What Will the Next "Thing" Be Made From?

 

Remember how “Plastics Make It Possible”, the famous early 1990’s mega marketing campaign that illustrated how much our lives benefit from plastics?  Then again, don’t forget “Cotton is the fabric of our lives”, and all the other slogans and campaigns in between.

But what about our lives tomorrow?  Will we still crave only natural materials swaddling our bodies?  Will everything come packaged in protective plastic (from food to brains to airplanes)? All to be nicely recycled in the blue box on the curb? 

Don’t bet on it. There is a revolution in new materials underway.

You know this is serious business when The President of the United States singles out the development of new materials as critical to the long term economic well-being of the nation. The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) launched a few years ago was an attempt to fast track the development of these new materials. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that $ 25 million would be spent on a new Advanced Materials Center of Excellence.

So what kind of new materials are we talking about? And how might they change our world? Here are a few examples:

·         Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel, thinner than a sheet of paper and more conductive than copper. In short, it is the thinnest and strongest material in the world. The NYT reported that a sheet of Graphene stretched over a coffee cup could support the weight of a truck! According to research by the University of Bath, this material could accelerate internet speeds by a hundred times. Bloomberg reports it could unlock super energy efficient devices, revolutionize batteries, and create everything from bendable touchscreens to super light-weight cars and even synthetic blood.  (Did anybody else just get a chill reading that - blood?)

 

 

·         Researchers at MIT have identified materials which could allow for the un-wrinkling of what we wear. So, your pants could magically be able to reverse wrinkle. I wonder what the ironing lobby is thinking of this new invention (I am sure they have a lobby. Everyone does).

·         A new kind of wood composite has been patented in China. Made from wood powder and recycled plastics, it has far better strength and bending capacity than ordinary wood, and only a very small water absorption rate improves durability. There is hope for deforestation.

·         As recently as the mid-seventies, all passenger jets were made of aluminum and steel. In 1974, Airbus changed things with a composite rudder on its first plane. Today GE, the biggest jet engine maker, is building vast factories to make new wave engines made from ceramics and a new material made from titanium and aluminum which has been under development for over 20 years.

 

 

·         If you walk into some of the hotel lobbies outfitted with the new dynamic view glass, you might be able to notice that the glass darkens to block out the sun and heat. This is more energy efficient and may even eliminate the need for blinds. The glass is programmable and even has the ability to predict the sun’s angle based on GPS positioning.  The office fish bowl conference room can change to blackout mode in a flash.

 

·         And while we are on windows, The South Dakota State University’s Center for Advanced Photovoltaics is working on a solution where windows generate electricity to heat and cool the buildings in which they are installed.

·         The Asian Scientist reports that Chinese scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing have developed a method to print electronic circuits on paper using liquid metal ink. A new wave of simple and low cost electronics, and even 3D functional devices, is around the corner. The Internet of Things (IeT) is likely to explode. If you are not familiar with IeT, here is a link: http://chopra-m.blogspot.com/2013/03/are-you-thing-yet-if-not-soon-you-will.html.

 

·         The days of looking for charging cables for phones and tablets may be coming to an end. DuPont Building Innovations and Power Matters Alliance are working together to create a wireless charging solution which is integrated into the work tops of solid surfaces. So, place your phone on the counter, and its charging. DuPont believes wireless charging of this kind will be part of furnishings and furniture as well. There may yet be other uses for the La-Z-Boy.

 

 

·         Researchers from University of London received the Materials Science Venture Prize for a material which can be incorporated into toothpaste, dissolves in the mouth, and releases calcium and phosphate that form the tooth minerals, thus reducing the incidence of tooth decay.

·         Socks made of carbonized coffee offer unparalleled moisture wicking and can be printed on your own 3D printer.  But will my feet have that caffeine edge?

 

·         The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have made a new kind of flexible sensor material which could be incorporated into e-skin (electronic skin), cover prosthetics and allow patients to feel touch, humidity, and temperature.

·         University of Maryland researchers have developed a battery with tin-coated wood which is a thousand times thinner than paper, making it the longest lasting nano-battery available. 

·         Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have developed a special material assembled from thin, wrinkled nanotubes which will allow for real-time breath tests from smart phones and tablets. They believe that such breath tests can also be leveraged for testing for diabetes, lung cancer and other maladies by focusing on the detection of biomarkers for these specific diseases.

