The curious case of the unknown unknowns
There are things that we know that we know. The taste of water. The number of fingers in our hand. Or the house address for that matter.
There are also things that we know that we don’t know. Such as the number of stars in the sky.
There are also things that we don’t know about the fact that we don’t know about it. This is where the unknown unknowns belong.
At least for the known unknowns, we make a quest of exploration to understand, to decipher what it might mean. And in this journey, we come up with some answers by unveiling the shroud that conceals the known as the unknown. But unknown unknowns are to be dealt with carefully especially when it comes to innovation and great design.
Certain exposure to these unknown unknowns has led to the emergence of some of the most innovative ideas, in defining such cases as actual ‘serendipity’. From Nike’s waffle sole to Teflon, Kevlar, dynamite and so on. All those unplanned serendipitous encounters have led to these ideas to come to fruition, and in this tone, one might ask — How can one engineer serendipity?
I have been battling with this question while trying to generate innovative, creative ideas from the rural kids in coming up with technological interventions in their villages. And as such this poses an interesting paradox for innovation posed by Greg Lindsay — How do we bring the right people to the right place at the right time to discover something new, when we don’t know who or where or when that is, let alone what it is we’re looking for?
While on a lookout for an answer to this interesting paradox, I was put off by a passage from Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.
Opportunities do not grow on trees, and even if they do, you have to be near them in order to pluck it. This applies well to our case too.
Living in big cities, the chances of being exposed to interesting ideas (positive black swans) are more. In his own words, it’s all about maximising the serendipity around us. It made sense in a way, and that’s why it disappointed me. You could find pluck all the opportunities nearby in a city like New York, but how about a remote tribal village like Lobhi exactly in the middle of nowhere? How then would you go about?
Even with good communications ‘in the age of the Internet’, the odds of serendipitous encounters in a rural area tunnels out of such sources of positive uncertainty. This is a big bummer for the grassroots innovation network and something has to be done about this component.
Nevertheless, The rural setting has its own unique advantages. Contrary to conventional thinking, due to the limited material resources and facilities that are available to them, the children are able to innovate with what they have on the plate, defining ‘jugaad’ tech (Less is more). As Horace best describes it —
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
Add to that, the unconditioned minds of the children who can think creatively, and out of the box. As the demarcations of what is inside and outside the box don’t necessarily inhibit their creative processes, rural children can definitely innovate and they are damn good at it.
These are the pros. The insufficient exposure to black swans are the cons. Now how do we work with what we have on the plate? Could museum visits and expos provide that source of replenishment?
It is important for them to see new things with wonder. Sometimes the new technology that they are exposed to talks in ways we could never predict.
We had this opportunity to exhibit our work at the Krishi Pradarshan (Agri Expo) through which three of our innovator kids (Chaitanya, Pratik and Lobhi) were able to make sales pitches to a wide range of visitors on the technological interventions that they had developed.
They had also got the opportunity to see the best agricultural practices in the Bhandara region, and various other tech demonstrations which really got their attention (the self-driving tractor, the portable sewing machine etc)
One’s mind, once stretched by an idea, never retains its original dimensions. The technique, the practice, or the design might have become an imprint already, creating the visual cues for their mind catalogue. And it could possibly be extracted from their mind palace for contextual use. For example, a simple three-point hitch in a tractor could be registered as a visual cue and could be used for a similar mechanism elsewhere, in an alternate design.
After looking at our technological interventions, we received a special request from Mr Madhukar Vitole, who needed help with his condition of hemiparesis (weakness of the right hand and right leg). He needed the kids to develop design interventions to the cycles provided by the govt to handicapped people as it doesn’t adapt properly to people with hemiparesis. Madhukar ji will be coming down to Lobhi and the children are looking forward to helping him in the process. Again this would not have happened if we had not exhibited our work through the expo. Such visits organised, could give them the competitive edge, in terms of the exposure to new ideas. There is a definitive advantage in not marching towards known unknowns, rather, to let the unknown unknown march towards us.
On a similar trajectory, there is a need to see existing things, the commonalities with the same wonder as well. For as Wittgenstein puts it — One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.
The grass scythe which we co-created with the kids had an interesting case associated with it, as it didn’t get identified as a major problem in any of those systemised design thinking sessions in classrooms, but through a random walk through the meadows.
To identify something as a problem — For them, the sickle was in itself a solution to the drudgery associated with wheat harvest.The idea of ‘improvising’ the technology never actually struck them. This raises an important question on why should breakthroughs or interventions somehow be planned? Why can’t it come out of randomised encounters?
When have we got the time to look at a water bottle, to inspect its curvatures and all its micro-edges and observe its elegance at close notice. When have we got the time to look at the stars and wonder? Even the contours of the mobile charger dock have an inherent beauty that we fail to notice. Even the simplest of the screw nuts had to pass through hundreds of years of innovation to come to what it is right now. We lose the wonder while we are exposed too much of it, to the point of it becoming a trite, a cliche, a commonality.
As we try to engineer serendipity, we are trying to look both inside as well as outside. All those common things that we notice, but fail to observe. And all those not-so-common things that we never observe, but come knocking our door one fine day.
