Here’s a Director’s Commentary from MacArthur genius grant winner Amy Smith.  This was one of my favorite talks from TED2006.  Enjoy!

A special reminder for all you Silicon Valley members of the metacool community:

John Maeda is speaking tomorrow night at Stanford.  I can’t wait. 

Check out his SIMPLICITY and Laws of Simplicity blogs — two of my favortie.

Hope to see you there!

The past few days my get-up-and-go-to-work routine has been spiced up by the rumbling above of a B-17.  I see it each morning out of a skylight in my house.  Yes, a WWII-vintage Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress restored and flown by the Collings Foudnation.  Out of thousands built, there are only 14 left flying, and this one is buzzing Silicon Valley, giving pay rides.

I’ve been a big airplane fan for as long as I can remember (are you at all surprised?), but I’ve never heard a B-17 in flight.  Mustangs, yes, Spitfires, yes, but never a multi-engine bomber.  The sound it makes is really distinctive and unlike any modern airplane.  It’s not so much the loud, piercing buzz or wail one gets from a turboprop or jet-powered plane; the B-17 is powered by four huge Wright Cycone radial piston motors which together put out a massive, low rumble, like a pack of NASCAR racers flying over your head.  Seeing the B-17 makes me think about a few things:

• What an amazing piece of design engineering:  it may look simple next to a new Boeing Dreamliner, but the B-17 is an amazingly complex beast, especially given that it was designed only three decades after the Wright brothers took to the air.  Piston internal-combustion know-how arguably peaked during WWII, and the sheer mechanical complexity of the motors on one of these is just breathtaking.  I believe that I’m one of the first generations of mechanical engineers to work in a 100% computer-driven design environement, never putting pencil to paper, never creating a blueprint.  I, for one, can’t imagine the individual imagination and organizational coordination it took to design a B-17 and all of its subsystems soley on paper.  Incredible.  Ingenious.
• How cool it is to experience the Real Deal: the problem with flying airplanes (or racing cars), is that potential and kinetic energy are the enemies of longevity.  Sooner or later, what goes up must come down, and the 14 B-17’s flying today will eventually decline down to zero, if only because their airframes will run out of life.  Still, it’s really cool to see the actual thing doing its thing.  You know, like hearing the Beatles play their own music.  Imagine what it would be like to hear a recording of Bach playing Bach, or Mozart doing Mozart.  Now that would special, and that’s what seeing this B-17 arc overhead does to me.
• Remembering and respecting the politics of the machine:  like it or not, this was a tool of war.  Lots of men were killed flying it, and thousands and thousands died as a result of the bombs it dropped.  Can a design get out from under the shadow of the politics and context under which it was designed?  I’m not so sure.  The VW Beetle Nazi People’s Car somehow became the Love Bug.  I think that’s the exception.  We may forget, but I think design decisions are forever — you just need to know how to look.

Anyway, it was cool.  Maybe someday I’ll take a ride.  Special thanks to the good folks at Telstar Logistics for their full write up of the Collings B-17 here and here.

(photo credit above Telstar Logistics)

What makes something gnarly?  And when can one be sure that one is experiencing true unabashed gearhead gnarlyness, and not some flimsy substitute?

Weighty questions.

I’m not sure of the answer(s).  I know gnarlyness when I see it, but I’m only just starting to tease out the underlying design principles.  Perhaps I’ll embark on a public journey, a la John Maeda and his Laws of Simplicity, of surfacing the true drivers of gnarlyness via a public conversation.  Let’s see.  Where this goes depends largely on you.

For now, though, I think gnarlyness happens when four design principles are held in mind:

1.  Embrace the visceral, dude:

2.  Have a strong point of view:

3.  Celebrate workmanship:

4.  Be red.  Really, really red:

Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.

How does a 400 horsepower, fire-breathing Honda Odyssey strike you?

Not exactly the greenest of conveyances, but I bet some hyper-fast minivans would go a long way toward changing the "vans are for soccer moms" story which makes people go and buy silly, tippy SUV’s for road use.  A powerful van would at least be greener than an equally powerful SUV.  After all, a mini van really isn’t a small van; it’s a tall car.  And space is the ultimate luxury.