·         A special kind of paper developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology repels liquids, including water and oil. They used the “lotus” effect from the lotus plant to create this new paper and believe that this is a first step in a new generation of biomedical diagnostics and has the potential to revolutionize packaging.

·         North Dakota University researchers have developed a new way to embed chips in smart paper, which may be highly effective against counterfeiting. But what about hacking? Hacked your $100 bill lately?

·          A new generation of flexible materials will allow Morphees, the name given to a new generation of self-actuated flexible devices, which will change their form factor based on the specific application you launch. So, your phone may bend as you type in a password and change to a stress ball when you are having an anxious moment.  Shape shifting anyone?

 

·         Computerized fabrics that change color and even shape are being developed at the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University. The project is aptly called Karma Chameleon and Boy George gets another lease. The garments harness power from the human body and then use that to change their visual properties. The day when you charge your phone with your shirt, may not be far behind.

 

 

Most of our minds can’t begin to wrap around all this wonderful work being done at these fine research institutes, let alone fully envision the applications of such new materials.  We patiently await the next mass marketing campaign to inform us what the next new Thing is, and which we absolutely cannot do without (preferably after significant tests to ensure life and limb remain intact.  I wouldn’t want my e-skin short circuiting).

Our current era continues to expand on the uses for the 1959 creation of the microchip.  That’s over 50 years of mileage from one new material, albeit a pretty radical game changer.  Imagine the possibilities with this new array of materials.  What will they make possible?

Titles, acronyms and the morphing of technology roles

 

Like many of business’s self-anointed indispensable experts, technologists thrive on acronyms. To someone who doesn’t understand technology, this bizarre world of alphabets can allow for jilting conversations in staccato.

 “I was under a DDoS”.

“Well, we have internal DNS and a WSUS”.

“Did you know that 365 doesn’t allow static IP? It’s all DHCP.”

“I love VDI. It’s far better than APP-V”.

“I use DFS instead of DPM. More reliable.”

…and on and on. Frankly, it’s very similar to Klingon. Strange dudes talking even stranger.

Now, the same acronym mess has infiltrated the titling of technologists. I recall the simpler time when we did not even call it IT (Information Technology), rather it used to be called MIS, short for Management Information Systems. And you were Director MIS or Vice-President of MIS.

But someone didn’t like that simple stuff. Acronyms, meet titles.

 

Some, more old fashioned schemas still have VP IT , but they seem to be disappearing. Now we have CIOs and CTOs. People are completely confused about the difference between a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and a Chief Technology Officer (CTO). What do these folks actually do? Why do some organizations have both, while others seem to select one or the other? Can a CIO become a CTO? Apparently some do. What changed for them? The answers can be hard to come by.

Recently, I met a CTIO (Chief Technology Information Officer). I guess they wanted to make sure that all the bases were covered. And then there is the CMIO (Chief Medical Information Officer), and probably another dozen variations of all these alphabets in a jambalaya of titles which no one seems to be able to understand fully.

As a CIO, I was recently introduced to a board member, who thought I was the Chief Investment Officer and started discussing risks in financial securities with me. I don’t blame him; and I do need help with my portfolio.

 

And now a CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) is morphing with a CIO (Chief Information Officer) to create another flavor of yet another CMIO. So now you could be a CMIO who is either a medical doctor or a master salesman. Great, this should make it easier for all of us.

Why this latest morphing? Because the largest consumer of data within an organization is now increasingly the marketing department. The potential of “Big Data”, with its reams of  information, to which can now be applied advanced data mining  analytics, and which can then validate or identify new marketing strategies – is the new frontier.

So, if there was one constituency which now ‘gets’ technology, it is the marketing folks, and their budgets are increasingly being spent on technology. The focus on digital content, social media and even mobile applications, is steeped in both worlds - technology and marketing. When you ask CMOs what is the one area for improvement, they identify the use of technology as being close to the top of their lists.

For the CIOs, IT is no longer just about reducing costs and increasing efficiencies. IT is now expected to enhance revenues in discreet and identifiable ways.
 

The new paradigm seems to be tech savvy CMOs and customer focused CIOs. Merging marketing and technology is gaining momentum. “Marketing, do you take IT to be your lawfully wedded…..” I see another Supreme Court ruling in the making.

Another round of new titles looks like it is around the corner. I think I am going to copyright CIMO, pronounced See-mo and short for either Chief Information Marketing Officer or Chief International Magic Official or even Commander in Interdependent Mobility Opportunities (I might as well cover a couple more bases – right?) and while I am at it, maybe I will also do CIMOT, pronounced See-I-am-h-ot (the ‘h’ is silent, of course) and short for either Chief International Marketing Officer and Technologist or Chief In My Own Time.

