Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Tatjana Jevdjic
Hello, it's great to see all of you here today in person
and for everyone watching the live stream all around the world,
thank you for tuning in.
My name is Rita J. King.
I am here today to talk about creativity and design in identity and community.
This is a concept that has changed very much.
I think what matters next is — creative flow in groups.
It matters for the future of education, it matters for the future of work.
It matters if NASA is going to succeed with the Mars mission.
NASA is the organization that first gave us the notion
that we can look out into the infinite cosmos
and really explore it and connect.
But is it also the organization that first gave us this glimpse
of our tiny blue planet that we share.
So today, I am not going to be talking about the physical world only,
I'm not only going to be talking about virtual worlds,
I'm not only going to be talking about augmented realities.
I'm talking about hybrid reality,
which is a seamless whole that we all inhabit together
across the digital culture and in the physical world.
Let's start with the physical world.
This is Saudi Arabia
and what you see here, point A on the map
those are millions of people taking the Hajj to Mecca,
which is a journey that is obligatory for Muslims
who are able to do it once in their lifetimes.
As a non-Muslim, I would never experience this myself
and I may never understand the symbolism of this,
which is important in a changing world, to experience.
What you see here is not the physical Hajj to Mecca.
This is a virtual version, which was built in a platform called Second Life.
For those of you who don't know,
you can build a 3-dimensional avatar of yourself
to represent yourself as fantastically or as realistically as you want.
It's complicated for many people
and there is a misguided media narrative around the space
that indicates it's not ready for business or cultural use. That is false.
People are doing amazing work there.
I first found Second Life back in 2006.
An IBMer told me about it, and I started interviewing
countless IBMers all around the world who were doing incredible work
across dozens of virtual world platforms.
And I also undertook a project for a year
with my collaborator Joshua S. Fouts,
called "Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds".
We traveled to 4 continents in the physical world
as well as interviewing people from 25 countries
in the virtual world of Second Life.
So, one of the things we asked ourselves is,
"Do these faces represent an opportunity for an upgrade over the physical world?"
It's not the same obviously, but as you can see
an avatar can click for information
and we went on virtual Hajj to Mecca with Muslim tour guides from Egypt
and we were able to interview them the entire time we were there.
It was really interesting, because when we first got there
there's a duffle bag you can click on
that gives you everything you need, including the clothing,
animations for stone throwing, everything.
And we met an avatar who's a man from the North Caucasus
and I asked about Ishtihad, which is the critical thought component of Islam
he thought I was asking about Jihad.
He got very upset.
I asked him to scroll back through the chat log
and to see that I had actually asked him about Ishtihad.
He scrolled back through. He apologized to me for the misunderstanding.
I apologized to him for underestimating the language barrier,
and we had an incredible interview for over an hour,
and I don't believe that would've been possible in the physical world
under those circumstances.
As the virtual world starts to augment the physical world,
the physical world is also augmented by this hybrid reality that we're living in.
This is a poster from a project that I'm affiliated with in Detroit.
The website is "MakeLoveLand.com".
The first time I heard about this project, my friend, Jerry Pafendorf
showed up at a party in New York with a T-shirt on that said
"I've got twelve inches in Detroit."
Needless to say I wanted to learn more about this. (Laughter)
He told me that he was creating micro-hoods in the city of Detroit
and they would be composed of inches that he would sell for $1 per parcel.
At first glance other people at the party were rolling their eyes.
What is a costal hipster doing in Detroit?
But avoiding Detroit is like avoiding a sick friend in the hospital,
and having done extensive work in blighted cities myself,
I immediately saw the inches as the ultimate metaphor
for a shrinking city, which Detroit is.
What you see on point A there, is in the physical world
the first micro-hood in Detroit.
It's called "Plymouth", there it is on the ground.
I am the largest "inchvestor" in Plymouth.
I have a thousand inches in this parcel called the Imagination Age.
But, is an inch really something that can scale up to meaningful action?
Well, there are 588 of us who share Plymouth and it has scaled up.
Right there is the map
that you can see the Imagination Age is the purple rectangle.
