Savants are capable of amazing performance in a number of specialized tasks (e.g. rapid counting). In the same time they have difficulties with tasks requiring higher level of abstraction, and display poor general intelligence.

Is integer arithmetic fundamental to mental processing? the mind’s secret arithmetic, A. W. Snyder, D. J. Mitchell:

In contrast to the popular views discussed above, the unique aspect of our perspective is that the mechanism and information drawn on for savant mathematics resides equally in us all but it cannot be recruited by us for mathematics. In other words, we believe that mathematical savants, like all autistic savants, arise from their privileged access to lower levels of raw information.

Why is it that savants have privileged access to lower levels of information ? Perhaps it is promoted by a loss of those centres that control executive or integrative mechanisms (…)

An intriguing question remains. Although we do not normally have access to lower levels of information as do savants, is there nonetheless some artificial means to promote this access, say via induced altered states of consciousness?

A reference to the theory of hierarchical memory (Jeff Hawkins, On intelligence, see earlier post).

From the point of view of this theory savants would be somehow unable to develop higher level memory patterns.

On the flip side, a normal person cannot recognize lower level memory patterns anymore, and therefore doesn’t have access to savant-like abilities, which are based on this raw access.

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Quoting Nick Carr’s post:

Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet. It’s even uncooler than editing Wikipedia articles or having a Second Life avatar.

Oh man, I guess the future is reading stupid facebook updates all day.

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Do you need some inspiring associations?

Yes you do

Check out 88 constellations:

Sharing something is much faster on facebook, but I still don’t like facebook that much.

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Paul Rand is perhaps America’s most famous identity designer, who developed logos such as IBM’s or NEXT’s.

Therefore it might be a shame to admit that it was only recently that I became aware of his works, nevertheless, I wanted to share appreciation of his identity document for Steve Jobs’ NEXT:

On the webpage, you need to scroll down to “identity presentations” section. Reading from photos is not comfortable but doable, especially if you are on a mac and can zoom easily.

One might find his approach to design problems rather intellectual if not pedantic, with all the detailed discussion of why this font and not another, why in italics and why in this color, but I find it quite fascinating, personally.

In fact, I found my way to this document passing from Steve Job’s record of his relationship with Rand:

Note the fragment when Jobs describes Rand’s way of working with his clients:

I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, “No, I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution – if you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that’s up to you – you’re the client – but you pay me.”

This reminds me, by the way, of a common dilemma in consulting of whether we solve problems for the client or with the client.

But to finish the episode with Steve Jobs and Rand, here is the account of how the cooperation started:

Jobs had always had an eye for good design. He was especially taken with the logos of ABC, IBM, UPS, and Westinghouse, all of which were created by Yale professor Paul Rand. Rand offered to create NeXT’s logo for $100,000, but only if IBM consented.

This was an outrageous price, many times more than what Rand had charged IBM for its now-iconic logo. Two months later, Rand sent Jobs a copy of the logo and a brochure explaining every detail. For the sake of a more interesting design, Rand even renamed the company NeXT, saying the ‘e’ stood for education. The new logo (and the name behind it) lent prestige and clout to a company without customers or a product.

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We spend winter holidays in Warsaw, looking after all details for setup of our brand new consulting vehicle.

Details include registering company (in fact two companies), selecting accounting firm, developing company’s brand and identity.

We are trying to be quite innovative and perfectionist in each of these, except for maybe the accounting.

Everyone left for skiing and all, but we are managing these details and it’s actually kind of fun.

Ogito, on the other hand, is closed for the time when I have time for another experiment.

I guess I should be more concerned about investing lots of time and then switching to something else without obvious return, but I’m really not. I guess I like experiments.

Jokes about global warming are probably tired already, but the fact is, I can hardly recall a winter like that. I mean the situation when you lost track of how long the snow has been around – it’s been so long.

I have a feeling that a proper winter spells a very good year. I don’t have anything tangible to back up this expectation, except perhaps how the frost is killing all the wormies etc.

In any case, this year for us is about pumping all the startuping experience into consulting, which is something we know best, and we have lots of ideas how to make it even better, therefore we are quite excited about it.

This post is due to the fact that I feel like writing rather than reading on this lazy Saturday.

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