's still consider what the best plausible future would look like that we'd want to live in, based on the trends we've seen. The happiest, most meaningful moments in our lives are often the ones where we feel like we're at the right place, at the right time, with the right people, doing the right things. Things just seem… well… right. Sometimes this happens because of our efforts, other times it happens serendipitously, all on its own. How might we begin engineering serendipity?

engineering(verb):!the action of working artfully to bring something about! serendipity(noun):!finding something good without looking for it

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In music, we've nearly done this. Using apps like Pandora or Spotify radio, we can declare what music we like most, compare that with others’ tastes and musicology, and specialized AI works out our very own personalized algorithm, then voila! Songs we've never heard before enter our eardrums, usually satisfying our listening desires. But what about matching the right time, place, and mood? Is it possible for each of us to have a DJ who knows what we want to hear before we've even heard it, there for us at all the right moments?

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Again, as you've probably guessed, it's still not about the music. How many people would want to wake up, and instead of a job to go to, have opportunities presented to them based on their skills, qualifications, and interests every day? To meet and work with people who are looking to go where we're going, and do what we're doing? To have as much (or little) variety in the people and experiences in our lives as we desire? Historically speaking, it's amazing that yesterday was so much like tomorrow for so many centuries. And how the biggest invention in 20+ years of a connected world was a cell phone which enables us to be nosier than ever in more or less the same people's lives. But literally speaking, there is nothing really holding the world together like it has been. Every passing day we have the chance to choose how we allocate all of our resources, and what gets changed.

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Questions for Pondering …If every human had the ability to feel in control of their day, and their lives, to work or travel where they wanted, and do what they wanted to do, wouldn't the world be happier? …If every human had the opportunity for not just planned happiness, but serendipitous happiness via constant pleasant and surprise opportunities, wouldn't we have a lot less to fight about? …If every human had the freedom to connect with each other based on realtime interests and activities, wouldn’t we accomplish things never before possible in the hundreds of billions of hours we collectively share every week to make life more meaningful? …What will it take to prepare for engineered serendipity?

…How are you preparing?

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The End?

Please send your thoughts, comments, and questions to me @ [email protected] or +1.513.238.5779

Thank You For Reading!