TED Community » James McGuiness

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Social development, synergy, motivation, facilitation, sustainable social progress

An idea worth spreading

One idea is that knowledge of the intellectual growth dynamic known as "neuroplasticity" means that education as we know it is actually dysfunctional in significant regards and therefore education reform should cease arguing that a new model is merely "better" or "more effective". Indeed the old model is institutionalized dysfunction and no one will choose dysfunction when a new model corrects that dysfunction. The model I am pioneering under the banner of UNDERSTANDING Inc. does this and much more.

Talk to me about

Anything you feel could bring about a synergy where we bring the future forward to the present.

People don't know that I'm good at

Public speaking and writing.

My TED Story

To be added later.

Comments

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• A reply on Conversation: Pleistocene extinction of megafauna not caused by paleo-indian hunters

  3 hours ago: I don't know how you could say that, Peter. A civilization could be killed off entirely by any number of events. See Göbekli Tepe, an ancient site in Turkey, which was advanced thousands of years ahead of what we thought were the beginnings of engineered cities. Ancient people capable of this were still not a massive population as lives today and lived precariously at the whims of nature--including comets if not volcanism anywhere else in the world. Humanity was almost stopped entirely about 75K years ago with the last eruption of a "super-volcano". It was in Indonesia and humans are thought to have been reduced to a few thousand survivors world wide--most being thousands of miles away. Anything that kicks up that much gunk into the atmosphere--a phenomenal cataclysm will bring on hardship if not destruction for early civilizations. Without the setbacks of Mt. Toba and perhaps the comet in the Great Lakes the story of humanity would be entirely different and we'd have a lot more ancient mitochondrial DNA lines existing in latter-day folks. Imagine being 75,000 years further advanced.

• A reply on Conversation: Pleistocene extinction of megafauna not caused by paleo-indian hunters

  11 hours ago: Evidence of advanced middle eastern cities dating to around that time have been found--6 to 7 thousand years earlier than thought the progression. It is certainly possible that a comet impact in the Americas could impact the global climate and perhaps bring civilization-retarding events like sustained droughts or harsh weather and storms.

• A reply on Conversation: Let us re-visit the idea of airship (lighter than air) transport. The scale of fast and dirty jet transport is unsustainable

  1 day ago: Hydrogen is fine IN A CAN under pressure. It's a lot more worrisome in a motorized balloon where there is static.

• A comment on Conversation: Let us re-visit the idea of airship (lighter than air) transport. The scale of fast and dirty jet transport is unsustainable

  1 day ago: I'd like to see a hybrid air ship with power but done for individuals or two-seaters. Not keen on hydrogen though.

• A comment on Conversation: What were 5 things you wish you knew as a senior in high school?

  3 days ago: I just wish I could have gone to the high school I wanted to. A family member intervened and talked me and my folks out of it and into what would become "Drug Haven" Catholic high school where I was totally unmotivated for the duration. It wasn't that my choice was an automatic win, it was that it would have been my first major life decision and I would have been driving it. There would have been impetus on me by me to make it add up. Instead I was a caboose on someone else's dumb runaway train. That was probably the place I went wrong in my life. The only things I did well in high school on were subjects in which the teacher had a constant reflection method as to how I was doing. If I got tested every day I couldn't stand seeing poor grades, so I fixed that by getting good ones. But there were a lot of incompetent nincompoops who didn't give a test for weeks and you could drift way too easily into failure--especially when there's weed.

• A comment on Conversation: Why is it that education almost everywhere is referred to as "the system"?

  3 days ago: It IS a system. And therefore new systems must supplant the one in place. Each year we get closer to the point where someone can offer something on the edges of education that radically departs and challenges the merits of education as it has existed. I know what I want to do about it, and I imagine that there are thousands of others with grand ideas. But we all know what's in the way--serendipity. Who will stumble into whom? Who will listen and risk versus judge and walk away. Creating a market is hard. It takes a lot of capital. But the numbers get better and better and the race has been on for a while. No one has delivered a radical concept that people will flock to yet. And there are reasons why certain developments in technology have made it murkier to try. One is the erosion of economy that has come with apparently "free" "aps" and software. Another is economic down-turn in general. Where does one start and with whom to create a new modernity that will be visible and attractive to others? This has been academic to me for a long time--it has only been serendipity that has dogged me. You run out of money and have to pay the bills doing "stuff" when you have just one purpoise to live for.
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  A comment on Conversation: How do we make social networking about being social again? The idea of bringing people back offline in the online world we live in.

