Defragging Transformation

Just watching Charlie Rose talking about Grand Challenges in Global Health with the director of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation . What's fascinating is that the idea for the 14 global challenges, and the $250 million in additional funding came out of a speech given in 1900 by David Hilbert laying out the 23 mathematical problems that were "difficult without being totally inaccessible". In that speech in 1900, Hilbert remarks that, "The mathematicians of past centuries were accustomed to devote themselves to the solution of difficult particular problems with passionate zeal. They knew the value of difficult problems." Let's hope that we do as well.

Doc and David do a great job of explaining, "What the Internet Is and How To Stop Mistaking It For Something Else" ... lessons that everybody will learn eventually. The question is how many times will the same mistakes need to be made before learning occurs? (Particularly by those in magazine and newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable television, the record industry, the movie industry, and the telephone industry - to name just a few.) Can business and government figure out how to participate if the primary virtues are not organizaed around what you own (business) or what you control (government)?

Doesn't the world really need more of the type of business insanity that Robert Cringely is talking about here ? (He says much more in "Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date" ... or see some chapter by chapter notes on the book.) This type of insanity is what gets people doing great things in spite of the odds against them.

Just finished viewing a recent presentation by Doc that seemed to be a great consolidation of a number of things I've seen and heard in the past, all in one place... In it, he mentioned this comic that Hugh Macleod drew... being someone who does alot of consulting with large organizations, I loved it.

Paul McCartney's first performance on Russian soil demonstrates that the political and social influence of musicians is alive and well. If you haven't been able to see Paul McCartney in Red Square on A&E , it's finally available on DVD . (It says the sale price is $17.95, but when I checked out, it was $16.16.) Love to know what you're favorite song is and why.

As I read Thomas Friedman 's piece in the NY Times, I started thinking what teacher's I would honor. Best known for his books on Globalization - " The Lexus and the Olive Tree " and " The World is Flat " - and his NY Times articles on foreign affairs , this NY Times piece is much more about what we can do in our own back yards. Acknowledgement can be a wonderful thing!

My friend Mary Stroupe spoke about some of the things she's discovered during her years of working with The Hunger Project . The purpose of The Hunger Project is to end hunger. That's been the purpose of the organization since it's inception in 1977, and ending hunger is quite a different task from just feeding people. On an investor trip to small villages in Senegal, where the investors (not donors) had been noticing how incredibly quickly the villagers would recognize and jump on an opportunity, Karen Wolff (no relation) remarked to Mary that "The real shame is not the conditions that the impoverished people live in. The real shame is that we have so much and we're still afraid." Maybe it's not about feeding people, but about unleashing the human spirit , because when you do that, people can feed themselves.

On May 14 2005, U2 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . There was some great stuff, but it was The Edge, U2's guitarist , and not Bono, the front man , who really had something profound to say. Maybe you'll have the opportunity to see it on VH1 , but just in case, here's the transcript of what "The Edge" said... Above all else, what U2 have tried to avoid over the last 25 years is not being completely crap. But next on the list down from that was to avoid being typical, predictable, and ordinary, because it’s so very hard to avoid the clichés – everyone else’s of course, but most of all your own. It’s so hard to keep things fresh and not to become a parody of yourself. And if you’ve ever seen that movie “Spinal Tap” , you will know how easy it is to parody what we all do. The first time I ever saw it I didn’t laugh – I wept…. I wept because I recognized so much… so many of those scenes. I don’t think I’m alone amongst all of us here in that… you kn...

Does it mean anything that in a Googlefight War beats out Peace 2:1? What impact could it have if the "Peace" people were really talking more about peace than about war?

The One Campaign video that's now on TV has an incredible line up. Is it really political if you have Pat Robertson leading into P. Diddy ?

What kind of perfect storm might be brewing as Alex and the gang take their view of the world of digital media and connect the Pixel Corps in a hyperlinked world?

Joi Ito , the blogger's blogger, shared some fascinating info on the state of blogging in Korea , where the adoption and use of internet technologies is incredible. This raised some interesting questions for Doc Searls , but the question Doc raises for me is why blog if you're not going to use hyperlinks? David Weinberger pointed to How could something so small alter the fundamentals of business life? Easy. This wee beastie represents an important change in how pieces are put together -- and since all of life is about putting pieces together, this isn’t a wee thing at all. When Carlos Castenada asked, " ..... how are you arranging your conclusions so that your current experiences fit into your scheme of complacency? "did he know how powerful the little thing called a hyperlink was going to be in getting us beyond that compalcency?

This is one of the original versions of the Apple ad. You can find a larger version of this here or by Googling for the image