I am working on a research assignment for Northwestern University which requires me to fly around and interview leaders in the media and their thoughts on innovation.  One interview that still has my brain throbbing was with Ted Shelton, founder of Personal Bee.

Ted is interested in the notion of the singularity.  Singularity is popularly understood as a time when the pace of change increases at such a rate that the aggregate of human intelligence is surpassed by the human intelligence being created in that moment. But if you're interested, let him explain it. He'll do a better job.

Whether or not you believe in 'singularity' or the possibility of coming technological attractions, one thing to me seems obvious. The rate of change is not linear, but in fact the rate of change itself is accelerating. Innovations have a faster life cycle than ever before, our feedback mechanisms make research instanteous and we can augment our personal knowledge base in the blink of a key word search. Post-modern life runs faster than at any other time in history. 

When I was about five, Seattle experienced a severe earth quake.  In my childhood home, my mother grabbed my hand and we flew down 3 flights of stairs to stand in the basement doorway.  As she pulled me along, I remember my legs running but only touching down every third or fourth step. Just long enough for my mom's power to propel me to the next level.

I don't suspect the human brain will evolve as fast as the technology around us. Whether or not singularity happens seems somewhat irrelevant.  What does matter is our ability to optimize the accelerating change. The human task is to find ways to keep agile - to be mentally alert, insanely curious and find the creative power that exists to learn to race while the earth shakes.

One of my colleagues runs a thriving therapy practice.  She laments that clients come to her with the notion they can be taught say, three simple steps to communication.  Or 4 ways to get along better with their child.  They want to buy a quick and clearn package of success.  She tells me clients resist the fact that it's only when they dive into the personal mess or the personal story that they will see real change in the problem they set out to solve. The abstractions don't bring the healing they hope for.

Apparently the same issue rears it's head in software design. I mentioned the book Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg in my last blog. Rosenberg  claime that software packages that bundle lower levels of programming complexity often fail.  He sites an essay called The Law of Leaky Abstractions by Joel Spolsky. When developers try to simplify the coding process with these bundles they are not more efficientbut less because they have to dive down and understand all that the packages intended to simplify anyway.  The abstractions "leak" because they really don't save time. When problems arise, as they always do in de-bugging, developers still have to take the time to learn the underlying building blocks of the code.

The sustaining truth here is there are no clean fixes to dirty problems.  In fact, the clean fixes often means cleaning up the dirt that leaks for a long time coming.  Seems it's better to learn how to slog around in mud.

I am enjoying reading Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg, co-founder of salon.com.  In the book, he chronicles the creation of a software program over the course of it's three year process.  While that may seem like a snooze, what's fascinating is the way he describes the creative process of developers. 

Rosenberg interviews Jason Fried the founder of the project management software called Basecamp.  "Constraints are the key to building a great product...They're what makes creativity happen.  If someone said you have all the money in the world to build whatever you want, it would probably never be released. Give me a just a month!"

This perspective mirrors one of my favorite thinkers - Rollo May.  He noted that when the claim is made that we have "unlimited possibilities", it de-energizes.  In fact, creativity comes from the tension between the limits, that the limits themselves are the edge where the innovation grows.

The 'thinking out of the box' cliche is not as helpful as thinking at the edges of the box, to examine the limits as value them as constraints that informe and instruct. The temptation is to fixate on the limits, whine about their existence and hypothesize how they got there.  But the key to creating new products, services and ideas is to use whatever limits present as the playing field of possibility.