Great talk by Ken Robinson on creativity and education

Excellent talk, here are a few most interesting and witty quotes from this wonderful, highly entertaining speaker.

- Creativity is as important as literacy

- If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original

- We are educating people out of their creative capacities

- All children are born artists (Picasso). The problem is that we are educated out of it.

- How annoying would that be, to have a 7 year old Shakespeare in your class : stop speaking like that, its confusing everybody!

- Our son had a girlfriend, Sara, a love of his life.. he has known her for a month. He said: “I will never find another girl like Sara”. We were rather pleased about it. Actually she was the main reason why we were leaving the country.

- Professors look at their bodies as transport for their heads. It s a way to bring their heads to meetings.

- We have to radically rethink our view on intelligence. 1. Intelligence is diverse – we think about the world in all ways we are experiencing it: visually, we think in sound, we think kinaesthetically, we think in abstract terms, we think in movement. 2. Intelligence in dynamic – intelligence is interactive: creativity (i.e. having original ideas that have value) comes through interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things.

- Women are better at multitasking. This is true: if my wife is cooking a meal, which is not often (thankfully), she is also dealing with things on the phone, she is talking to kids, painting the ceiling, she is doing an open heart surgery. If I am cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, if she walks in, I get annoyed- I say, ‘Terrty, please, I am trying to fry an egg in here, give me a break’.

- If the tree falls in the forest, and nobody seen/heard it fall, did it actually fall. If a man speaks his mind in the forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?

- Most people would describe her (Jilian Lynn) rather fugitive behaviour as ADHD nowadays, but it was in 30s, and ADHD was not invented yet, it wasn’t an available condition, people were not aware they could have that.

- The doctor said she was not sick but she was a dancer. She was taken to a dance school where she met people like her, who had to move in order to think. She entered Royal Ballet School, she graduated and had a wonderful dance career, she was involved in the world-known musicals. She is a multi-millionaire now. Somebody else might have put her on medication (when she was young), and told her to calm down.

- We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.

- "If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." Jonas Salk

Hermann Hesse

I just cannot get enough of him.. his mind is like mine.. for the first time in my life there is that feeling that someone might understand, might have same thoughts, feelings as myself. Deep down there, there is that desire to see it as a sign, as myself finally moving in the direction, making the right decisions towards finding the Self and maybe finding that happiness that all philosophers and thinkers seem to be talking about, and peace.

This is one of my favorite poems of his: beautiful, sensual and very close to my heart

Rain (from Wandering 'Farm')

Soft rain, summer rain
Whispers from bushes, whispers from trees,
Oh, how lovely and full of blessing
To dream and be satisfied.

I was so long in the outer brightness,
I am not used to this upheaval:
Being at home in my own soul,
Never to be lead elsewhere.

I want nothing, I long for nothing,
I hum gently the sounds of childhood
And I reach home astounded
In the warm beauty of dreams.

Heart, how torn are you,
How blessed to plow down blindly,
To think nothing, to know nothing,
Only to breathe, only to feel.

Two extracts from "Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought"

p.89. " The difficulty, however, says Kierkegaard, is that the wanderer, who has only accidentally come upon the quiet place, feels he is surrounded by a nature that does not understand him 'even though it always seems as f an understanding must be arrived at'. Therefore he says, the wanderer can see the stars, but the stars cannot see him, 'thus there is no agreement between him and the stars.' With the person who confesses, however, things are different: 'the environment knows well enough what that stillness means and that is asks for earnestness. It knows that it is its wish to be understood' (p.26 original text)

p.90 " For Dogen, our suffering stems not so much from the nature of existence as from a false perception of existence. That is, it stems from delusion. This delusional awareness then leads us to form attachments to non-existent or misconstrued objects, including the idea of an unchanging self, and ties us into a cycle of suffering when the world does not fit with our misperceptions and attachments. The way out of this cycle is to see through one's delusions and thus break these attachments.
This much of Dogen's thought is supported by the core of the Buddha's philosophy [...] Selfish desire is based on the delusion of a persisting self, which in turn leads to attachments to things which one misperceives as one's own or as having the potential for being one's own. The way out of this problem is to give up selfish desire."

PROVOCATIONS - Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

Reading Provocations now- it is the book that is helping to find the true self, discover something that was always there, but was lost for a while somehow.. a possibility of the crazy city life? no, we are not blaming anyone and anything, it was purely out of our own weaknesses.. but now the time for the recovery has come.