Don’t get me wrong. I speak Technology Klingon too. Acronyms? Bring ‘em on.

Mukul Chopra CIO, CISSP, PMP, MCSE, ITIL, CNE, CNA, MCP+I

Some dead things, just don’t die

 

Recently, a frog species thought to be extinct, magically appeared in an Israeli pond. These things seems to happen more often than you might think.

In 2000, the pygmy tarsier, a mouse-sized animal last spotted alive in 1921, was rediscovered. In 1894, a handful of specimens of the Nelson’s small-eared shrew were found in southern Mexico. That was the last time the shrew was seen alive for 109 years; until 2009, when three were found in a forest. 

Similarly, there are many ‘things’ from the world of technology, which you might have thought are either extinct, or are on the verge of disappearing, because you don’t see them around anymore.

One of the oldest technologies we know, simply refuses to go away. Fax machines were invented in 1843. More than 170 years later, in 2012, an astonishing 700,000 new fax machines were sold in the US. Still going, and going, and going……and not looking to be gone anytime soon. Heck, I had to buy two for my office this year. Can’t seem to get some people off it.

Do you miss the clickty-clack of the dot-matrix printers? Do you even remember them? Thought they had gone for good? Wrong again. More than 20,000 were also sold in 2012. I write this at an airport where I can actually hear one in the distance because one of the most technologically advanced industries, which buys planes for hundreds of millions of dollars, also insists on still using dot-matrix printers at airport counters. Go figure.

Thought that vinyl records were extinct? Wrong. In 2012, 4.6 million of them were sold in the US. Someone has turntables and is playing records in the millions. DJs, you say? That many?

In the high definition world of Blue-ray DVDs, some folks are still watching their movies on VHS tapes. Not kidding. An astonishing 13 million blank VHS tapes were sold in the US in 2012. People are still recording on VHS tapes? With what? VHS cameras? The ones which were so big and heavy to lug around on your shoulder, and which then cost me hundreds of dollars in chiropractor fees just to straighten me out? Someone out there still uses that dinosaur?

Oh, and since we are on cameras, 35 million rolls of film were sold in 2012. You read that right, millions! I thought Kodak was out of that business and others were getting out of that business too. Apparently not so fast. I cannot imagine that the film aficionados would be buying rolls of film in such large quantities. So, who is? Time to fess up.

Sony stopped making 3 ½ inch floppies a while ago. Apparently, there was no market for them. Wrong.  Verbatim, still sells millions in Europe and UK. Miss the 5 ¼ inch variety? That one must surely be gone, right? Not a chance. Floppydisk.com will sell you 50 for $ 40. They are double sided too (whatever that means). If you feel very guilty, you can even buy recycled ones. Now all you have to do is find a computer with a 5 ¼ inch floppy drive and you will be able to access all 1.2 megabytes of data from your floppy! Why would you ever need anything more (wasn’t that a quote from Bill Gates)?

With the wildfire growth of smartphones, one would have thought that some industries would be strongly affected. Remember pagers? Anyone still use pagers? Well, $ 350,000 worth of Pagers were sold in 2012. I still see some old fashioned doctors holding onto the pagers they first used in medical school. But boy, that’s still a lot of pagers.

Made a call at a pay phone lately? There are still 305,000 active pay phones in the US? If you find a pay phone, take a picture. You may need it to show your grandchildren. “Kids, to make a call, we had to hunt for something called a ‘pay phone’. Then, we had to struggle to get coins out of our wallets, because these special devices did not accept bank notes. And you could make a call for a short period of time, before a voice started threatening to cut you off if you didn’t put in more coins…..”  I kicked a payphone for that.

And how about the GPS systems? With almost every smartphone now able to provide GPS navigation, who is buying independent GPS systems? Imagine having to buy one device for phone calls, another for texting, another for navigation, another for the internet and so on. Then, you can hang all these devices in your Home Depot handyman belt and go to work in a suit. People still don’t know you can do all of this, and much more, from a single device?

