{"id":952,"date":"2015-06-04T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T12:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/?p=952"},"modified":"2016-01-07T13:11:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T18:11:23","slug":"wisdom-from-the-young-generation-fear-of-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/2015\/06\/04\/wisdom-from-the-young-generation-fear-of-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisdom from the young generation: We fear “the new”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From BDC WIRE:<\/a><\/p>\n

“Emily Bruell, a valedictorian\u00a0at Roaring Forks High School in Carbondale, Colorado, delivered a powerful message to her fellow graduates.\u00a0Objectively, it was about\u00a0labels. But the ultimate takeaway was the importance of courage.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

She acknowledged the tendency we all have when faced with something new:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the easiest thing to do when you are scared of something is to ignore it, to just keep on acting the way you did before you got scared.\u201d”<\/h3>\n

Many scientists face this response to new proposals, ideas or beliefs.<\/p>\n

Contrast this simple but profound quote to the long speech from Bill Clinton that the university probably paid $100,000 or more for.<\/p>\n

He talked about the significance of education and its role in advancing society. \u00a0We all agree with the importance of education of course. Education is essential to create useful advances but is it sufficient?<\/p>\n

He \u00a0concluded his speech with this recommendation:<\/p>\n

THE WORLD IS IN A RACE BETWEEN THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE FORCES OF OUR INTERDEPENDENCE. GETTING OUT OF EACH OTHER IS NOT AN OPTION. THE ONLY OPTION IS VICTORY FOR THE POSITIVE FORCES. AND NONE OF US CAN DO THAT ALONE. SO JOIN THE FIGHT. AND GOOD LUCK.<\/span><\/h4>\n

From: Clinton commensement speech to NYU<\/a><\/p>\n

An inspiring speech of course from a brilliant man with many off-scale accomplishments. \u00a0But \u00a0I think we all read this somewhere, and heard about “positive or negative” or “good and “bad” a “few” times… Oh yes, in virtually every religious speech …or text.\u00a0Is this a sound advice, yes, whether one is religious or not. Is it new or novel, not so much. Also, each one of us also has a different definition of positive or negative… and isn’t “fight” negative almost by definition. How about stand-up to by creative innovation?<\/p>\n

Perhaps Bill Clinton knows what the young student observed — it is hard to teach people something they don’t know already, it will mostly create fear and rejection Unless we find ways to change that.<\/p>\n

The young student was talking about “new vs old”. That distinction is pretty clear. The society’s response to new is a very important point here. Its fear, rejection, or simply ignoring it.<\/p>\n

This has to improve.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton talks about education and tightly connects it to “invention”. \u00a0Education does not create invention. \u00a0The search for novelty and change does. \u00a0In order to experiment and adopt the new we must have courage to consider and accept it.<\/p>\n

Education + Innovation + Removing the barriers (e.g. fear) to integrating innovation into the real world is my proposal for catalyzing more rapid advances, technological, medical, political or societal.<\/p>\n

See my blog on\u00a0Agile and Lean Education: Lessons from Bacteria<\/a><\/p>\n

Go NEW Generation !<\/span><\/h3>\n

p.s. \u00a0Here is one example of a cool idea from a jointly supervised PhD student, Clark Freifeld (BS Yale, MA MIT, PhD Boston University) who won the Engineering Best Societal Dissertation Award.<\/p>\n

Clark in BU Engineering News After Receiving the Best Societal Impact Thesis Award: Tracking Drug Side Effects Using Social Media\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Crossing Epidemiology and Public Health with Twitter cannot be found in textbooks…. and I can brag about it because the idea and the solution are not mine.<\/p>\n

But I did sign Clark’s thesis approval papers and I am already trying to integrate it into other significant real world problems….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From BDC WIRE: “Emily Bruell, a valedictorian\u00a0at Roaring Forks High School in Carbondale, Colorado, delivered a powerful message to her fellow graduates.\u00a0Objectively, it was about\u00a0labels. But the ultimate takeaway was the importance of courage.\u00a0 She acknowledged the tendency we all have when faced with something new: \u201cAnd the easiest thing to do when you are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8782,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8782"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/phenogeno\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}