While living in London, one day there comes the time for realization of how many are losing themselves in their own world of dreams, trying to be someone else - pity they do not realize how silly they look sometimes from an outsider's perspective. It is rather sad that most of them will never come to realization and will never have a chance to uncover the true self as they will always be too preoccupied with material and simplistic living. Well if you are one of them, and do not afraid to acknowledge that, maybe this chapter will lead you in the right direction. It definitely helped me.

As it was noticed by a good friend of mine the other day, it is enough to be loved and supported by just one other person, to feel that strength and peace inside of yourself. But this other person has to love the true you.

The Despair of Weakness
If you would like to read the book please download it here

The despair of weakness is the despair of not wanting to be oneself. This kind of despair amounts to a passivity of the self. Its frame of reference is the pleasant and the unpleasant; its concepts are good fortune, misfortune, and fate. What is immediate is all that matters. The determining factor is what happens or does not happen to oneself. To despair is to lose the eternal, but of this loss the one who despairs in weakness says nothing, it doesn’t even occur to him. He is too preoccupied with securing his earthly existence against unnecessary deprivation. To lose the earthly, however, is not in itself to despair, yet that is precisely what this person speaks of and calls despair. What he says is in a sense true, only not in the way he understands it. He is turned around and what he says must be understood backwards. In other words, he stands there pointing to something that is not despair (e.g. a loss of some kind), explaining that he is in despair, and yes, sure enough, the despair is going on behind him but unawares.

Therefore, if everything suddenly changes, once his external circumstances change and his wishes are fulfilled, then happiness returns to him, he begins life afresh. When help comes from outside, happiness is restored to him, and he begins where he left off. Yet he neither was nor becomes a self. He is a cipher and simply carries on living merely on the level of what is immediate and of what is happening around him. This form of despair consists of not wanting to be a self, really. Actually, it consists of wanting desperately to be someone else.

Such a self refuses to take responsibility. Life is but a game of chance. Hence, in the moment of despair, when no help comes, such a person wants desperately to become someone else. And yet a despairer of this kind, whose only wish is this craziest of all crazy transformations – to be someone else – is in love with the fancy that the change can be made as easily as one puts on another coat. Or to put it differently, he only knows himself by his coat. He simply doesn’t know himself. He knows what it is to have a self only in externals. There could hardly be a more absurd confusion, for a self differs precisely, no, infinitely, from those externals.

And what if such a person was able to become somebody else, could put on a new self? There is the story of a peasant who had come barefoot to town but who made enough money to buy himself a pair of stockings and shoes and still have enough left over to get himself drunk. On his way home in his drunken state he lay down in the middle of the road and fell asleep. A carriage came along, and the coachman shouted to him to move aside or else he would drive over his legs. The drunken peasant woke up, looked down at his legs and, not recognizing them because of the stockings and shoes, said: “Go ahead, they aren’t my legs.” So it is with the immediate person who despairs in weakness of being a true self. It is impossible to draw a picture of him that is not comic.

Kierkegaard and Japanese thought

Currently inspired by Kierkegaard and the book on him and the connection between his and Japanese thought.

Danish Philosopher Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is an enigmatic thinker whose works call out for interpretation. One of the most fascinating strands of this interpretation is in terms of Japanese thought. Kierkegaard himself knew nothing of Japanese philosophy, yet the links between his own ideas and Japanese philosophers are remarkable. These links were spotted quickly by Japanese thinkers and Japanese translations of Kierkegaard appeared long before English translations did. Yet, strangely enough, the Japanese relation to Kierkegaard has been all but ignored in the West.
This book seeks to remedy this by bringing the Japanese interpretation to the West. Here, both Japanese and Western scholars examine the numerous links between Kierkegaard and Japanese thought while presenting Kierkegaard in terms of Shintō, Pure Land Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, the Samurai, the famous Kyoto school of Japanese philosophers, and in terms of pivotal Japanese thinkers who were influenced by Kierkegaard.

New Book by Don Tapscott: MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

Don Tapscott is an internationally renowned authority on the strategic impact of information technology on innovation, marketing and talent. He is a hugely successful author whose books include the international bestseller, Wikinomics. He will be in the UK for the release of his new book MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World|.

Don Tapscott explains how the current economic crisis is transforming society, business and markets, and where the opportunities are for thriving in the face of the downturn.

