Mind blown: Storytelling, Language, Technology, the Future

My mind is blown right now. I just returned from a colloquium session at Viterbi Engineering in which Bran Ferren, Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Applied Minds spoke about some of the most shocking things ever. I only hope that I can articulate the sheer meaning and impact of what he said.
Let's start with a deceptively simple question:

What is the most important invention of mankind?

Some people said the wheel, fire (which is more a discovery), harnessing of electricity for light, tools... but according to Ferren, it is something else:

Language.

Before language, humans were herd animals. We hunted for food and lived with little organized communication with others. We could not advance our thinking, we could not grow out of our minds - we could not even begin to unleash what we were capable of.

But then language gradually took shape. It went from grunts and gestures to pictures and carvings. Soon we developed an alphabet... and over the centuries we began to unify languages on a larger and larger scale. Symbols and pictograms transformed - evolved - into what we have now.

Language became a brilliant means of storytelling, and storytelling is one of the most powerful qualities of humanity. But before we get into that, we should continue to examine history.

Every time we reinvented language in some way, a fundamental shift occurred in the way humans behave. Oral storytelling was an old means of perpetuating knowledge. What came next? Reading and writing. The invention of the printing press (which was not by Gutenberg, by the way; as Ferren says, a Chinese man invented it, but Gutenberg invented the movable metal type, and the mere fact that Gutenberg was a white European male assisted recorded history's common mistake of crediting him with printing) drastically altered the way we communicate. Now, Gutenberg died penniless because the Church and other forces discouraged literacy, and the cost of a single book from a printing machine was the equivalent of $100,000 today. Moreover, nobody in his time could grasp the implications of what he had done. However, once we could print text ubiquitously, newspapers, magazines, novels, and so many other mediums of communication emerged, and humanity faced an enormous shift in daily life.

Then came the telephone. Did you know that when the telephone first came out, people, upon picking up the telephone, would not speak into it? After all, it was an alienating technology, and there's nothing in the human genome that programs our minds to speak into the phone after picking it up. In fact, this is why we originally had operators: not to regulate interaction if there's no one on the other line, but to just get the conversation started! Thus the phone business encouraged people to get into using phones this way (otherwise you'd just have two people picking up their respective telephones and then not speaking into them...). People could not grasp the significance of this change in communication. The larger idea is that the phone, like the printing press, altered our means of communication and behavior fundamentally. It enabled humans to grow even more - to be able to envision communication without being physically present.

Both the printing press and the telephone captured storytelling in a new form. We've always been storytelling; it's hardwired into our minds. Our parents tell stories, and the most engaging ones remain with us for the rest of our lives. Cavemen and people from millennia ago told stories. And enabling new means of storytelling - or capturing language in a new way, has historically always led to a drastic change in the world. This applies to one of the most fundamental aspects of life in the early 21st century: The Internet.

The Internet, like the printing press and the phone, captured storytelling in a new form like no other. And Ferren believes that the Internet is the next most important invention of man after language. Further, he asserts some of the most astounding and mind-boggling things related to this and the whole idea of language... perhaps most notably the following few:

The computer revolution has not started yet.

Reading and writing are just abstractions that will eventually be nonexistent.

Whenever we rethought language, a fundamental shift in humanity occurred. 

During the times when we did reinvent language, nobody could grasp the significance of what was going on.

It's so difficult to even begin to grasp the implications of these ideas.
What does this all mean? What is going on? Ferren believes that to invent something that profoundly impacts humanity means (1) nobody in your time is going to follow the significance of what you are doing and (2) a change in how we tell stories is critical. This is a rudimentary explanation of the larger picture, but I just found what he said beyond stimulating. There's more... (at this point, I'm just trying to get down my jumbled thoughts into words):

1) There are "big idea people" and "requirements process" people. They usually do not get along. However, they must get along for any big idea to become real.
2) We must take seriously our education - and not just for ourselves, but for future generations. The ability to pass on knowledge to future generations is essential to not only humanity's advancement, but also humanity's survival.
3) To make something real, you need...
    a. Vision
    b. Trust
    c. Simplicity

Regarding simplicity, he explained to all the engineers there that engineers tend to make things more complicated then they should be. He cited an example with space and writing. Someone thought that pens wouldn't work in outer space because pens depend on gravity for the ink to come down. So, companies poured millions into developing a pressurized pen that would work in space. They did it alright. And the pen was (and is) pretty cool; it works. But Russia just used pencils. Seriously - keep things simple...
 
Everything I wrote boils down to the key ideas that storytelling is critical, that already we should see that the usage of words - writing, reading - will eventually be outdated, and that future changes in the mediums for storytelling will be drastic and world-altering. We should expect some new technology to allow our minds to communicate by some other means... words can't begin to capture true expression.

Yeah. That's clearly the case in the mess of words I wrote above.

