thilly thenny

“The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.”

— Ray Bradbury

.

I attend Toastmasters meetings every two weeks. The purpose of the international organization is to support members with public speaking, eloquence and impromptu speaking opportunities.

(The official vision is: “[t]hrough club activities and conferences, Toastmasters helps its members improve their communication and leadership skills while fostering self-confidence and personal growth.”)

During our last meeting, this Thursday, a member brought up inspirational quotes for a table topic. (Table topics are themes that prompts everyone to give a 2-3 minute speech.) Mine was pretty straight forward.

“You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.”

— Hal Borland (1900-1978)

.

But the quote by Ray made a much bigger impact for me.  It strikes me with two impressions.

1. What is a scientist?  Isn’t each field advancing in its own right? I have friends in archeology, who are using 3D modeling to reproduce murals and frescas on ancient sites.  I mean that’s an advancement in history!  A topic based on what happened.  Something that isn’t supposed to changed… cuz… it already happened.  We’re making changes in communications, not just with the blah blah blah blogosphere blah blah blah bloggers but information aggregators and predictors.  Already, technologies like the Semanticator can predict where we should go and what page we should see, not by our demographics but by behaviours.  So in essence, we are all scientist.  All creators and discoverers.  Therefore this quote is about all of us.
2. Passion and openness guides us to new jewels.  Most of the best innovators were in love with their craft and simply curious to see what could happen.  That should be the philosophy behind idea generation.  I’m just starting to learn that college is just the very base of knowledge required to learn everything else.  Our interest and curiosity guides us far beyond the elementary topics of undergrad courses.

.

I’ll leave you with a third thoughtful quote:

“Time has been invented by people unable to love.”