The global economic crisis is a wakeup call to the world: we need to rethink and rebuild many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, but now have come to the end of their life cycle. The financial services industry, for example, does not just need fresh infusion of capital or some new regulations; it needs a whole new operating model - one based on transparency, sharing of intellectual property and global governance.

As the crisis has spread to other sectors in the economy and even other sectors of society, it is exposing structural weaknesses and modes of operation that no longer nurture social and economic growth. The recent collapse of many newspapers is just one storm-warning of more to come: conventional wisdom isn't going to cut it for success in this century. We need to reinvent our institutions.

The most compelling issue: We face no challenge today that is more important than creating a green energy grid and reindustrializing the planet for sustainability. And for the first time in human history, the peoples of the world are building a global movement to solve this problem - a movement in which everyone is on the same side. So while the burning of the global economic platform is propelling change, simultaneously the digital revolution is driving new opportunities and a new generation of digital natives is entering the workforce, people who think differently and bring a new and much-needed set of skills to our problems.

Don Tapscott has unique insight and bold proposals for how to transform these institutions to meet the challenges posed in the new century by new media, a new generation and a new economy.

Russia an its folklore

From: Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 211–220, 2008

Russia: A Work in Progress - Transcending the Fifth ‘‘Time of Troubles’’
MANFRED KETS DE VRIES, KONSTANTIN KOROTOV, STANISLAV SHEKSHNIA


Russian folk tales are all infused with the rich and varied cultural identity of Russia and the historic events of its past. One of the most enduring images found in Russian folklore is the symbol of the Firebird (0aD BH4Pa, zhar-ptitsa, from BH4Pa bird Old Russian 0aD fire), a magical bird from a faraway land. During the centuries, the Firebird has been an icon for Russian peasants, revered as the herald of both blessing and doom for its captor. The Firebird is always depicted with majestic red, orange and yellow plumage, glowing like a fire after the first turbulent flames die down. The Firebird resembles the Phoenix and, like that bird, is heavy with symbolism representing the rising and setting sun.

In Russian folklore, the Firebird is the object of a difficult quest that the hero must undertake, and plays a role in determining his eventual fate. The quest is usually initiated by the hero finding one of the Firebird’s tail feathers, upon which he sets out to capture the live bird, sometimes of his own accord, but usually on the bidding of a father or king. These Firebird tales follow the classic scheme of fairy tales, with the feather serving as a premonition of a hard journey, magical helpersmet on the way, and returning from a far-off land with the prize. It is a tale of a hero overcoming impossible odds. The most popular version of the Firebird is in the tale Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf. The composer Igor Stravinsky first found international fame with his composition of a ballet called The Firebird for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

In many ways, the Firebird can be seen as representing the mystery of the Russian soul. The Firebird is the symbol of Russia; it is a representation of its people’s resilience; it is an icon of rebirth, resurrection, and transfiguration. The Russian people have always had a remarkable capacity to rise from the ashes
of their history. As the tales of the Firebird suggest, they are tough; they are not easily defeated; they have always been a very strong and resourceful people. In spite of all the hardships Russians have been exposed to throughout the ages, they have been able to succeed due to their incredible stamina, a quality that distinguishes them from many other people and nations. In spite of chaos, misery and hardship, they have always been able to overcome times of trouble.

International Itinerants

Very interesting article about the definition and analysis of international itinerants.. I finally found a description for my personal attitude to career/work :)

BANAI,M AND HARRY,W (2004) "Boundaryless Global Careers: The International Itinerants"
Int. Studies of Mgt. & Org., 34(3): 96–120.

A few prepositions that have been highlighted by the author can be found below.

Self-managed careers
Proposition 1: The more that international managers, rather than their organizations, are in charge of their careers, the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Loyalty to professional development
Proposition 2: The higher the international managers’ loyalty to their profession, rather than to their organizations, the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Employment in multiple firms
Proposition 3: The more organizations independent of each other the international managers work for, the more likely are these managers to be international itinerants.

Transferable skills
Proposition 4: The more likely international managers are to acquire transferable skills, the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Learning-related milestones
Proposition 5: The more likely international managers are to measure their career’s progress by assessing their level of learning, rather than by comparing their rank with that of their age group, the more likely they are to
be international itinerants.

Psychological meaningful work as measure of success
Proposition 7: The more international managers measure their success by psychologically meaningful work, rather than by pay, promotion, and status, the more likely they are to be international itinerants.

