Kaiwen's Blog, 凯文的博客

Recently I stumbled upon an enlightening presentation given by a Stanford Business School professor Chip Heath on the topic of what makes ideas stick.

He first asked the audience if anyone has heard that the only man-made structure visible to the eyes in outer space is the Great Wall of China. Many people raised their hands. He then said he was originally fooled by this urban legend himself too! Yes, the Great Wall is very long, but it’s also not very wide. So if it is visible from outer space, any 8-lane highway will do.

Professor Heath’s point is, without advertising budget and coordinated marketing effort, urban legends are able to stick to many people’s mind and spread far away. How can we learn from them to create messages for something as meaningful as helping countless children in poor areas of China? Professor Heath described the SUCCES formula in the book “Made to Stick” he co-authored with his brother Dan Heath. SUCCES stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story.

On the authors’ website, they provided some supporting materials for the book.  One of their handy PDF readings mentions the message from the Girl Effect organization:

“The world is a mess. Poverty. AIDS. Hunger. War. So what else is new?
What if there were an unexpected solution that could turn this sinking
ship around? Would you even know it if you saw it? It’s not the
internet. It’s not science. It’s not the government. It’s not money…”

Go to http://www.girleffect.org to find out what that is!

I believe both girleffect and CTEF focus on helping the children in need to become successful world citizens of the future. As CTEF has focused its effort on China’s poor rural areas, meaningful results are everywhere on its website and keep coming in all the time. By the way, my definition of a successful world citizen has 3 criteria:

* They are self-confident and self-reliant. They have faith in themselves and their future.
* They have empathy and respect for others. They care and unite others.
* They understand the world enough so that they know what will bring them true happiness and fulfillment. They know what they want, and know that when they relentlessly pursue their goals they’re also making the society better, better for their own future, for their family, and for everyone.

I want to work on my little definitions to make them meet the SUCCES criteria. I can definitely pick up tons of concrete examples from all the works done by CTEF.

We have 3 levels of potential disasters: level 1 within our body (virus, genes), level 2 among ourselves (social break-down, war), level 3 beyond us (natural disasters).

Stories and movies have been rehearsing many of these possibilities in our consciousness (virus break out, wars, alien invasion, end of the world, etc.). However, all rehearsals are missing effective and systematic approaches to solutions. We depend on ourselves to avoid mistakes that lead to level 2 and ignite level 1/3 before they happen. We rehearse ourselves to prepare for and save ourselves from all 3 levels.

Both level 1 and 3 disasters have the potential to invoke level 2. To prevent level 2, using the power of identity is more effective than the power of consequence. Refer to The Power of Fear and Texas driver in the Made to Stick book.

We empower ourselves when our knowledge is holographic, as each individual knows all major knowledge, like each cell contains the genetic information for the whole body.

Education: use history as the main theme for introducing systems of knowledges.

A recent scientific finding published on the journal Cell describe a gene in female, FoxL2, which when turned off, can unleash the male gene Sox9. The ovaries of a female mice without FoxL2 become testes, producing same level of testosterone as male mice. Minnie becomes Mickey.

That caused me to think some social issues. First, China has a problem with preferring boys over girls. Because of deep cultural tradition and perception of a son over daughter in elderly care, parents want to have boys. But when the boys grow up, there too many boys, and they need girls to get married. What if, with the switch of a gene, the hospital switch the gender of babies when they are little. When they grow up, they switch back, so everyone is happy. It is just like some of the fish which can “switch sexes at times when there is a scarcity of either males or females”.

Second, what if we turn on FoxL2 in male? Will that turn off Sox9 gene and testosterone in male, turning man into woman? It is a fact that, compared to women, men are predominantly the aggressors in the society, causing various social problems (crimes, wars, etc.). Rather than keeping men in prison, what if we give them a gene therapy, just turn off their Sox9? Is this a humane solution?

Certainly, there are broader considerations for both of these solutions. The China population issue, the real solution might be to give people real insurance when they grow old, and to change the cultural view on girls. For the crime solution, education might be more fundamental than mere gender switch.

I stumbled upon Warren Buffet’s 2003 article about U.S. Deficit.  The deficit simply cannot run forever, as it has negative consequences for both the US and foreign countries that are manifested in current economic debacle.  I like Buffet’s idea of using the Import Certificate (ICs), a market-force friendly way, to achieve trade balance for U.S. import and export. The idea is that the US government issues ICs to all US exporters in the same amount of their export value. The exporter then sell their ICs to US importers or foreign exporters to the US, probably in a market.

I have a few additional thoughts on Buffet’s idea.  First, the 1-for-1 ratio is too dramatic to get started.  We can think the ratio as a continuum from the current actual ratio to the target ratio of 1-for-1.  Thus, at the beginning, we can start issuing ICs comparable the current trade deficit ratio.  With a target date when the trade balance should be achieved, say 5 years, we adjust the ratio month-by-month gradually toward the 1-for-1 target.

