I'm watching my kids relax from the pace of the school year and settle into a different way of life.  They are doing the work of adolescence; laying around and complaining there is nothing to do.  Call me crazy, but I organized it this way. I'm famous around my house for saying, "It's good to be bored".  It's only when you've reached the end of the fancy schedule, that the real learning of discovering your native interests starts and you find what is really worth chasing. 

A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with Ted Leung.  I was introduced to Ted through Scott Rosenberg's book Dreaming in Code.  Ted is a contributor to the Open Source Application Foundation's Chandler project.  I was impressed by his wicked will to navigate the tangle of developing the Personal lnformation Manager product. 

When I met Ted, his committment to community and collaboration was clear.  I could tell from our conversation it was these principles that made the work matter and provided the ability to innovate. While his education at Brown and MIT surely provided a knowledge base for the hard work of software development, this internal drive can't be taught.  It can only be discovered.

And so this summer I'm letting my kid's minds wander. Because discovering those driving interests is the only summer school that matters.

It's going to be 96 degrees here today and missing the cool breeze of Seattle, but find comfort in my native coffee company.  Only wish the internet were free...

Check out Luis von Ahn a computer science researcher from Carnegie Mellon.  He has created some incredible games.  I especially like esp in which you and an anonymous partner guess until you agree about the names of images. This game is similar in structure to the Turing test which I'll explain in another blog.  But leave it to say that von Ahn estimates that in 2003, humans spent 7 billion hours (yes, 7 billion) playing solitaire on the computer.  He is setting out to eliminate wasted human mind-space by using games to tag pictures on the net.

I was so impressed by a presentation that he gave at Google (which is on his site) that I e-mailed him to ask what he thought were the skills that humans still do better than humans. He said that among other things, like responding to visual and auditory stimulus, human intelligence exceeds computer intelligence in common sense reasoning.  At least for now. 

And this morning, it defies my common sense reasoning that 22 people are waiting for coffee in the Starbucks line.  And I may even go back for a refill. 

It's a widely held belief in the scientific community that one of the enduring characteristics of human life is our ability to predict.  Throughout history we've been quite adept as a species at creating scenarios of what the future may hold and anticipating possible outcomes.

Enter the 21st century.  As the pace of change itself increases and more access to the innovations that change brings, human capabilities of prediction are less and less accurate.  Who could have predicted that a defunct presidential candidate would produce a powerpoint presentation that would revolutionize American consciousness about global warming?  Or that humans would be spending 7 billion hours a year playing solitare on the computer?  (More about that in another blog).  The point is that as our ability to anticipate the future declines, our anxiety about the future increases.  We wonder how to manage change and maintain a sense of control in our daily life.

Some advocate giving up trying to control as a way to deal with the future.  And certainly there is some sense to that argument on a spiritual level.  But practically, our evolutionary brain won't allow us to give up control.  Humanity will always find a way to try to shape the change and survive it.

Fortunately in addition to our ability to predict, another characteristic that is uniquely human is our ability to create. We are wired to shape our experience and that around us in new and different ways.  Because participating in creation - whether it's writing a computer program, raising children or painting a canvas - is finally one of the most satisfying parts of being human.  And as Virgil noted, hanging stars in the sky might be God's job, but it's the human trajectory as well.

There's a new American dream.  Working on projects that matter and pursuing work we are passionate about have become the gold-standard of a life well-lived.  Instead of amassing stockpiles of money, more are choosing to spend energy creating a better world.  From fighting global warming, to battling poverty, technological tools have brought Americans closer to the plight of the human community and are responding.

Legacy used to be a goal dangling at the end of life.  But the ability to effect change now, through influencing public opinion, grass-roots fund-raising and more, have proven legacy is a real-time effort.  Measurement tools now show the efficacy of these efforts and it becomes more evident that the ends rarely justify the means.  We can judge ourselves by a different yardstick.  The question becomes "Am I living a life with purpose today?".  Creating a legacy now is the new measure of the American dream.

I take heart in the spirit of the 4th of July.  It signals to me the independence of thought and inventiveness that characterized the birth of this nation.  And the hope that we can create justice for all.

Like Disreali said, "Life is too short to be little."  We can each join in the celebration of independence by waging our fight, however small, in creating justice for all.