Reasons for identity changes, and needs for life reevaluation.

An Extract from EEVA KOHONEN (2005)
"Learning Through Narratives About the Impact of International Assignments on Identity"International Studies of Management and Organization, vol.34-3,pp 27-45

Traveling, cross-cultural contacts, and frequent job changes between organizations may stimulate and intensify our reflexive capacity so that we come to understand better who we are (Lindgren and Wåhlin 2001). It can be assumed that in the absence of stable, supporting social networks, the boundaries of the self dissolve, and one’s identity comes under scrutiny. Osland (2000) found in her study that an overseas assignment was a transformational experience for expatriates. As a consequence, they questioned many of the taken-for-granted aspects of their life— identity, values, and everyday assumptions—and discovered hidden resources and skills. Furthermore, Sussman (2000) pointed out that successful adaptation to the host culture predicts a significant change in one’s cultural identity, and this may result in a more difficult repatriation period.

The capacity to endure

The masters' thesis has been started and from now on I will be posting interesting facts/extracts from researched material related to Russian character, Russian history etc. My dissertation will be trying to identify the reasons for many occasions of miscommunication between western and Russian businesses and trying to find ways for its resolutions. i believe that much of Russian character is shaped by its intense and unique, extremely violent and unstable history (which is supported by many scholar's observations and studies). I believe that any behaviour, no matter how strange it might seem to us, has an explanation. Therefore I will try and explain the current lack of trust in the west among Russians.

It has been known for centuries about the Russian ability to survive under inhuman conditions, which has been trained for centuries.

An extract from Kets de Vers, M.F.R. The Anarchist Within: Clnical Reflections on Russian Character, Leadership Style, and organizational Practices 98/96/ENT describes it perfectly.

The Capacity to endure

In spite of (or perhaps because of) the harsh circumstances under which the Russians have lived – predominantly on vast, empty plains or on the Siberian taiga-Russians also come across as a people of enormous endurance and stamina. Their history is illustrative. The creation of their nation, a process marked by hardship, was preceded by centuries of social unrest. People in what is now Russia had to deal with Viking raiders from the north, the Tatar-Mongol domination, the Teutonic invasion, the Don Cossacks, and the Turks. Indeed, unrest has been Russia’s constant companion. Not surprisingly, then, the “Times of Troubles” (1598-1613) – a period of social and political upheaval during and after the reign of Boris Godunov, a period of great suffering caused by famine, epidemics, and incursions by Cossack soldiers and Polish adventures – continues to resonate with the Russian collective memory. Nor has Napoleon’s invasion or Hitler’s military campaign been forgotten. But the Russians, with their indomitable stamina, have risen above the many evil forces around them- the irrational authority, the violent changes of regime, the civil wars, the social disorder, the foreign intervention.

This ability to endure, this capacity for survival, has prompted some observers to offer ice fishing – an activity pursued by many Russians – as a metaphor of their character, of the hardiness and mysticism of the Russian soul. Standing for hours in front of a hole on a frozen lake in Siberia under arctic conditions in the hope of catching a fish is an unattractive proposition to most people. It looks like an open invitation for frostbite or even death. But in spite of its predictable discomforts, a large number of Russians find pleasure in this pursuit. Their pleasure could be seen as an expression of the love of suffering – even the assertion of a death wish; at the very least it could be seen as passive consent to a miserable situation. Yet it also illustrates the desire for solitude and the need for mystical unity with nature – traits that exemplify the deep spiritual character of the Russians.