If you pay attention to the younger generation, there are a couple more vestiges of another older time (all puns intended), which are under assault. Young folk don’t wear watches. They get their time from their smartphones. And just when you thought watches would soon disappear, along comes a game changer: the much rumored iWatch from Apple.  Will all the kids start wearing an iWatch? Will that become the new fad, the same way that oversize ceramic watches are a craze with the ladies now? Recently, I actually saw a young lady on the metro train, check her time on her iPhone, while carrying this large ceramic “clock” on her wrist. Presumably the clock was just for show. Or she didn’t know how to tell analog time. Or both?

Gone you say? Not so fast. Some dead things, just don’t die.

Can you MOOC?

 

 

In 2012, The New York Times declared it ‘The Year of the MOOC’, or Massive-Open-Online-Course.

MOOCs are changing the way people learn, educators teach, and who can participate in learning. When early internet evangelists called the internet the “ultimate leveler”, this is probably what they may have meant. Soon, it may not matter where you are, you will still have access to the same high quality of education.

Initially, the concept evokes high hopes for educational equality, together with some valid concerns for method, rigor, the value of face-to-face learning and costing.  At the moment, MOOCs are more common for college level courses, but they are already encroaching into the high school niche.

How are MOOCs different from traditional online courses? The latter charge tuition, limit enrollment and ensure a higher level of interaction with instructors. MOOCs are generally free and well, massive. Some estimates have the median number of students enrolled in a MOOC at an astonishing 33,000!  Visualize Ohio State crammed into one classroom all at the same time, learning the same thing and from the same instructor.

Who can attend a MOOC?

Almost anyone, and from anywhere.

You need an internet connection and a browser. New compression algorithms have made even low bandwidth solutions adequate for an online class. Thus, infrastructure matters less.    

Coursera, the largest MOOC Company, reported in August of 2012, that of its first million users, 62 percent were from outside the U.S., led by students in Brazil, India, China, and Canada. Coursera’s largest MOOC forum in China has more than 12,000 members.

At the RSA Security Conference in February 2013, Dan Boneh, a Professor of Cryptography at Stanford, told an audience I was in, that the largest contingent for his popular crypto online class, outside the US students, was from Chile! Go figure.

Theoretically, a single MOOC on a particular topic could accommodate every student in the world.  (That ignites some intriguing ideas about content, standardization, validation, cultural influence, language…..but I will postpone those questions for another time).

How is K12 education being impacted?

A new, free online project dubbed a "MOOC-Ed," or a massively open online course for educators, is the work of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based advocacy organization and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, at North Carolina State University's College of Education. The 7-week class is specifically designed for school and district leaders, including superintendents, principals, curriculum directors, tech directors, finance officials, lead teachers, and others responsible for planning the use of technology in K-12.  They hope to plant the seed of MOOC understanding to the current generation of primary and secondary educators.

The fact is, worldwide there is a global teacher shortage in K12. Almost 2 million new teaching positions need to be filled globally to ensure access to a primary education by 2015.

In the US alone, we need almost 250,000 new STEM teachers over the next decade. Now imagine how MOOCs might help fill that gap.

How much does it cost to attend a MOOC?

A week ago, President Bill Clinton speaking before his Global Initiative, spoke of the way higher education is delivered in the US, and the need for “dramatic change”, which could be driven by the accreditation of massive open online courses.

“A lot of people will have student debt that goes beyond the federal student loan program. I think the only sustainable answer is to find a less expensive delivery system,” President Clinton told Times Higher Education. MOOCs may well be the key to driving down costs, which as we all know have risen beyond inflation for many years now.

 

Currently, MOOCs are free, and are serving as an experiment of sorts. But commercial enterprises are showing a serious interest, and the monetization of MOOCs will soon follow. MOOC providers want to keep courses free to students, but "for these to work they're going to have to be sustainable and bring some amount of money in," says Michael Horn, a co-founder of Innosight Institute.

The hope is that we would be able to benefit from the economies of scale. Should a class for 100 students cost as much as the same one for 15,000 or 100,000?  Quite unlikely.

Who are the big MOOC players?

In a report in 2012, Moody's Investor Service called MOOCs a "pivotal development" that has the potential to revolutionize higher education. Investors are getting very interested.

EdX, the $60 million collaboration between MIT and Harvard, is a MOOC. Both universities have made a plethora of courses available to anyone for free. EdX has said it plans to eventually charge a fee to students who want to receive a certificate upon completion. Would you pay a few hundred dollars for a certificate from Harvard or Stanford? Resumes may start looking very different soon.

In fact, Harvard is so interested in MOOCs, they are asking alumni to donate their time and intellects in the rapidly expanding field of online education.