Second, different countries may have different deficit ratio now.  We can let the beginning ratio to be specific to each country, while keeping the same pace for merging into the target ratio.

Third, we can have an even gentler ramp-up period, where we start the ICs ratio equal to the previous period’s deficit statistics.  When the deficit reduce, we continue to adjust the ratio, but never adjust with any deficit increases.  When the market is warmed up to the ICs, say in a year, we start the time clock to drive the ratio towards our 1-for-1 target.

“I’m a firm believer in luck. The harder I work the luckier I get.” -Dick Motta

Generally speaking, phase change from mediocrity to excellence requires extraordinary inputs, which we often describe as inspiration, commitment, focus, perseverance, talent, etc..  Money per se, without intrinsic value to our life or sense of calling, cannot create such brilliant and consistent energy, except for desire of shortcuts planted into our mind by external influences.

There are two general human drives that can create such commitment and perseverance.  First, you are very poor physically or psychologically, and your survival instinct drives you to extraordinary height, often with some luck elements as in the surviver bias.  Second, you have a comfortable life with no distractions, and you found the passion of your life, which makes you unstoppable.  In success or failure, you charge on, completely obsorbed.

Let us call the first kind of drive the drive of survival, the second the drive of calling.  An ideal society should eliminate its average citizens the drive of survival and provide an environment for the drive of calling.  However, the path to the drive of calling remains squarely in the hands of each individual.

Here are my wish list for Kindle:

1. Password protection (software)
2. Chinese display support (software): UTF-8
3. Content organization support (software): folder or tagging
4. Shortcut setup (software): supports jumping around among several relevant materials across contents in the library
5. Paper version and kindle version bundle (business model): classics needs both paper version for reference and kindle version for reading
6. Tactical navigation (hardware): horizontal slider or touch-sensitive stripe below the screen (next to the progress bar) with a simple, small, and responsive digital display similar to a dumb watch to indicate location in the reading or list.

Since Grace asked me how to make it easy for more people to use computer, I have been thinking a computing device that is a mirror on the wall when it goes into sleep. This toy of mine would be probably named iMirror if made by Apple, SmartMirror by HP, StudioMirror by Dell, LiveMirror by Microsoft, VaioMirror by Sony, or GMirror by Google, but for me, let’s call it the Magic Mirror (MM), so that Snow White might use it against the evil queen.

The MM hangs on the wall quietly for most of the time. It’s being charged silently by a wireless charger, similar to the one you use to charge your toothbrush. It makes update quietly to the content cache on its solid state drive (SSD) through wifi, receiving data from a network storage device and the web (optional: fall back on a mobile network).

Unknowing all the things going on inside, its master (my mom) walks to the MM and wakes it up: “芝麻开门吧” (open sesame). The hidden webcam scans her face and recognizes the master, instantly fade in a polite servant (one of those Flash movie loops). The servant is pretty smart, figuring out that she understands Chinese only. According to the time of the day (7am), he guessed she probably wants to know the weather, direction, and traffic for the event planned ahead.

He even remembers to praiser her in a flattering tone: “wow, you look very healthy after working on the garden yesterday!” Then put on a stylish hat on her with augmented reality, probably from one of the department stores nearby.

However, she decided to wake me up from my warm bed, so she yelled: “KAIWEN!!!”. The servant immediately zoomed in my smily face, and started dialing my MM. Five seconds later, my sleepy face shows up on the glass. My mom’s order comes in from the other side of the Big Apple: “don’t forget to bring my green tea tiramisu today!”

“But, the only bakery that made it at the Cooper Square has closed.” I can’t believe she don’t remember that.

“I know, but I want to eat it now, you better learn to make it.”

“Yes, your highness.”

My hands touch the mirror, making circles. Kudos to Google, after I did a few Tai Chi strokes, a recipe jumps into view:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Green-Tea-Tiramisu-144906

Such is the life with Magic Mirror.

I am thinking a web application which takes an RSS feed and generates a PDF file suitable for printing. While it is great to read blogs online, it can be invaluable to have an archive in a book format, or just a plain ebook format, so you can read like a book on iPhone or Kindle.

It can be very simple, just requires the URL of the blog or RSS feed, then generate the PDF file, with table of content, table of photos, index, etc. A paid version can include visual configurations and other fine-tune options. It should allow easy ordering for printed copies.

I would be interested in hearing from people who want to make this real.

On new year’s eve, I migrated my web site server and started this new blog.  Wish the world a better place in 2009, my friends more moments with happiness, my family ever closer in the heart , and myself a better person.