But this is my first glimpse of what is called the Imagination Station.
Inspired by the Imagination Age,
which is the time that I believe that we're living in right now.
This is my first glimpse and the project has since scaled up
to include physical world properties.
So the one on the right is being transformed
into a digital media literacy center,
and the one on the left is being transformed
into a public art project.
So this is my first glimpse.
The first glimpse of the person who is living in that
burned out arson house,
which much of Detroit has been shelled by arson.
And this is what it has become.
This past weekend, Catie Newell just launched
Salvaged Landscape in this space.
It's the second major art project that has unfolded there.
And Marianne Burrows was the other artist.
You can see we have a long way to go,
but it's an amazing start and I urge you to check out the site and participate.
What this project does is brings people from all over the world together
to be invested in a place that they may or may not live in,
at the same time connecting us to the people who do live there.
Turning the physical world into a virtual world.
The same way the Virtual world can mimic the physical world.
Often on the internet what is missing is a feeling of serendipity.
Many of the platforms that are the most ubiquitous, such as Facebook,
are based on who we already are, who we already know.
But the internet is filled with opportunities
that are perhaps less measurable, but create real value in our lives.
So one day I was looking at her blog,
her name is Katelan Foisy, she calls herself La Gitana
and she said that she was about to open her letter from Balthazar.
Well, who's Balthazar, I wondered?
So I clicked over to his site.
He's an imaginary sailor, pretend photographer.
Sounds like my kind of guy.
So I noticed that you can request a letter from him,
and it was free, or for 5 bucks, you can get a Polaroid.
So, of course, I opted for the Polaroid,
even though it said it may not be safe for work.
But I run my own company, so very few things
are unsafe for the office.
And he sent me this beautiful letter,
including this picture of an iron bird sculpture.
And he wrote this incredible piece about how,
he wishes the sky would be less serious
and just hold up the iron bird for a minute.
And I think that's a really beautiful cautionary note
about the times we live in right now.
Very serious, but at the same time, we need to put
a little levity in the process,
so that creativity and flow in groups are fun.
We're at a time right now where we need to marry
great engineering with great creativity,
and create systems that enable each individual to participate in a group
in a way that is meaningful, so that solutions can be created.
I responded to him.
I told him that my grandmother had just passed away,
and I just inherited the sole work of art that she had created in her lifetime.
And we are going to meet in the physical world,
he's from Wisconsin in New York, this next weekend.
This to me is the image that is the ultimate metaphor
for the time we live in right now.
On the surface, we have the circumstances into which we happen to be born.
The socioeconomic bracket you inherited.
The belief system that you inherited.
Gender, race all these factors that shackle us to the physical world
and used to be the sum total of our identities and our communities.
This is the first time in the history of human evolution
that we are able to consciously shape our identities and our communities
in a way that is both creative, uses great engineering
to keep us functioning as a whole,
and allows us to really start to attack major crisis that we face together.
And at the same time shape our own lives
and learn to work together with flow.
There are implications for ourselves, our community, our nation and our world,
the boundaries between these different systems of thought are blurring.
One of the major things that we learn during the understanding
"Islam through Virtual Worlds" project is that
we are conditioned to look at each other with respect,
but what we're conditioned to respect are those circumstances
into which we're born.
What matters next is the ability to cultivate an aspirational tone
when we're dealing not only with ourselves, but with each other.
And what that means is that if you are leader of a group,
it doesn't mean necessarily that you're the boss of everyone,
and they have to bow to your hierarchical structure.
It used to mean that it was important to keep that hierarchy in place.
What it means now, is that you're a conductor of an incredible orchestra.
And if that music is to sound beautiful and speak to a larger issue,
which is whatever problem your group is trying to solve,
that's the business of the modern world — it's trying to solve problems.
You're a conductor of that process.
Whether you're looking outward or looking inward,
and what I want to offer you today is LevelingUp.com,
a site where you can register whatever your creative problem is,
and we have a network of people who will try to help you solve it.
So, LevelingUp.com,
I'm Rita J. King and thank you very much for being here today.
(Applause)