  3 days ago: Technology give us power we are generally not prepared to properly value. Unfortunately, this condition--where we grew up passive and powerless but then became suddenly over-endowed makes us poor authorities when it comes to thinking about technology and policies for our children. I therefore conclude that we should be growing a new culture which takes all its technology and the potentials locked up in each other thoroughly to heart. It never seems to occur that one of the worst things about human beings is their social default to "mob" behavior. Who among us has not been put on the spot to say and do things that are popular but which we quietly differ with? I want to live to see the last remnant of "factory model" "processing" of socially neglected human cattle stomped out of the model of human development with purpose forever. "Class" itself is a mob construct. I want to see people starting early on to achieve a new kind of literacy in which the implications of technological power is interpreted culturally. Within that literacy must be new guidelines as to how technology facilitates and at which points does it become dysfunctional. Perhaps after ten years of a reformed educational model we will start having a generation that could LEAD US. We are doing a poor job of leading them. And I think the best we could do is be idealistic in our designs even though we don't demonstrate that idealism in our actions. This is yet another kick in the conventional wisdom where it has always been suspect to say "do as I say, not as I do". This may be the one time that this is actually necessary. It would not be a "do as I say, not as I do", it would be here's two models--one of ancient crawling compromise with known dysfunction and here's a radical departure to function which only you can precedent. It is not easy to find the opening on the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey but the apes are yacking and there IS a way.

• A comment on Conversation: Does anyone understand the Big Bang theory?

  3 days ago: Existence seems to demand the roundness of a three dimensional sphere. Can non-existence exist? Can there be a 2 dimensional plane that is not made of matter that has implication on matter without being of matter? If you look at the pinwheels of galaxies, as big as they are, they seem to be flung out relatively flat and thin--as if the arms of the spiral orbit the center on the edge of a 2-D wafer. I'm perplexed that we can talk so much about the nature of matter and atoms but after a giant star produces a neutron star or "black hole" there is no explanation of the matter these things are made of. Neutron stars are obviously spherical and exist in 3 dimensions. They must therefore be explained in terms of elements of matter. I asked similar questions of the so-called "black hole" and wondered how can we call something like that a "hole"? Is it a sphere in three dimensions made of matter with certain properties which must be explained in terms of elemental matter?, or is it flat--a two dimensional region of "implication" which bears consequence on matter but isn't matter itself?
  
  Is the reason we can't see a "black hole" because unless we are looking perpendicular to it, it disappears into flathood? If it's not flat, should we continue to call it a hole? If you assume that "gravity" causes a star to form why should anything exist after a star explodes? If something remains that has enormous attractive power one must ask the chicken or egg question ie. was there the presence of some phenomenon to cause the collapse which is preserved and added to? When a black hole "feeds" is it just that matter has come close which is not on the precise axis with the "hole"? Or is this nuts? Either it's a hole or a sphere. And if it's a hole, which becomes invisible if we look at it from a parallel edge, we have to realize that we are talking about non-existence as existing. When something exists and doesn't exist, it comes into line with things that exist on two places at once.

• A reply on Conversation: Is equality feasible and is it worth achieving? Subquestion: By your definitions, is equality synonymous with fairness?

  5 days ago: Race is a sweeping generality applied to individuals--all of whom have the capacity to grow more capacity. It shouldn't matter if one's family had slaves in it versus tribal nobility. The nature is still the same. It is a world of unique individuals all of whom can overcome (unless they are prevented by defect, disease or disabling event). What we need to do is fundamentally change the social dynamics of education to deal with social defaults such as mob loyalty and misinterpretation of authority. It can't be the work of one teacher versus another. Any crusader on that level is bound to be crucified. It has to come about that there is something big happening which holds new value to those whom avail themselves of it. This may involve some societal growing pains.

• A comment on Conversation: Pleistocene extinction of megafauna not caused by paleo-indian hunters

  6 days ago: Or how about the comet impact in the Great Lakes region about 12K years ago. It rerouted the Great Lakes out flow from the once more expansive Mississippi to the St' Lawrence, creating Niagara Falls. Surely that would have global implications. Mankind took a big hit from that and had it not happened we might be thousands of years ahead in terms of civilization.