Human Rights & Visual Culture

Birbeck College
University of London
11th June 2010

How are human rights represented and disseminated through visual culture? What is the role of visual culture in the formation of human rights politics and practices? How radical is the use of visual, online and web based media by human rights activists? Is there a visual politics of human rights?
This colloquium will bring scholars, campaigners and practitioners together to show examples of human rights in film, television, digital media and photography and discuss ways in which we can conceptualise and understand the emergence of visual culture in the human rights political arena.
The review will be coming soon.
SPEAKERS include
Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck) a regular contributor to The Guardian on human rights, and author of Human Rights and Empire: The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism and The End of Human Rights;
Oscar Guardiola- Rivera (Birkbeck) author of What If Latin America Ruled the World? How the Second World Will Take the First into the 22nd Centuryand Being Against the World, Rebellion and Constitution;
Roger Hallas (Syracuse)author of Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image and co-editor of Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture;
Jacqueline Maingard (Bristol) author of South African National Cinema and engaged in scholarship on visual culture on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC);
Les Moran (Birkbeck) author of Sexuality and the Politics of Violence and Safety and co- editor of Law’s Moving Image;
Gita Sahgal filmmaker and journalist, and former Head of the Gender Unit for Amnesty International; credits include Love Snatched and The War Crimes File, co-editor of Refusing Holy Orders, Women and Fundamentalism in Britain;
Emma Sandon (Birkbeck) co-editor of Law’s Moving Image, has taught on the EIUC summer school on Cinema and Human Rights.
Michael Uwemedimo (Roehampton)curator, filmmaker and member of Vision Machine Film Project which produced The Globalisation Tapes and currently working on the Niger Delta advocacy project

LECTURE REVIEW "The Truth will be known when the last witness is dead"

17/05/2010
University of London, Birbeck College
Speaker: Peter Osborne

The Memory Model:

• Misunderstands the constructed character of historical representation.
• Reduces history to representations of past events.
• Assumes a set of relations betweeen individual subjectivity, social subjects, collectivity and the process of history which, while still ideologically dominant, is being fundamentally historically transformed.

My DIRECTION : CULTURE and GLOBALIZATION

Many people ask me what is it that I do.. impossible to explain, as the area of expertise is way too wide to cover in few words. So I thought, it is best if I give a definition of each, culture and globalization, and then compare both. The latest book by Helmut Anheier and Yughishthir Raj Isar "Conflicts and Tensions" provides us with some in-depth research in this area, and this entry is mostly based around their words.

SO.. what is culture? CULTURE is the lived and creative experience for individuals and a body of artifacts, symbols, texts and objects (all closely related to graphic design and other kinds of communication, such as textual, audio and visual). Culture involves enactment and representation. It embraces art and art discourse, the symbolic world of meanings, the commodified output of the cultural industries as well as the spontaneous or enacted, organized or unorganized cultural expressions of everyday life, including social relations. It is constitutive of both collective and individual identity. Closely related to culture is the concept of COMMUNICATION, which refers to the ways in which meanings, artifacts, beliefs, symbols and messages are transmitted through time and space, as well as processed, recorded, stored, and reproduced. Communication requires media of storage and transmission, institutions that make storage and transmission possible, and media of reception.

GLOBALIZATION involves the movement of objects (goods, services, finance and other resources, etc), meanings (language, symbols, knowledge, identities, etc.) and people across regions and intercontinental space. The notion of CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION involves three movements: flows of investments and knowledge, flows of cultural goods, and flows of people. Cultures or aspects of cultures are globalized to the extent to which they involve the movement of specified objects, systems of meanings and people across national/regional borders and continents. Yet these processes, so closely related to the globalization of communication, the media and the cultural industries, are for one thing inaccessible to the majority of the world's population and actually appear to generate countless counter-affirmations at the level of local reception.

The relationship between cultures and globalization is not only multifaceted from a systematic perspective, in each case, it also involves different units of analysis such as individuals, organizations, professions, institutional patterns, communities, societies, as well as nation-states. The different units, in turn, may be interrelated and affect each other over time. In making observations, and in reaching conclusions about this relationship, it is important to specify the units of analysis involved.

To summarize, culture, globalization and communication are all interconnected, and in order to achieve great results in one industry, it is impossible to escape other industries, that are all interconnected. Global economy, politics.. it is a never ending circle. And my challenge is to explore these dimensions. The greatest challenge will be not to get lost within them - wish me luck!

KORAKOR

Keveen, the founder of Korakor, is an amazing, inspirational individual, who have great ideas of helping, loving and caring. Everyone should consider helping him out. You can donate him using a link on his site, or you can get involved and join him in his adventures. He welcomes everyone who is willing to give a piece of themselves by teaching children in disadvantaged communities, and spreading the knowledge around. Great ideas!

ISSUU

Just uploaded my 4 magazines onto ISSUU, a great tool for online publishing.

http://issuu.com/purrfect-designs/docs/nakedplanet_cropped

http://issuu.com/purrfect-designs/docs/small_brochure_cropped

http://issuu.com/purrfect-designs/docs/crea_brochure_cropped

http://issuu.com/purrfect-designs/docs/trees_magazine_cropped

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

WORLD CHANGING

Another relatively new website that represents a community for like minded, world changing minds and ideas. An American website (American and Canadian coverage), looks at many environmental and ethical projects, and appears to be more then another charity, money making business projects, but rather a well designed and thought-through project.

