Outlier

The book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell investigates what’s behind great success, and why some people achieve more than others. Malcolm claims that one reason for success among athletes is when they are born during the year. He has studied hockey players for example, and in the elite teams most of the players are born the first three months of the year. The second reason he stresses is the 10 000-hour rule. This rule says that in order to become very successful you will have to practice 10 000 hours. This rule can be applied to many different areas such as music, sports and computer programming.

If you go to se Färjestad (or another elite team) play a hockey game and look in the program you can se that Gladwell is probably right, according to the first reason he gives. When you look at the birthdates of the players, many of them are born early in the year. This is probably because at a young age when children start to play the physical difference between children born in January or December is huge. At the age when they pick players to play in a “better” team this difference still remains, so children born early in the year are more likely to get more practise and at a higher level than those born later in the year.

The 10 000-hours rule is interesting. I guess that you have to do those 10 000 hours when you are quite young, and not spread out over your entire life. I know an old lady who has bees playing the piano since she was a young girl, and still plays today at the age of 80. She is not very good at it, and has probably been playing and practising at least 10 000 hours. If it is only about doing 10 000 hours many (specially women), would be world leaders in cooking, cleaning and washing clothes when they are 60. Well, maybe they are…

Another interesting thing about the 10 000 hour rule is when you think of many kids that spend hour after hour playing games on computer or videogames. Since I have been working with teenagers for many years I know how much time they spend playing those games. If you play three hours a day for ten years you reach 10 000 hours. Lots of kids spend more than three hours a day playing, year after year. Maybe this means that in the future 10 000 hours is not enough to be world champion in WOW, COD or another game…. It is probably another thing with sports, where you need time for rest and recovery so you don’t get injuries.

Why things break

I have asked some people in my family why they think that things break. And it’s interesting, because they all give slightly different answers. My sister claims that things break because she has too many things stuffed in her cupboard so it’s inevitable that things break. Her husband, my brother-in-law, believes that things break because of him. My dear husband thinks that things break because of children. My oldest son believes that things break due to gravity, things fall down and break.

I believe that there are at least four reasons why things break, and different things or materials break by different reasons. The first reason is that people break things, mostly by accident, but it is still a person who is behind things breaking. This is mainly things made of glass, porcelain and other hard fragile materials. It can also be that people use things wrong, maybe because they don’t know how to use them. The second reason for things breaking is that they are too old and worn out. This happens to things made of cloth, wood and metals, often parts in cars, machines and so on. The third reason is natural phenomenon’s like hard winds, large waves and lightning. Those natural phenomenons can break practically anything. The fourth reason is another kind of accidents (other than the one I mention in my first reason), where people are involved. It is when they have to react in a way that make things break in order to avoid a larger accident where people or animals can get hurt. This can for instance be when a driver drives into a tree beside the road, so he or she doesn’t run over an elk or another animal on the road. The car will break, but hopefully the animal and the driver will be ok.

Are droids taking our jobs?

Being in a situation where I have started to look for job, it feels a little bit scary the way Andrew McAfee talks about fewer jobs and an increasing gap between the number of jobs and the number of people in working age. He is probably right in what he says, but I haven´t seen this development yet. When I think about my friends and my former colleagues I can´t think of anyone that has been replaced at hers or his work by a droid. I would rather say that they work harder than ever. Maybe they aren´t representative for the whole population, since a lot of them work with people (teachers, nurses and so on). I have also a feeling that some of the systems (for instance: computer programs) that are supposed to make their work easier only takes a lot of their time, and it consumes time rather than save time for them.
I think Andrew McAfee is right in what he says about innovations. The fact that innovations is the driving force in economy, rather than capital, and that it might not be the people it used to be that comes up with the brightest new ideas.
He spoke about how more time will be available when fewer people work, time that can be used to fight powerty and environmental destruction. I hope he is right, but I'm not sure. Time will tell...
He spoke about how poorer societies can benefit from new technology, and that is great. It is important that new technology is spread globally so we don´t get a huge technology-gap between different parts of the world.
Finally I just need to say that we live in an exciting time, and nobody knows whats ahead of us...

Cities without cars

I think it is unrealistic to believe that we can create cities without cars, at least the way we live our lives today. We can reduce the use af cars, and decide to ban cars from some parts of cities, for example the city centre, but a total ban in cities seems farfetched.
I think it would be easy for people to use public transportation to get to scools and work, especially if workplaces and schools had a positive approach towards it. This requires of course good public transportation, and/or good networks of cycle paths.
One big problem, the way I see it, is to do things like grocery shopping. If you have two or three children (or more) it is hard to go by bike or public transportation twice a week to the grocery shop, especially the way supermarkets are built today. It seems like there is a trend towards building supermarkets outside the city centres so you are supposed to go there by car.
A way to reduce the use of car is to try to change peoples behavior and the way we think. For many parents it is natural to take turns in getting children to their activities, so instead of one parent driving one child they try to fill the car with three or four children. Maybe we could think the same way about grocery shopping, go two or three together in one car instead of one in every car.
I also believe in subsidies for "green" cars to get a large amount of cars with lower emissions and smaller environmental footprint in the car fleet.