Tag: ted talk

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When I was much (much) younger and actually understood the Maths I was studying, I read a wonderful little book called Flatland by Edwin Abbott. At one level it was a commentary on social hierarchy and at another an examination of the resistance of humans to recognizing – much less understanding – the concept of multiple dimensions. The book was written in 1884 BTW.

Just been watching a wonderful Ted Talk on ‘E8’ (or as it is affectionately known – Garrett Lisi’s Theory of Everything ) two years after it was recorded.

In the past 125 years, we seem to have developed a little – and now routinely talk of (that is different to understand) multi-dimensional space. In Garrett’s case (he is focussed on a theoretical model with 8 dimensions, dubbed E8 – that he ‘hopes’ IS the unified field theory we have been searching for around a century now (maybe longer) – I use ‘hope’ loosley – he seems to be working with something more than hope 🙂

At the end of a talk, Garrett gave to a small group of souls on Maui, he was asked by our host to explain E8 a little further. As he did,I couldn’t help but recall Edwin’s book as he talked of how different aspects of the 8 dimensions spin in and out of focus as the model spins around. Read the book – you will see what I mean.

(BTW fellow followers – Garrett is a Maui Resident – we truly have an eclectic, stunning, and extraordinary collection of residents on this island of ours.)

This post was originally published on January 9th 2012 - and dusted off to celebrate life again ....

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The sad thing is that I can see a few companies that fit this model … IBM and HP to name a couple … but there is another that has recently hove into my particular orbit that is going to hit this wall soon.

For decades, we’ve tried to motivate people with money, even though we’ve got a vast amount of research that shows that money erodes social connectedness. Now, we need to let people motivate each other. And for years, we’ve thought that leaders were heroic soloists who were expected, all by themselves, to solve complex problems. Now, we need to redefine leadershipas an activity in which conditions are created in which everyone can do their most courageous thinking together.