The issue of sustainability is a questions that all self-respected modern business are trying to answer. Many contemporary cultural analysts have proved that nowadays in order to have a successful business, establishing a positive, close social relationships with potential consumers and clients is an essential par of the marketing strategy and model.

"The search for competitive advantage is a priority for firms that operate in a complex global environment" (Lopez, Garcia, Rodriguez, 2007) The researchers who are professors at Spanish Universities agree that "adoption of sustainability strategies should grant them competitive advantages over firms that do not adopt them (Adams and Zutchi, p.34; King, 2002). "Currently, successful businesses are beginning to be defined by their integration of concepts such as management quality, environmental management, brand reputation, customer loyalty, corporate ethics and talent reputation."

to be continued

MOVE DESIGN

HELLO - They are a design company. They help companies and organisations design products and services to promote sustainable lifestyles.


http://movedesign.dk/

Visual Communication DEFINITION

Visual communication as the name suggests is communication through visual aid and is described as the conveyance of ideas and information in forms that can be read or looked upon. Visual communication solely relies on vision, and is primarily presented or expressed with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colour and electronic resources. It also explores the idea that a visual message accompanying text has a greater power to inform, educate, or persuade a person or audience.

The evaluation of a good visual design is mainly based on measuring comprehension by the audience. However, personal aesthetic and/or artistic preference may also effect the meaning of the image, as there are no universally agreed-upon principles of beauty and ugliness. Excluding two dimensional images, there are other ways to express information visually - gestures and body language, animation (digital or analogue), and film. Visual communication by e-mail, a textual medium, is commonly expressed with ASCII art, emoticons, and embedded digital images.

The term 'visual presentation' is used to refer to the actual presentation of information through a visible medium such as text or images. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically-oriented usability. Graphic designersWorld Wide Web is perhaps the most important form of communication that takes place while users are surfing the Internet. When experiencing the web, one uses the eyes as the primary sense, and therefore the visual presentation of a website is very important for users to understand the message or of the communication taking place. also use methods of visual communication in their professional practice. Visual communication on the

The Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus is often referred to as the symbol of visual communication. It is said to be a representation of an eclipse, as the corona around the pupil is like the corona around the sun during a solar eclipse.

RESEARCH : COMMUNICATIONS vs CULTURAL STUDIES

Another day I felt a sudden urge to know the real meaning of term 'communication' and possibly find an answer to a question if there is an existing standardized structure of educating this discipline and if the current industry, including lectures, writers and researchers do know the answer to this question themselves. Myself, I am currently researching and reading Masters course at University of London, and by doing a Masters Degree in Communication, a course with a very academic approach, unlike my Bachelors in Visual Communication, that was more practically orientated, where creative and technical skills were targeted the most. The current Communication course's structure and teaching methods confused me a little bit, they created some sort of vague atmosphere about it, some sense of uncertainty among professionals was constantly present. Anyway, after asking myself too amny question I decided to research a little bit into this discipline and possibly find some answers. I went online, found some books, spoke to people, went to British Library, and to be honest I felt much better after all these activities - my research made me realize that it is all up to an individual what he wants to make out of "communication" and how he wants to apply it. One thing that was evident to me and that made me feel better was that I definitely was not the first one to question this relatively modern term "COMMUNICATIONS". It is an immense area of research, relatively new and therfore there is so much work to be done!

Communication can be applied to anything : politics, environment, media, creative and design industries. What is most difficult for me is to choose the specific area where I would like to concentrate on- to be honest, all areas of its possible application, interest me equally. I am interested in how human mind work in general, I am fascinated by what triggers a human to make certain decision, or think certain things.

Psychological aspects of communications is a talent on my opinion. I always thought I have a skill to 'read' another people's mind, I always had a great intuition to know what people are feeling, but I never knew how to describe it academically, and how to explain it verbally. I was never good at explaining myself very well, I was never good at essays, I found myself being too impatient, and unorganized with my thoughts, when writing, my essay would always lose their structure, and therefore confuse the reader. I understand now, that this happened because I always had too much to say, too many ideas, and without theirs proper organization I would always be the first one to get lost in these thoughts, and the reader would be the next victim. Obviously they wouldn't suffer for too long, and would simply give up on reading my 'fascinating' pretty soon (or as I thought). One of the reasons for me writing this blog is for me to tackle this incapability of mine. It would be nice if someone read all this mess, but I don't expect anyone to.. It is more to record my own thoughts about communication, about globalization, about things that are going on in the world right now. It is for me to try and answer questions that always bugged me, and now when I have all the necessary facilities, connection and most importantly the passion, I am ready to answer.