Stanford is one of Coursera's partners and Dr. Ng, one of the principals at the company, is also Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford. Coursera now offers courses from 33 of the biggest names in postsecondary education, including Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins, and Duke among others. Overseas universities from Lausanne, Munich, Paris etc. are also participating.

Other popular MOOC platforms include Udacity, and the very popular Khan Academy, the latter endorsed by none other than Bill Gates himself. In September, 2012, Google launched a MOOC-building online tool. More MOOCs are on the way.

David Stavens, formed Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Michael Sokolsky after more than 150,000 signed up for Dr. Thrun’s “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” leaving the entire higher education community astonished and immediately taking notice of this staggering number.

Do we learn differently with MOOCs?

We most certainly do. But this is also an opportunity to increase learning about how people learn. Studies might help provide new insight into when students get fed up with lectures, how men and women react differently, and how online forums can stimulate better performance. 

At Stanford, the Learning Analytics Group comprises graduate students, researchers, professors and others from the fields of education, computer science, communication and sociology. They collect data on when students complete assignments, take exams, watch videos, participate in forums or do peer assessment. The hope is that this data will assist in assessing progress, predict performance, and identify problems to improve the MOOC experience with better outcomes.

How is this impacting brick and mortar classrooms?

The University of El Salvador, is the only public university in that country. It spends $60 million a year to teach 50,000 students, and its budget is so limited that it can only accept about one-third of applicants. Can a MOOC help here? You bet. The arrival of MOOCs is adding to an already “huge pressure” to expand university access by bypassing the brick buildings altogether.

While MOOCs could be an opportunity to improve education in poor regions, they are also profoundly threatening to bad professors and to weak institutions in any region. Would you go to a poor class in your neighborhood or one from Harvard, MIT or Stanford online? And it doesn’t matter if that bad class is in North America or Bolivia.

Are MOOCs easier for students?

MOOCs may have previously provided general classes intended to serve as primers on a subject. Attempts are now being made to make MOOCs just as rigorous as those in a traditional classroom environment.

Gautam Kaul, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, will soon teach the latest iteration of his “Introduction to Finance” class, but this isn’t your standard MOOC. Kaul went a different route for the course he created. He offered up a class that he says is just as intensive as what a Ross MBA student would sit through. He is answering the question, “Is this high quality?” In this case, it is.

Will MOOCs be taken seriously?

Some people think so.

Dr. Agarwal, who leads the EdX project, predicts that “a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with EdX certificates.” He expects students will one day arrive on campus with MOOC credits the way they do now with Advanced Placement.  But, will employers give them credence?

Downsides of MOOCs?

There are plenty of skeptics and they have some legitimate concerns.

Language skills can certainly present a barrier. Dropout rates are very high. In many ways, students are testing the waters just like the educators.

Andrew Delbanco, a professor of American studies at Columbia University, in an article in the New Republic titled “MOOCs of Hazard” talks about the loss of face-to-face teaching. MOOCs are unlikely to be able to meet the high thresholds and benefits of a university campus class. Feedback and interaction with the instructor remains a challenge. How do you make the massive feel intimate? Details to be worked out.

 

Can learning be scaled up this much? That is another question. Is there a limit to how many should participate in a MOOC? Grading is still a problem. Cheating is an unpleasant reality. “We found groups of 20 people in a course submitting identical homework,” says David Patterson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who teaches software engineering. Udacity and EdX are now going to offer proctored exams.

2012 may not have been the Year of the MOOC for rank and file educators, but it is commanding the attention of a large swath of beneficiaries participating in these experiments, and of the thought leaders in education who are attempting to conceptualize and shape this new realm.  MOOCs present an interesting adjunct to the traditional brick and mortar experience, particularly for those who previously lacked access due to geography or wealth.  I applaud all the subject matter experts who post such information for free. It still takes work.

 

They are educating all of humanity one MOOC at a time.

 

Outsourcing Critical Thinking to Google.

One of my favorite questions to a young prospective job applicant goes like this:

Imagine you are on a deserted island with no phone or other internet enabled device. You have never been to NYC. Now, if I asked you how many Thai restaurants are in NYC? How would you try and find that out? What considerations might be important to answer this question?

Responses have varied, but here are some which are fairly common for the Millennial Generation:

"So, like, can I call someone who has a computer?" No, remember you don't have a phone.

"Hmm... can I walk to an internet cafe?" There are no cafes here.

"My friend lived in NYC. I could ask her". There is no post office or phone booth here to call or mail from.