A white roof on a car has been a good idea for a long time.  It keeps things cool.

It was a good idea on a Chevy Suburban back in the 60’s.  Good for proportions.

When they designed the original Mini, they thought white was great.  And it was.

An uncle had a Landcruiser.  It was very tippy in the corners (with a white roof).

It looks not half bad on the new FJ Cruiser.  Helps it look less like a Hummer.

White works very well on the new new Mini… at least on the roof. 

White is the new black roof… and it’s even on top of the new Ford Flex. 

Thank you for your time.  This is just the way my brain works.

Citroen photo: Jessica Bee

Suburban photo: SF Steve

Mini photo: mparthesius

Landcruiser photo: CasaLuMa

What happens when a singular talent like Joshua Bell plays Chaconne on his $3.5 million Stradivarius for rush-hour commuters in Washington D.C.?

Nothing.  Or very little — $32 in exchange for 43 minutes of music, which is only bad if you’re Joshua Bell.  And aside from the lack of monetary compensation, very little attention from adults (click thru here for a few must-see videos of Bell playing in context).  Who listened? According to the article, only the children, with a few exceptions:

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people
who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast
majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians,
young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But
the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every
single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And
every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

Why the kids?  Partly because they know beauty in their hearts and not in their analytic brains.  Partly because they’re not rushing somewhere like all the adults (even if they’re in tow — young children don’t rush anywhere they don’t want to go).  The kids were listening because that’s what kids do.  They listen and observe with an intensity that only the most talented and highly-trained professional ethnographers can muster.  In the face of such beauty and mastery, how could they not spend these precious moments of life soaking in the music?

This sense of "beginner’s mind" or "mind of the child" is a pillar of design thinking.  It’s the ability to see things afresh.  To see deeply and to sense the truth and the beauty.  It’s not the same thing as ignorance — far from it.  Rather it’s a cultivated ability, an ability which, ideally, is matched with deep technical expertise and wisdom.  A structural engineer with the ability see with the mind of a child gives us the works of Robert Maillart.  Learning this skill, and keeping it alive and sharp and curious, requires lifelong dedication.

In that sense, my hat goes off to John Picarello, one of the few adults to stop and listen.  Here’s what he said to a reporter afterward:

This was a superb violinist. I’ve never heard anyone of that
caliber. He was technically proficient, with very good phrasing. He had
a good fiddle, too, with a big, lush sound. I walked a distance away,
to hear him. I didn’t want to be intrusive on his space… It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.

Picarello was once a devoted musician, which is the reason behind his ability to analyze Bell’s technique.  But what Picarello has is beginner’s mind.  He heard Bell for what Bell is even without knowing that it was Bell.  Perhaps a distinguishing mark of a design thinker is the cultivated ability to "know good" when one sees it.  Is he a practicing designer?  No, and he gave up the violin a long time ago.  But somewhere along the line he picked up this skill, and it’s a strong argument for giving children the kind of broad, creative education advocated by people like Sir Ken Robinson.  This last quote from Picarello gave me chills:

"If you love something but choose not to do it professionally, it’s
not a waste. Because, you know, you still have it. You have it forever."

Thanks to Matt from Signal vs. Noise for highlighting this article

The good folks over at Winding Road have posted an incredible set of their 25 favorite images from the last year.  Even better, they’ve provided a wallpaper-size version of each photo so that you can enjoy them from the comfort and privacy of your very own LCD. 

Doesn’t the photo above of DED Jr’s ’62 fuelie Corvette just knock your hat in the creek?

photo credit: James P. Morse

Why settle for beautiful when you could be interesting instead? 

That’s what jolie-laide will do for you.

April 2 means that metacool is now three years old!  Thank you for all your attention, ideas, conversation, help, and interest.  Let’s see where we are on April 2, 2010!

Gnarly!

photo credit: the.voyager