COMMUNICATION IN DESIGN

Communication Design is a fascinating areas of research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_design

This can definitely be used in order to make this world a better place. Anything that can help us stop the human' cruelty in this world, to stop killing our ONLY planet we have right now.

POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Discourse in politics, how this can be applied in order to forward right messages to population so they start thinking for themselves, so they start making their own choices (hopefully the right ones). Politics are changing in western world right now with the birth of social media, where everyone have a saying and everyone can be aware of major decision made by the government. It is not a one ruler's politics anymore. It is a millions' society. This fact opens so many new possibilities and it is a way to a possible perfect society, where nobody is ignored, where everyone is valued for their personal achievements and everyone has same possibilities. By learning this discipline, it can help us to come up with a model that will work in many societies.. Everything is possible- we just have to do our best in order to prove it!

SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK

Watch live streaming video from smw_newyork at livestream.com

This forum is about how social media can change the way consumers interact with the product and the brand interact an communicate to their consumer.

HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a process and a set of techniques used to create new solutions for the world. Solutions include products, services, environments, organizations, and modes of interaction. The reason this process is called “human-centered” is because it starts with the people we are designing for. The HCD process begins by examining the needs, dreams, and behaviors of the people we want to affect with our solutions. We seek to listen to and understand what they want. We call this the Desirability lens. We view the world through this lens throughout the design process.
Once we have identified a range of what is Desirable, we begin to view our solutions through the lenses of Feasibility and Viability. We carefully bring in these lenses during the later phases of the process.

Values by Hofstede

"Values are among the first things children learn–not consciously, but implicitly [...] by the age of 10, most children have their basic value system firmly in place, and after that age, changes are difficult to make. Because they were acquired so early in our lives, many values remain unconscious to those who hold them. Therefore they cannot be discussed, nor can they be directly observed by outsiders. They can only be inferred from the way people act under various circumstances."

Spiritual Capital: wealth we can live by

Another great book that inspired my view of the world, is a book written by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall "Spiritual Capital: wealth we can live by"

A few quotes from there while I am reading this book:

"If things go wrong in the world, this is because something is wrong with the individual, because something is wrong with me. Therefore, if I am sensible, I shall put myself right first...In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations just take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals. In our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, its sufferers, but also its makers/ We make our own epoch". Last words by Carl Jung that Zanah quotes at the beginning of the book, inspired her to write this book.

She says "They underpin its central theme, that if enough of us change ourselves, we can thereby change the world. I began the task on myself by putting aside my gloomy inactivity and its associated avoidance mechanisms and getting myself back into in a state to write."

Consequently, these words of hers inspired me to write in due course. I believe that through writing we can bring the message across the world. This is a century that is the beginning of something good, we have a help of new technology that helps us to target millions of people to bring awareness of global issues. I see a lot of potential in uniting our strengths and making a change for our world to be a better place.

Politics and Communication: Majid Tehranian

Book Title: Global Communication and World Politics
Author: Majid Tehranian

Majid Tehranian starts her book with a quote by Lao-tzu from Tao Te Ching (Chapter 29):

Those who would take over the earth
And shape it to their will
Never, I notice, succeed. The earth is like a vessel so sacred
That at the mere approach of the profane
It is marred
And when they reach out their fingers it is gone.

This book have great intentions and I share a lot of values and ideas with the author. A few quotes from this book will follow.

"Communication can act as a process of free and equal exchange of meaning, development of epistemic communities, and advancement of social solidarity, and hence of peace and harmony among individuals and nations [...] communication can also systematically distort perceptions by creating phantom enemies, manufacturing consent for wars of aggression while stereotyping and targeting particular ethnic groups or nations into subhuman categories. Communication empowers, but it empowers more those with greater competence and access to the means of communication. The ethical choice in communication is therefore focused on whether the communicator is aiming towards power-free understanding or systematic distortions and powerful manipulations (Habermas 1983)