[Aside]
He mentioned one possible, simple idea of changing the medium of language that is writing. Colored words could indicate emotions... like red for anger. I thought of simple universal symbols along with writing to indicate emotions...
He also mentioned that we naturally envision things in 3D space. The idea that a picture is a thousand words is useful, as words take forever to describe things, but a 3D experience of something captures things even more...
Hmm... I seemed to have left out the impact of Steve Jobs and the iPhone. Ferren mentioned this. The iPhone essentially reinvented a medium of storytelling by placing a screen on a phone. Not a big deal when people are used to it, but imagine the shock when it first came out... and imagine the shock of the next new medium of storytelling...

Specifying miscellaneous attributes in a Rails text field

Quick code tip: Specifying miscellaneous attributes in a Rails text field is easy.

Here's an example in which you set autocomplete="off":

<%= text_field_tag 'textfield', nil, :autocomplete=>"off" %>

The idea is to use "nil" as a placeholder for the middle value. In this case, the middle value for text_field_tag is value, which is what normally fills the text field.

If you didn't specify nil as a placeholder for the function, you would get a text field that said {:autocomplete=>"off"} inside. Probably something to avoid :)

Setting optional local variables in your partials

Rails' partials are great - but sometimes, it's a hassle maintaining them.

For instance, haven't you ever changed the name of a partial, and consequently had to go find all your renderings of that partial and tediously adjust the name?

Or, have you ever decided to add a local variable requirement to a partial, and then have to, again, find all your renderings of that partial and then adjust the :locals => { :some_variable_I_now_have_to_set => "some value that shouldn't exist for most partials" } appropriately?

I don't have a solution to the first one (though I certainly wish I did), but I do - hooray! - for the second.

Basically, if you're thinking of doing something like this in your partial file...

<% unless optional_local_variable.nil? %>
  
<% end %>

...you'll encounter an error saying that "optional_local_variable" is not defined, which is quite disturbing, considering that you wanted to check if it was nil to begin with.

So what do you do instead?

<% unless local_assigns[:optional_local_variable].nil? %>
  
<% end %>

Voila. What does this mean you can do? Here's a more complete example:

books/index.html.erb:

Books
<%= render :partial=>"partials/book", :locals=>{ :books=>@books } %>

partials/_book.html.erb:

<% unless local_assigns[:books].nil? %>
  The 'books' variable was passed.
<% else %>
  The 'books' variable was not passed.
<% end %>

stores/index.html.erb:

Stores - Featured
<%= render :partial=>"partials/book" %>

The stores/index file's partial call doesn't require the local variable that was passed into the partial call in books/index. Useful.

Basically, if you want to make the specification of a local variable in the render :partial call optional, use local_assigns[:variable_name].nil? This also checks to see that variable_name is nil if you specify :locals=>{ :variable_name=>nil }.

When someone realizes your idea before you

What should you do when someone makes the thing that you've been dreaming of creating for years?

Smile & be genuine.
Try to make it better.
Ask yourself: Does it really make what you wanted? You probably wanted something different...
Just relax... go about your ways, discovering, embracing.

If it helps, treat life as a discovery process.

The Stigma of Video Games

I don't play video games much. Honestly. I remember a time when I was addicted to a few games, but into high school and college, I stopped playing entirely simply because of countless other activities I deemed "more important."

But since I'm at the University of Southern California, which has (apparently) the best game design program in the country, I began pondering video games more. I started considering the stigma video games have and how gaming is similar to reading, a highly praised educational activity.

Someone who reads a lot gains credibility. He becomes a knowledgeable person. But someone who plays video games a lot doesn't gain this same credibility, although he no doubt learns things too.

Is this right? Should gaming have such a stigma?

Reading and playing video games share many similarities. You learn. You "get lost in a different world." You, potentially, become isolated from others. (In the case of reading, you might be reading in a group, and in the case of video games, you might be playing with others, but often, reading or playing video games would isolate you from surroundings.) Your mind is engaged and focused. They're similar...

I remember a conversation I had with a good friend about how video games should be viewed as credible an element to society as literature. So many novels have literary merit, and the educated members of society are proud to have read such novels. But games? What if games had "literary merit" too? They're so complex - perhaps even more so, what with the direct interaction with people. What if we could view the various elements of a video game - graphics, storyline, themes, meaning, representation of life, music, and more - and appraise the game just like we appraise literature?

If games were clearly educational, and if they didn't have the mild stigma they do, what would society be like?

#rambling thoughts...

EDIT ===
Here's an interesting link about video games being the next great art form: http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/06/20/tom_bissell_extra_lives_interview_ext2010

I got to think more about this. Perhaps the usage of the word "game" in "video games" limits our understanding and ability to see that video games are more than that. Ever read 1984 by George Orwell or Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell? If you have, you'd know that limiting language/vocabulary influences thinking. By having the word "game" associated with video games, people have a harder time grasping the artistic and "literary" value of video games. This is probably because we associate "game" with so many childhood things - tic-tac-toe is a game, and so are board games, little puzzles...

Maybe we need a whole new term for video games.