TORONTO (Digital Journal) — IdeaCity is the brainchild of Toronto entrepreneur and cultural impresario Moses Znaimer. For three days each year, it brings together an eclectic potpourri of people speaking passionately about their ideas — scientists, musicians, adventurers, media moguls, artists, politicians, environmentalists, inventors, cartoonists and more.
Each participant gets 20 minutes to talk about an idea and say why they are passionate about it — no notes allowed. Five or six ideas are presented consecutively, followed by long breaks to enable participants and others in attendance to interact and discuss. And each night Moses throws a great party featuring gourmet food, lively entertainment and even more interaction and cross-pollination.
This year’s ideaCity took place June 16 to 18 and if there was one theme emerging frequently from the presentations, it was the idea of “interconnection.” From technologist Ted Stout stressing electronic interoperability, to scientist/artist Alexander Tsiaras marvelling about how human organs interact with each other, to MIT’s Irene Pepperberg reporting on animal-human communications, to author Dan Falk speculating about the mega-theory that will logically connect the entire universe — the idea of perceiving and using interconnections was present everywhere.
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Preston Manning discusses his thoughts about ideaCity04 in an editorial meeting with Digital Journal. — Photo by djc Features |
As so often happens at ideaCity, presentations of ideas beget other ideas, and the revelation struck me that one could apply an “idea matrix” to define and explore the interconnectedness of all the ideas presented at the conference.
The word matrix is Latin for “womb,” the place where new life is nurtured from conception to birth. I have always been fascinated by the role matrices play in generating new perceptions of reality.
For example, in the 19th century, the Russian chemist Dimitri Mendeleev organized the 63 known elements — the building blocks of the universe — into a matrix which came to be known as the Periodic Table of the Elements. In a sense, every substance in the universe is represented by a cell or combination of cells in Mendeleev’s Table. Even the “holes” in his original table became “idea generators” as they focused on the defining characteristics of elements not yet discovered.
Similarly, economist Wassily Leontief used a symmetric matrix to represent and analyze the flows of resource inputs and product outputs among the various sectors of national economies. Leontief Input-Output Tables and their econometric successors theoretically define all the possible interactions in every sector of an economy. They also generate and partially answer a host of “what if” questions — for example, what changes would be necessary in the activities of the steel and construction sectors if the automobile sector’s output increased by 10 per cent?
Applying this matrix concept to modelling the interconnectedness seen at ideaCity, we can conceptualize the ideaCity Matrix of. It is a simple tool for systematically identifying and exploring the relevance of each presented idea to all the others, thus generating new ideas which in turn can be related back to all the others, ad infinitum. To “mobilize” the matrix, all that is required is for someone to take the kernel of Idea 1 and ponder the question, “What is the relationship, if any, between this Idea and Ideas 2, 3, 4, etc. and vice versa?”
For example, what if we fully explored the relationship between the ideas of yoga master Tesh and the ideas of scientist Astro Teller? Dr. Teller’s idea is to equip each of us with an electronic body-monitoring device that will instantly give us all the information we would need to micromanage our health. Tesh’s idea is that our bodies are already trying to give us most of that information, but we have to learn to relax, tune in and respond appropriately. Who knows what further insights into the maintenance of human health lie at the interface of yoga and electronic biofeedback?
And what about the various presented ideas that shift our perceptions of this planet and the universe — like astrophysicist Jaymie Matthews’s idea on telescopes and pattern recognition, NASA researcher Darlene Lim’s hope for a Canadian Mars mission and deep-sea explorer Joseph MacInnis’s idea of “fierce innovation” in high-risk situations? Might not these ideas provide the new insights or the shifts in perspective required to realize the environmental conservation visions of activist Severn Cullis-Suzuki and artist Robert Bateman?
Doesn’t Alexander Tsiaras’s idea of anatomical travelogues generate a heightened sense of awe and respect for the intricacies and marvels of the human body? What insights might result if we brought this sense of awe to bear on Laura Kipnis’s ideas on pornography, John Ince’s ideas on the politics of lust and Lou Hawthorne’s ideas on animal and human cloning?
And what new insights might lurk at the intersection of Terry Mosher’s idea of cartooning as the compression of information on personalities and events into a single impression and the idea behind author Dan Falk’s quest for the Theory of Everything? Could the next Einstein be a quantum cartoonist and the “universe on a t-shirt” be as amusing as it is profound?
Six Degrees of Separation
At ideaCity, the evening parties and the intermissions between presentations are the chief social mechanisms used to discover and explore interconnections among the ideas put forward. But one wonders what additional mechanisms could be employed in the future to define and explore these idea-connections more thoroughly.
Perhaps Stanley Milgram’s social network theory — that there are only “six degrees of separation” between any two individuals on the planet — could be employed to improve the efficiency with which the bearer of Idea X connects with the bearer of Idea Y.
Or perhaps pattern-recognition software could someday be used to analyze computer abstracts of each idea, compare them with the abstracts of other ideas, and then identify those with the highest probability of inter-connective significance. (In a way, this is what the University of Toronto’s Blueprint project is doing with 2,000 articles published every month on the interconnections between molecules within human cells.)
Perhaps the first or last session of a future ideaCity could be devoted to “the interconnection possibilities of this conference.” A post-conference prize — the Eureka prize — could be offered to the participant who can identify the most unique and insightful of those intriguing possibilities.
In our information-saturated society, a seamless and practical system of linking diverse ideas could prove to be a highly valuable commodity.
Preston Manning is a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto and a Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute and the Canada West Foundation. He has also been Leader of the Official Opposition and Official Opposition Science Critic in the Parliament of Canada. To read about Manning’s idea of a Virtual Parliament click here.
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