I heard of “Central Saint Martins” two days back and discovered today that it is – to quote Wikipedia – “widely regarded as one of the world’s leading art and design institutions.”
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Moments ago, my friend and I were discussing about outsourcing and its demerits. Somehow it digressed to the topic of how Hong Kong would be like in twenty years’ time. Here‘s one view of the current situation in Hong Kong. As Hong Kong faces intense competiton from the other two big cities at the Pearl River Delta – Guang Dong and Shen Zhen – how would it cope? Will it evolve into a hip and happening place as it attempts to – as my friend put it – “define itself outside the economic arena”?
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Not sure how I came across this, but the coolest term I learned today is “dynamic inconsistency”, a term used in game theory to refer to the inconsistency between a person’s preference at different points in time such that what is the preferred option now is altered as time passes. In behavioral economics, a similar concept is termed “time inconsistency”. I suppose the difference between the two terms lies in its focus? Dynamic inconsistency as used in game theory emphasizes the change in situation as the cause for inconsistent preferences whereas time inconsistency highlights the change in time and with that, a change in the “self” of a person, as the cause.
Our City and Us
August 4, 2008
Earlier today, I read Paul Graham’s essay on “City and Ambition“. According to Wikipedia, the author is a Lisp programmer, a venture capitalist, and an essayist. He founded Viaweb, the first ASP (Application Service Provider) with his friend and the company was subsequently acquired by Yahoo.
The essay “City and Ambition” is about how each of us are affected by the place we live and how the nature of cities bears direct effects to our ambition.
The author uses the case of the lack of a “Milanese Leonardo” (as Mr Graham puts it) or 19th-century Paris to illustrate the extent to which the message a city sends matters. Despite Milan having a population as big and the people the same as Florence, almost every painter in 15th century Italian painter we have heard of was from Florence. It is no coincidence also that the Impressionist painters share the common denominator of having at one point in their lives, lived in Paris. The message a city sends determine the kind of people it attracts.
It is certainly true, as he says, “that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you’d be able to transcend your environment.” Yet it will be a difficult process when you can’t find people who share similar interests as you do. In one paragraph, he states, “No matter how determined you are, it’s hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It’s not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.”
Think of New York, and the image that comes to mind is one of financial power; think of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the image is one of an intellectual hub; think of Silicon Valley and entrepreneurship springs [to] our mind. Mr Graham argues that the message each city sends is important to our lives and the work, in particular for fields like the arts, writing and technology. This is because these are dynamic and chaotic fields in which the results are hard to judge, unlike those of math and physics where ascertaining talent or developing expertise is relatively straightforward. Writers, entrepreneurs, and artists need a supportive environment. They need to have peers who can share their enthusiasm and show appreciation for what they are doing. They need feedback for what they have done. They need an audience.
Having read the article, two questions I have in mind are: what do you think is the message that our city sends? What effect does it have on you?
[Continue reading for an edited version of the chat I had with a friend on his city - his views are expressed here]
The Luxury to Discover
July 31, 2008
It starts today, my attempt at posting at least an entry a day. Not really sure what’s the most effective way to go about doing this but here goes =) :
I read this article from the UK Telegraph on the 100 books every child should read. I was curious whether I have read any of the books when I was a child. Apparently not. There were only very few books I have read wihin the 100-book list, not even Alice in Wonderland! The introduction to the list says that if we want to develop the love for reading in children, we first have to develop their love for stories. The author argues that it is a mistake for children nowadays to be taught phonetics, spelling, and other “reading techniques” before they are being taught to love stories. How can you “teach reading” when the kids themselves refuse to read? In Finland where children get to spend most of their time at home due to short schooling hours, children are able to spend time playing, sharing stories or do whatever activities they like. This might be the reason Finnish kids score higher on literacy test. They are happier too.
Perhaps a similar problem applies to Singapore/Malaysia education system. I was surprised a few months ago when a friend told me that his siblings who are still in primary school now have to endure long schooling hours – two to three hours longer than it was during my time. Singaporean school-goers spend long hours in school too. It seems to me that the new generation of kids do not have the luxury to discover and develop their interest. Rather, they have to follow through a rigid pre-determined set of curriculum when it comes to learning. This method of learning is artificial – it may have produced the desired results/grades, but does this system adequately develop independent, critical thought among the kids? It will also be harder to nurture creativity and inventiveness within that structured environment. Effective learning needs to come organically, where passion for learning grows gradually over time, guided rather than imposed by external forces. When the study of history in lower secondary school leads to widespread misconception among schoolgoers that the study of history are but copying notes, memorizing dates and facts, or where there exists a history teacher in my sibling’s school ignorant about Nazi Germany, ignorant even about who Hitler was, it shows how badly we have failed in the education of our next generation.
