Chance Favors the Connected Mind

Steven Johnson: Where good ideas come from – Steven Johnson (2010) 

Chance favors the connected mind. That was Johnson’s last sentence in this TED talks presentation in which he spoke about researching where ideas come from.

He gives points that support the theory that ideas build slowly over time, that are more likely to happen in chaotic environments (such as the coffee house in the age of enlightenment  in England) and when people share thoughts and problems, this is also known as the liquid network.

The slow hunch is that an ideas is never just  suddenly one thing that is clear in your head but rather a process that builds over a period of time slowly. He gave an example of Darwin mentioning in his autobiography that he came up with the theory of natural selection in an eureka moment but when a scholar looked at Darwin’s notebooks he found that he had the theory months before he had the euphony.  The point from this is that ideas build over a period of time. 

This is only a very short summary of the TED talk I watched but you can also read more about it in his book (Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation) and you can watch this video which is a summary of the book on YouTube, I rather enjoyed watching it because of the way it explains everything by drawing it.

Most of the ideas I had (Good and bad) didn’t happen while I’m sitting down and pushing myself to think of an idea, and most of my ideas I remember having while talking to someone about something unrelated to the issue and suddenly I would get this idea and usually end up saying out something unrelated to the conversation and confuse the person I’m talking to. The other time that I had any good ideas was just before going to sleep when I’m half awake and when I wake up in the morning if I didn’t write it down I would wonder if I actually dreamt it. Then there are the ideas, most of these are at work, when I discuss the issue I’m trying to resolve with a colleague and find a great new idea together.

National Days

While driving around AlAin tonight I realized that national day decorations in the streets are not a interesting as every year even though this year is the 40^th national day. Usually, by national day AlAin would light up with decoration lights and people from all over the country will come to AlAin to see it but this year you could drive a few roundabouts without see any decorations.

This made me think of National Day in the UAE which is one of my favorite holidays because it always signifies the beginning of winter and rain and so you can see everyone decorating their cars and spending time outdoors either in the desert, parks or any outdoor restaurants and cafes. It’s also the only holiday that you can see physical signs of celebrations everywhere in decorations and festivals unlike Eid holidays, which are more about spending time with families and friends. I feel bad for countries that don’t have national days to celebrate their love to their country and share a holiday with all their few nationals regardless of religion or ethnicity (countries that do not have a national day are UK and Denmark).

What always interested me about national days is that all the national days that I know about are during a time of the year that the weather would be at its best in the country. Such as December in UAE, and Qatar, May in Germany, July in the US and Canada, which could lead us to believe that people are more willing to work, be positive, and build countries when they are happy with the weather. (That was a joke…)

With all this national day talks, I started reading about public holidays in different countries and found out that we don’t have as many public holidays as other countries, for example in the US, they have ten public holidays, in India they celebrate 16 public holidays, Britain has 8 public holidays and we only have 7 (New Year’s Day, Mouloud (Birth of the Prophet), Leilat al-Meiraj (Ascension of the Prophet), Eid al-Fitr (End of Ramadan), Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice), Al-Hijra (Islamic New Year), National Day. That said some of our holidays are more than one day depending on the day of the week (if it’s on a weekend like National Day this year then we don’t get a any days off for National Day) and I don’t know about the other countries exact number of days.