WORKSHOP 7: Innovative Instruments
Friday 8 June at 9.00-11.00
Chair: Ruuta
Ruttas-Küttim
Dream Merchants:
Neuroscience and Intellectual Property
Jake F. Dunagan (Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies,
University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA)
Practical applications from neuroscience are being generated and incorporated into a global economy in the midst of an overwhelming push for increased privatization and expansion of the “ownership” society. The ability of content providers to control entertainment media, gaming, design and other aesthetic enterprises has been extended by technological means and by broad IP rights enforced by states and international bodies. Spyware and digital restrictions management tools are becoming standard issue with content purchases and reception. Negotiating the boundaries of intellectual property rights will be a crucial issue in an economy driven by the commodification of culture and creative expression.
Enter the brain. With the ability to mediate content at the level of the human sensory and cognitive apparatus, new options for both creativity and control emerge. Sony has recently applied for a patent on a technique for generating sensory experiences by directly stimulating the brain using magnetic forces. It already seems that every mediation of creative expression requires a new “toll” to be paid. Will we soon be paying for music subscription services that work at the level of our auditory nerves? Are our thoughts and memories truly “ours,” or do they ultimately belong to those who provide the platforms of thought and the aesthetic content of our memory? Tracing the trajectories of neuroscience and IP, this paper critically examines alternative aesthetic, political, and ethical futures that could emerge from this convergence.
Introducing the
Strawberry Discovery and Niche Process
Kristiina Annala (TULIO, Finland)
The Strawberry Discovery and Niche Process is a workbook to make strengths, tacit knowledge, hidden talents, underlying capacities visible. It is a training process involving creativity, emotions and values, identifying weak signals. The trainees draw up a visual presentation of their individual personalities as expressed in their life experience, and make plans on the solid foundation they found.
At its most powerful, the SDNP serves as a tool to discover personal talents, on which to build employment and life long learning. Individually, it can be used to point to a new direction. Locally, the process could become a powerful tool to generate new economical activity and new ideas for start up of new SME's.
The SDN process is a planning tool, a framework for a person to evaluate his/her most powerful asset, his/her own talents, on which to build his/her career. The SDNP is a group process, where the trainees support, inspire and motivate each other through shared experience and creativity.
The SDNP name originates in a mind map drawing: a strawberry plant, an apt illustration of accumulating talents and experience. The preliminary findings in the pilot phase point towards culture as well as entrepreneurship and new economical activity. This paper introduces a case study how to find personal talents for local development. ”In the final analysis, all development is local” (Gupta 1998) - a result of active and motivated people working to express their own talents and values.
The Case Study of Digital
Concept Design (DCD)
Ossi Väänänen (Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland) &
Vesa
Kantola (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, HIIT, Finland)
DCD was an intensive educational course, which was realised to try out and create a new learning method combining innovation and entrepreneurship together with Turku and Lahti Polytechnics. It was arranged during 2005 and it was also a research project formed under financing of Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES). The basic idea was to gather students from different schools and educational institutions to multidisciplinary and multicultural teams. The teaching language was English. DCD was done during 10 months, including 3 intensive week-end periods all together 10 days and group work done mainly in internet. 24 students were chosen to the course from engineering-, design- and economical departments. They made 6 different business plans. One of them was developed further to a research project of Turku Polytechnics. Every student got 10 credit weeks. There were tree teachers involved in the process.
The aim of the course was to simulate the process of real working life. Students should learn how to develop products, services and concepts of digital technology, which could be presented to the potential financiers to make patents and create new enterprises based on the product ideas. As results pedagogical analyses of the teaching methods and learning results were made and reported to TEKES.
The aim of this paper is to introduce DCD-course and consider how to develop the course concept further.
Metaphor as a Method
Ruuta Ruttas-Küttim (Centre for
Development of Public Administration, Estonia)
According to Lakoff & Johnson, the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much matter of metaphor. The power of metaphor to direct our thoughts is so strong that it is pushed away from science as something dangerous. But for exploring and explaining a new thought or phenomenon we have to use metaphors, otherwise it is difficult to get the picture or give the message to other people. Different metaphors create different associations and mental maps and so they create different research methods and give different focuses. Every metaphor contains its own method. Using unconsciously only one metaphor (as we can’t avoid them anyway) creates a problem, not metaphor itself. Instead of being afraid of metaphors for their power, we can use the virtue of them as a helpful tool for developing methods. If one has certain research idea, there is always a question, how to approach – what theory to choose and what methods to use? This presentation gives some examples how existing metaphors like “seeds of change” and “weak signals” guide us to different roads of exploration, what are their “favourite theories” and how these metaphors answer to some research questions. One example is given to show how to develop new approach with new metaphor.
The conference organisers reserve all rights to
any programme or schedule
changes.