....and so it goes. 

Most never reach the point at which they actually begin to solve the problem. They are too busy trying to find out how they can get to someone who might get them to Google!

Critical thinking needs imagination, insight, and even thinking outside the box. What is far more common nowadays, is thinking "in the box" - which in this case, is  the "box" in your pocket (your smartphone) or even in your hand (tablet). 


The next time you ask a Millennial a question, notice how quickly they reach for their phones. The phone is an extension of their mind. Not tomorrow. Today. 

If Google can answer it - why should I know? I don't need to know, because Google knows!  That space in the head, and the critical skills which working a problem bring to the fore - may be under some threat. This should concern us. There are some really smart folks in Silicon Valley from this same generation who are inventing remarkable technology, and in turn are making this world a more connected and hence a more informed place - a better place. 

But there seems to be a large segment of that same generation which is just as comfortable outsourcing critical thinking to the smart devices which they own. 

Another manifestation of the same technology is a seeming lack of focus. Time is now being lived in very small segments as we multitask through a plethora of competing distractions. This is turn makes sustained focus on one issue much more difficult and is bordering on a lost art. We live in a time where everything important needs to be said in 140 characters or less, and then we move on. Some studies have shown that it can take us between 4-8 minutes before we can refocus after a distraction.

More analysis and studies of these phenomenon will need to be done before any long term trends can be identified with any precision.  

Was a previous generation just as alarmed when calculators first became ubiquitous? Did they worry that math would become a lost art?

Time will tell...

Can your “attention”, change you?

 

 

About a hundred years ago, scientists discovered a very unique characteristic of the smallest objects. At the quantum level, particles behaved differently when you “looked” at them. More precisely, these tiniest of particles, changed from a wave to a point, simply by being observed. When not being observed, they could exhibit wave like form. But the moment you turned your “attention” to them – they changed. They became pin points.

If you want to see a great rendition of this mysterious phenomenon, watch Dr. Quantum explain it with the help of the now famous double-slit experiment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc.

A hundred years after this discovery, we are still not sure why this is? We can replicate the experiment at will. Physicists have tried to “fool” the particles into somehow not “knowing” that they are being watched. Some of these experiments have been rather complicated and very clever. And yet, alas, the result has always been the same. You simply cannot fool these tiny particles. Look at them, and they will change. Every time!

About 2600 years ago, another scientist performed a very similar experiment. He did not have the labs available to his modern day counterparts. He did not even have microscopes. But he had, what in many ways, may be the ultimate laboratory – his own body.

He discovered, that if you moved your attention over your own body, and did this in a deliberate and careful scan, the nature of the tiniest particles of the body, would change (just like the double-slit experiment). Focus long enough, with enough practice, attention and discipline; and magic could happen. You might even become enlightened.

This ancient scientist, named this process Vipassana or insight. His name was Siddhartha Gautama. He lived in the India of old. Many of us know him today by his simple honorific – The Buddha.

Today, Vipassana meditation is the underpinning of Buddhist meditation and is a pillar of the oldest lineage of Buddhism – Theravada. It is the lineage taught by The Buddha himself.

 

What is Vipassana? Well, ‘insight’ can be a complicated thing.

However, in its simplest form, Vipassana meditation requires the practitioner to use a concentrated, focused and quiet mind, as the only tool, to scan each area of one’s own body with pure attention. You observe. And when you “feel” something on the observed part of the body - you move to the next part of the body. You might feel an itch, a breeze, a tingle, pressure, heat, cold – it could be anything. You simply observe it in a non-judgmental manner, and once observed, you move on to the next spot on your body. That simple.

And you scan your body again and again, over days, even months, or even years. The simple act of observation, changes the nature of our very being, particle by particle. And nothing more than observation is required to begin this process.

Today, we can see how experiments in the lab are overwhelmingly conclusive and provide resounding evidence that attention changes the nature of things. Literally!  

Turn your attention to yourself, and you too will change.

Evidence also suggests, you will likely change for the better. Vipassana meditation (and other forms of meditation) are known to make the practitioners more compassionate, more joyful,  peaceful and balanced, and increasingly happier. Matthieu Richard, a biologist who worked at the Pasteur Institute before becoming a monk in 1968, and who is now dubbed “the happiest person on earth” has been a meditator for over five decades. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard).

 

Attention, is a very powerful thing. ‘Watch’ where you look. You are changing your environment with your attention. You may even be changing yourself.