Innovation

Yesterday we participated in an activity that was chosen by the class: hide and seek with a twist. This was used to represent something new and innovative. The takeaway was that innovation is not as much careful planning and ingenuity, but rather off-the-cuff productivity and advancement.

The process of innovation:
1. Identify a problem or area that can be improved

2. Visualize a solution

3. Begin designing the solution, or effecting any idea generated

4. Test the finished product to ensure functionality

5. Implement the solution

 People innovate by addressing faults and coming up with a new way to do something or a new idea completely. Innovation occurs naturally as a response to an environment. Innovation must be from a hunger to do something new, or do something that has been done before in a new way.

I think the education system needs to be changed.

The solution should be to use technology to empower the students and teachers, and reverse the order of operations of learning. Students should learn at home and come to school with any questions for the teacher to answer and expand upon. Also we need a better curriculum altogether: the current curriculum is weak and lags far behind other countries around the world.

Friday TED Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/travis_kalanick_uber_s_plan_to_get_more_people_into_fewer_cars#t-1106155

This TED talk was from Travis Kalanick, who is the CEO of Uber. He talked about how Uber is beginning to shift away from rides for individual people and start generating rides for multiple people at once. He talked about how much time, money, and productivity could be saved if the we were able to fit more people into less cars. He also explained how stupid the current model is, because it often leads people to take separate rides to the same place. By combining this ride into one, the total cost would be the same, but the bill would be split between two people, along with the obvious reduced carbon footprint and another vehicle off of the roads. In the end, he began to explain the future of transportation, and cited the fact that hundreds of thousands of people die every year from car crashes, and that self-driving cars will all but eliminate those pointless deaths.

1. What was the earliest form of Uber known as?

2. Why doesn't this business exist anymore?

3. What are the benefits of combining rides?

4. How many miles were taken off the road in one year?

5. How much time could be saved from combining rides?

6. Why is Uber more successful in an urban environment?

7. How has the Uber carpooling affected traffic in San Fransisco?

8. What are some problems Uber faces in rolling out carpooling?

9. How long did Travis predict it would be before self-driving cars were used regularly?

10. How much per mile does it cost to own the average car?

TED Talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us

This talk was about the future of technology. He said that the capacity of technology is nearly doubling every year, and that by the 2020s we will have reverse-engineered the human brain. He also talked a lot about how nano-technology is advancing extremely fast and that it will soon be able to help improve our lives in everything from medicine to energy production. He used many graphs and analogies to explain how he can predict this, and showed us very clearly that technology is advancing at an exponential rate, and that it will lead to things that we cannot even imagine right now. One of the most important factors of advancement is to be predictive and adjust for the future: tomorrow's technology cannot be created using today's tools. He also talked about how technology will affect the world economy, and expressed confidence that the world will be able to keep up with it based on the data that he has compiled.

1. How often does the capacity of technology double?

2. What word describes the trend that technology is growing?

3. When and why did most of the work for the Human Genome Project occur?

4. How much sunlight must be captured to fulfill the worlds energy demands in 2030?

5. What type of cells does he show being replaced by nano-technology in his animation?

6. How does the price of a transistor today compare to one in the 70s?

7. How much has the world poverty rate declined since the 1990s?

8. According to him, why do 90% of technology related projects fail?

9. When will we have reverse engineered the human brain by?

10. What are some uses for nano-technology?