What do reality TV shows like Survivor and America's Next Top Model have in common with an insurgent method of stimulating useful innovations around the world?
It may be hard to believe that watching Tyra Banks drive aspiring models to the breaking point can provide insight into how to accelerate technological change.
Well, pinch yourself.
PHOTO : NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Popular reality shows indeed provide a way to understand the logic behind a new wave of contests in technological innovation. Both types are driven by head-to-head competition among unknowns. And the winner takes all - and is celebrated in the process.
A research agency for the government is using the model to spawn a new generation of driverless cars. Google is sponsoring a US$20-million-grand-prize race to the moon and back for commercially feasible spacecraft.
And this week, the newest contest - for a drivable, affordable car that gets 42.51km per liter - will be formally started at the New York International Auto Show. Sponsored by the X Prize Foundation, which is also running the lunar contest, the car contest is really two in one. In 2010, there will be a winner in the "city" category, which permits three-wheelers, and another in a category for four-wheel, four-seat cars.
"Human beings do some of our best work under the pressure of competition," says Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation, based in Santa Monica, California, "Cooperation is wonderful, but it doesn't lend to breakthroughs or true innovations."
The usual way that companies spawn advances is to employ staff members or contractors to create them. The market then rewards the winning products. The problem, however, is that the market sometimes delivers just incremental improvements, especially in areas of energy, transportation and health. Breakthroughs are imagined, but not mass-produced.
Contests, which come with a deadline, aim to create a sense of urgency, conjuring up a "race" mind-set that harks back to the Cold War. After World War II, competition between the US and the Soviet Union fostered technological races in space and weapons, for instance. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh made aviation history winning a US$25,000 prize for being the first pilot to fly nonstop between New York and Paris.
Why have contests proliferated in recent years? "Tycoons have come into it," says Stewart Brand, president of the Long Now Foundation, which aims to raise awareness on solving long-term technological problems. The X-Prizes, for instance, are funded by such wealthy people as Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, and Stewart Blusson, a Canadian who made a fortune in diamonds.
The sponsor rewards only the winner. The contestants invest their own money, thus expanding the pool of capital devoted to the field. Taking a page from the playbook of professional sports, contestants can often attract sponsorships.
Skeptics say that prizes often merely confirm what has already been done in the lab - and that too often they shower attention on the contest's founders.
"Creating useful innovations ought to be self-rewarding," says Robert Friedel, a historian of technology at the University of Maryland.
Although the contests have flaws, they bring innovators into the open. That can inspire young inventors - and tip off venture capitalists to the next big thing. Indeed, venture capitalists watch these contests to get leads on whom to fund.
"These contests and prizes become a quality-control mechanism," says Yogen Dalal, a managing director of the Mayfield Fund, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California.
To be sure, the devil is in the details. The creation of a great contest echoes the lesson of the Goldilocks story: Make the goal not too difficult, but not too easy.
As more innovation contests are introduced, the more obvious goals may already be met. For instance, there is already an all-electric car made by Tesla Motors of San Carlos, California - going into production Monday - that promises to achieve more than 42.51km per liter. But the Tesla car is only a two-seater.
The complexities of creating the auto prize illustrate a wider problem of how to come up with ever more novel tests of human ingenuity over time. Brand of the Long Now Foundation predicts that contests will soon pursue "things we truly think of as impossible."
Brand's wish list includes machines that defy gravity or that allow us to read the minds of other people.
Hey, Tyra Banks, are you available for an afternoon of Vulcan mind-melding?
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located