The bug list

“Can you see?” asks one of the oracles of held captive by the U.S. Department of Justice in the popular movie Minority Report. A strange question considering that the oracle herself was endowed with good eyesight and could “see”. Yet it wasn’t the actual seeing that she was referring to. She was wondering if she was actually seeing reality – the world as it was.

Most of us are capable of “seeing” things. We have come to regard our sight with so much casualness that we don’t simply attach the importance that needs to be attached to it. That oracle could for the first time see things that were not visions was so frightfully exciting for it. That must tell us how important the power of sight is.

We as humans have been blessed with strong cognitive capacity - the ability to apply thought to concepts, build on them, take actions on them, “evolve”, as it were, not just physically but also intellectually and spiritually. We have the power to apply strong cognitive models to our sensory faculties and develop a more comprehensive and enriching picture of the world around us.
For example, when we see things, we apply our mental energies to understand the image in front of us, what it stands for, what it implies, and how does that affect us. If that doesn’t happen to us then God save us!

However, we must go beyond just the perfunctory duty of seeing things. There is more to seeing than just images forming on the surface of the retina. That is why there exist words such as watch and observe. The word “observe” beautifully describes a higher form of cognitive process that accompanies the process of seeing. It is not just viewing things and trying to understand them. It is going one level beyond that. It is about bringing more value to our lives. An observer builds on his viewing experience and then applies his intellectual power to explore ways in which he can use the visual experience to add more value to a human life.

I recently read about a company called IDEO (http://www.ideo.com) and was blown away by the incredibly innovative work that they do. A book “The art of innovation” has been written on the company and their philosophy. In the book is mentioned an interesting phenomenon called “The Bug List”. It is list of things that designers “see” around them in the world and are unhappy about. The inherent unhappiness drives them to seek better designs in the systems around them thereby continuously adding value to the society.

A typical observer, they say, would view a queue at a railway station ticket window and try to figure out how he/she can improve the process. An observer would view the flowing traffic outside the window of his house and wonder how to improve the traffic system, or how to reduce the burden on roads, or how to move to a more efficient public transport system etc.

I think every human can “see” the world in this new way. Every human can and must do justice their human-ness and strive to add more value to the society and the world. Only then we may deserve any bit of the pride that we associate with us being Humans.