Asking better questions through technology

If I think of questioning, if I am trying to generate a new question to be able to solve a problem, if I stay in my little, small physical cubicle and generate as many questions as I can, it's better than nothing. But if I open up that cubicle to a world through technology that tries to solve that problem, not just me, but other people, then there is a greater hope for greater things happening. And that's what the 4/24 Project I mentioned, that's what it's trying to do. Basically: Create a common space for people in business, government, social sector, artists, I think they have a lot to contribute as well, where they basically will look at problems and ask nothing but questions about them. So take a simple thing like water, or having pure, clean water. Lots of organisations out there are trying to solve that problem. And the notion here is: Leverage technology to get the world to ask better questions about the problem of pure, clean water. And once we work through and sort through and winnow down the best questions, we are not going to solve it but we will feed those questions to organisations that are trying to, in hopes that better questions will solve some of these really distressing problems. It might take other sorts of skills, ID-networking. Who would have guessed that, you know, we could now go online and instantly connect with somebody who is not like us, if we choose to. Now the tragic, implicit consequence of technology with ID-networking is the way the search algorithms and all the data behind that are giving us information, it's mostly trying to feed us people who are like us, products that we like, products who like what we like. It's all about convergence, it's similarity. And so what we have to do to let the technology work with us instead of against us when it comes to creativity, is intentionally ignore for example Amazon's book recommendations. To don't buy the next book that's like that last book but to go to a completely different domain in order to get a new insight. Now it's a similar thing with finding friends, with our Facebook worlds and our Twitter worlds et cetera, they tend to be people who are like us. And it takes real hard work to jump out of that technology cocoon that's been created and in some ways constrain our view of the world. To jump into a different space, and that's where we're going to get new ideas. So technology with any of these skills can be either a curse or it can be a great critical help if we're conscious of how we're using it.