The Phenomenon Effect

Let me tell you a few things about The Phenomenon Effect:

• It didn't exist before 1995.
• It's not so much an addiction, as it is a condition. 
• It doesn't involve John Travolta or Kyra Sedgwick, but it was inspired by that movie.
• It may help you solve problems that known scientists have been trying to solve for years. 
• To feel its effects, you must have a high speed Internet connection. 

Graphically I like to use this image to explain it:

What you see above are two ideas. They might be the most random of ideas, but as you can see above, that they are only millimeters apart from connecting. They are so very close. 

Now one idea could be- a theory of time travel, and the other could be about how to bake the best cake in high altitude: 

What matters is that both ideas need answers, and in 2010, the first mode of answers for most folks is going to be the Internet, or as some folks call it, our Collective Intelligence. Now, before 1995, and the commercial Internet, the probability that the idea of baking a cake at high altitude could inspire a particle physicist was probably small, but today the Internet is flowing with good (and bad) ideas everywhere and connecting the most random of people. If Einstein was inspired by the music of Mozart then what could he have accomplished with a blog, and an online community of millions (or billions)? What if he gave TED talks like Sean Carroll? How many would he have inspired?

Okay- but that's not really the big picture. Really what you see above is a side effect of The Phenomenon Effect, or a by-product. And why is it related to that (sometimes cheezy) movie?  Because that movie had a premise that is commenting on our present condition. 

Can the Internet make you move objects with your mind? 

George Malley (John Travolta) is a lowly small-town car mechanic, who, one night, sees a bright light in the sky, which knocks him off his feet. Consequently, he begins to tap into unseen amounts of intelligence in his own mind, staying up most nights, reading every book imaginable, and creating usable inventions that could revolutionize agriculture and our planet. 

The unforeseen premise this movie left out was- the Internet. The Internet was only a baby when this movie came out. The idea that a person can just, at any moment right now, tap into the collective intelligence of the human population wasn't even foreseen in Gordon Moore's law (Intel's co-founder), which states that, "the number of transistors on a chip will double nearly every two years."   

via Intel.com

What happens to technology when people begin sharing all of their ideas via the Internet, and ideas previously unheard of begin connecting with other random ones? Shouldn't Moore's Law begin to start looking like this? Instead of doubling, shouldn't technology (okay, transistors) begin to triple or quadruple if we're collectively starting to share information?

To make this point, I think of The Human Genome Project- it finished ahead of schedule and under budget mostly because scientists pooled their research and essentially crowd-sourced their scientific data to other scientists. On the Internet you have millions of ideas passing over each other, like ships in the night, and it's only a matter of time before one of those ideas connects and becomes a practice or a fact. 

So, in relation to George Malley's gift, I think that it's clear now- we all have that gift. We are discovering that we all have the ability to learn beyond what we previously thought was imaginable. The collective intelligence of the Internet, blogs, and the sharing of information via Twitter are allowing us to reach an untapped potential in our own minds. How many of us are staying up later at night listening to Bill Gates speak about the future of energy on TED.com?  How many of us are risking our life Twittering in our cars (please, pull over)  because you absolutely must respond to the folks that offered you a new idea about creating a Digital Learning Space at your school? Or- in strictly commerce terms- how many of us have discovered a new way to streamline a product because of a video or podcast we saw on the Internet?  Have you begun springing out of bed in the morning because you know- you absolutely know- that you are going to learn something new today? It's like a prophecy; it is written. 

Most notably- how many more of us are writing more than we ever thought we could, in hopes that one of our own ideas will have one of those miracle connections, and, two ideas will meet and become a practice, a fact, or an experience?

This is The Phenomenon Effect. This is life!

So, if you, like me, are suffering The Phenomenon Effect, please take heed: it's okay to be addicted to learning. As long as you're sharing that learning with others.

How to know your "suffering" from The Phenomenon Effect: 

• You sometimes think that if you think hard enough, you could "figure out" interstellar travel; it's just one night's sleep away.
• You feel like, if there's a problem, you can always find a way to fix it. Always. 
• You think that using The Force is a very good possibility. "Just give me time..."
• Webinars are where you go to eat breakfast. 
• You have more ideas than you know what to do with. "Hey- have you heard of Ning.com?...."
• You believe everything is a teachable moment. 
• Learning trumps lunch. 
• Podcasts trump NPR 
• You have (at least) 1000 colleagues, and that's not even considered a lot. 
• You just know that someday you're going to find the "magic bullet" to inspire a child to learn.  

So, have you seen the light? 

via Mario Armstrong A Digital Learning Space:

NYC Uses Motion Capture in Classroom.