Stop whatever you're doing (I mean whatever). And read this article Infinite Stupidity published on the amazing Edge.org.

By Mark Pagel (pictured), professor in evolutionary biology, it explores the notion and consequences of social learning and human evolution.

In short, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that social learning has allowed us to take gigantic evolutionary leaps (beyond all other species). The bad news is that as we get more and more connected (Facebook and Google anyone?), we can afford to rely on our ability to copy people more than ever, meaning we no longer need to pay the costs of innovation. Which I don't have to tell you is not great news.

Pagel also explores the notion - and presents a compelling argument - that instead of us really being intelligent and shrewd beings, our ideas evolution that has driven our brilliant progress might all be based on random idea generation and selection. He literally suggests that Einstein might actually have been more lucky than bright!

Some choice quotes:

"...social evolution may have sculpted us not to be innovators and creators as much as to be copiers, because this extremely efficient process that social learning allows us to do, of sifting among a range of alternatives, means that most of us can get by drawing on the inventions of other"

.....

"... as the Internet connects us and wires us all up, we can see that the long-term consequences of this is that humanity is moving in a direction where we need fewer and fewer and fewer innovative people, because now an innovation that you have somewhere on one corner of the earth can instantly travel to another corner of the earth."

.....

"...our brains might be whirring around at a subconscious level, creating ideas over and over and over again, and part of our subconscious mind is testing those ideas. And the ones that leak into our consciousness might feel like they're well-formed, but they might have sorted through literally a random array of ideas before they got to our consciousness."

.....

"...these ideas, I think, are received with incredulity, because humans like to think of themselves as highly shrewd and intelligent and innovative people. But I think what we have to realize is that it's even possible that, as I say, the generative mechanisms we have for coming up with new ideas are no better than random."

.....

The most frightening provocation of the article is when Paget links the growth in social technologies with these possibilities. He writes, "we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet."

It sent chills down my spine to think that these tools might be domesticating us. It brings to mind Marshall McLuhan's famous quote, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

Pagel us not a lonely contrarian in his reflections. But by no means is he in the techno-phobe, 'world is falling in' band of neo-luddites. (This would be missing the basis of his argument).

There is the (slightly scary) phenomenon of 'filter bubbles', beautifully articulated at TED by Eli Pariser, that explore how technology makes decisions about what and who we see or read based on relevancy rather than value. There's another TED talk (that I can't find) about the herd mentality of social networking in which the presenter presents a vivid analogy about ants that get into the habit of following the ant in front of them, and literally if they happen to form into a circle, they will march around and around until they die.

As for Paget's ideas, I don't know how they reconcile with the many, varied and beautiful benefits of social technology that helps us feel more connected and closer to the people we care about. 

And there's significance and relevance to the whole field of social recommendations and whether they could potentially be doing us as much harm as good.

On a personal note, of late I have been getting vague hints and fleeting suspicions that Facebook (and especially the trend towards frictionless sharing) sometimes makes me think I like my friends less!

Regardless, it's the most thought-provoking piece of writing I've read in a long time, and you should do yourself a favour and read it... now:

Edge.org: Mark Paget on Infinite Stupidity

However, with its broader acceptance and adoption come some associated problems, most notably ones of understanding. Or more specifically misunderstanding of what lean is (and what it isn't).

I have no problem with people who understand the Lean Startup Movement approach and decide it's not for them (one hopes they have another approach to making something people want!). But as its fame spreads, and the level of 'lean understanding' spreads invariably er.. thinner, there will increasingly be those who reject it based on misconceptions or some incorrect assumptions that they are 'already doing it'.

So, it's time to confront some of these misconceptions... if only to avoid the déjà vu-esque prospect of tiresome and ongoing misunderstandings over what Agile really is and how to do it (hint: Agile is not about doing Waterfall quickly).

So here they are: some of the Lean Startup misunderstandings that we've encountered. 

Read the rest of this post over at Made by Many.

[I've cross posted this to the Made by Many blog where there should be some more conversation, so you might want to head to www.j.mp/happyappy.]

I recently watched the utterly fantastic TED talk 'The Happy Planet Index' by Nic Marks. The talk covers a lot of sensible ground including why the environmental movement needs to shift their tactics and also the quite stunning results from his research on measuring countries' happiness in relation to life expectancy, contentment and ecological efficiency (hint: the results will surprise you).

It's well worth 17 minutes of your time (embedded below).

However it was his concluding comments about the key ingredients driving people's happiness that really caught my attention. Marks only had time to race through the 5 principles that came out of some research by the New Economics Foundation (nef) in 2008. The principles were:

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Keep learning
• Give

Not many surprising ones there (although "take notice" is a lovely addition), and after I had finished watching the talk, I was chatting to my Made by Many colleague Paul Sims about how simple and yet fantastic these principles were. I think it was Paul who first suggested that putting these principles into practice and recording them with a mobile application could be an amazingly powerful tool. (NB: The two of us have been playing around with the brilliant iPhone app mappiness of late so it's no surprise our heads were in this space).

As a result I spent the weekend digging around and finding out a little more about the research. I quickly came across a terrific summary of the nef research which had been "commissioned by the UK Government’s Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Well-being to review the inter-disciplinary work of over 400 scientists from across the world".

Here are the summary results:

Anyway, I decided to spend the weekend mocking up a bunch of pages to see how these principles could work within an iPhone app.

My design skills are pretty much confined to Keynote shape manipulation, so luckily I had the wonderful Anel Palafox (@thinkdsignchnge) on hand to polish things up to make it all presentable (not to mention that she's a great social designer used to applying creative thinking to social challenges!)

Mock-ups embedded below but would recommend you check them out full-screen.

So I guess next steps is to get someone (nef?) to get some money together to build the app (I'd humbly recommend Made by Many!). Would love some feedback and any comments. Obviously there's loads missing in these screens. For example, I imagine that you could set daily push notifications to remind you to share 'well-being moments', as well as deciding whether you want your posts to be private or public etc. Or perhaps it should be integrated into Twitter?

All in all, I reckon this could be an awesome, helpful and fascinating app.

What do you think? Would you use it?

(Comments below or alternatively get in touch via Twitter @juzmcmuz. You'll also note that I borrowed some screens and elements from such great iPhone apps as Facebook, Echofon & Evernote; sure they won't mind!)

I wrote a blog post about a missing element when agencies are creating new products/services. Read the full post at http://madebymany.co.uk/what-customers-want-004332

I just posted this article over at Made by Many's blog. Head over, have a read and join in the debate: http://bit.ly/AgileStrategy