How this works
Each of your senses (touch, smell, sight, taste, hearing) sends information to the brain at a different frequency. The brain determines where the sensory information it receives comes from by the frequency at which it resonates, it can then process it in the appropriate way (e.g. turn sight information from the eyes into pictures in the mind).  

An array of resonators positioned on the surface of an Eye Candy transmit information from the tongue to the brain at the frequency that the eyes usually send visual information to the brain. A pleasant sensation of soda bubbles can be felt on the tongue as the mind decodes this sensory information as vivid pictures.

What are the available flavors?

• RELAX –  Tranquil fish swimming through the streams of your consciousness will help you to unwind.
• SOCIALISE - The shooting stars will encourage sociability.
• ASSERT – A big thumbs is guaranteed to reassure and motivate you.
• MEDITATE – The the slowly shrinking circle helps you to meditate.
• OVERCOME – Images of spiders will enable you to overcome your fears.
• FOCUS – Direction giving arrows help to improve focus and attention.

Head on over to EyeCandy.com and order yours, just make sure not to mix flavors! Is this a step in the path of replacing chemically induced “highs” with electronically induced “highs”?

Is this legit?
I’ll admit, it’s hard to believe this is legit.  But before you make your mind up, watch the Wired Science video below, which shows a very similar device used by a blind person to read numbers on playing cards as if he was looking right at them, and even follow a path drawn on the ground.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update: Well it turns out the Eye Candy product is actually a spoof, but the technology is very real.

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Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die | By Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Drawing extensively on psychosocial studies on memory, emotion and motivation, their study is couched in terms of “stickiness”—that is, the art of making ideas unforgettable. They start by relating the gruesome urban legend about a man who succumbs to a barroom flirtation only to wake up in a tub of ice, victim of an organ-harvesting ring. What makes such stories memorable and ensures their spread around the globe? The authors credit six key principles: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future | By Daniel H. Pink
With visionary flare, Pink argues that business and everyday life will soon be dominated by right-brain thinkers. He identifies the roots and implications of transitioning from a society dominated by left-brain thinkers into something entirely different—although at times, he seems to be exhorting rather than observing the trend. As a narrator, Pink delivers in a well executed manner, with occasional hints of enthusiasm.

Technique for Producing Ideas | By James Young
Since its publication in 1965, A Technique for Producing Ideas has helped thousands of advertising copywriters smash through internal barriers to unleash their creativity. Professionals from poets and painters to scientists and engineers have also used the techniques in this concise, powerful book to generate exciting ideas on demand, at any time, on any subject. Now let James Webb Young’s unique insights help you look inside yourself to find that big, elusive idea–and once and for all lift the veil of mystery from the creative process.

How to Get Ideas | By Jack Foster
How To Get Ideas answers the basic questions of where do ideas come from, why do some people get so many of them, and is there some secret technique to getting more of them. How To Get Ideas answers these questions and demonstrates that any reader, regardless of age or skill, employment or training, can come up with more ideas, faster and easier than ever before in his or her life. Author Jack Foster shows how to condition the mind and become “idea-prone”; how to make the child within us and our sense of humor work for us; how to develop our curiosity, visualize our goals, rethinking our thinking, combine different ideas, and overcome our fear of rejection

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea | By Sam Harrison
How do you unleash bursts of creativity, increase occurrences of spontaneity and ultimately find great ideas? Through anecdotes, interviews, quotes, tips, creative exercises and success stories from the biggest corporations in the country, author Sam Harrison shows you how to think outside the box—then throw away the box for good.

 
Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques | By Michael Michalko
Tinkertoys  will teach you how to generate new ideas for businesses, markets, sales techniques, and products and product extensions. Packed with fun and practical tools and exercises, it outlines 30 practical linear and intuitive techniques that can be used by individuals or groups to tackle and solve business problems in fresh, creative ways. An updated edition of the best-selling business creativity book, with more than 30 brainstorming techniques and hundreds of creative-thinking tips and tricks. Revision includes new techniques, examples, and sections on group brainstorming and endgames.

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative  | By Roger von Oech
Now Roger von Oech’s fully illustrated and updated volume is filled with even more provocative puzzles, anecdotes, exercises, metaphors, cartoons, questions, quotations, stories, and tips designed to systematically break through your mental blocks and unlock your mind for creative thinking. This new edition will attract an entire new generation of readers with updated and mind-stretching material.

 
Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius | By Michael Michalko
What exactly is creativity? Why do some people seem to have so much of it? Can their secrets be learned? In this trail-blazing book, internationally renowned business creativity expert Michael Michalko answers these questions and more, bringing life-changing techniques into everyone’s reach. Michalko has researched and analyzed over 100 of history’s greatest thinkers-from Leonardo da Vinci to Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison to Walt Disney-to show readers how creative people think and how to put their secrets to use.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind | By Stefan Mumaw
For any designer or creative type who wants to quickly limber up their imagination on a daily basis, Wired helps readers get into the creative zone, from which all their best work springs. Packed with 15-minute simple and conceptual exercises, this guide will have readers reaching for markers, pencils, digital cameras, and more in order to develop a working and productive creative mindset.

Zing!: Five Steps and 101 Tips for Creativity On Command | By Sam Harrison
A five-step process for generating big ideas in business, personal, and professional contexts is outlined in this high-energy guide to the creative process. Real-world anecdotes and inspirational messages complement the straightforward discussions of exploring, being free, pausing, embracing, and enjoying life. These five steps cover issues such as how to use observation to uncover fresh ideas, how potential ideas are stymied, and how incubation allows the subconscious to find solutions.

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Recently, a group called Improv Everywhere performed their Sixth Annual Mp3 Experiment. This one involved over 2,000 people of all ages downloading the same mp3 and pressing play at the same time.  As seen in the video, they responded to a creepy instructional voice (think SAW) and were mindlessly led (think cult) through a series of goofy activities.

At least it looks like everyone had a blast and ended up connecting on a human level. Perhaps this is a great example of technology catalyzing human connection. My recent post about embracing the caveman within is a relevant read.

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Furthermore, Ilardi fingers our modern, industrialized lifestyle as the key culprit behind the burgeoning depression epidemic, which continues to worsen despite decades of sharp increases in pharmaceutical consumption.

“A century ago, according to the best epidemiological evidence we have, the lifetime rate of depressive illness in the U.S. was about 1 percent,” said Ilardi. “The rate now stands at 23 percent. So we’ve had roughly a 20-fold increase over the course of a century. Since World War II there’s been roughly a 10-fold increase. And a recent study found the rate of depression has more than doubled in just the past decade.”

Published June 1, Ilardi’s book, The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs
, is based on research suggesting that depression can be treated effectively by helping people reclaim healing habits from a more primitive way of life. In fact, Ilardi thinks this may be a superior approach than modern psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs, which typically work for only about half the patients who try them. The KU researcher heads a large treatment study, dubbed the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change project, which calls for patients to adopt six healing elements from the ancient past: consuming more omega-3 fatty acids; using engaging activity to combat rumination; getting regular sunlight exposure; increasing physical exercise; connecting more with others socially; and getting increased (and healthier) sleep.

“As a species, humans were never designed for the pace of modern life,” said Ilardi. “We’re designed for a different time – a time when people were physically active, when they were outside in the sun for most of the day, when they had extensive social connections and enjoyed continual face time with their friends and loved ones, when they experienced very little social isolation, when they had a much different diet, when they got considerably more sleep and when they had much less in the way of a relentless, demanding, stress-filled existence.”

Many elements of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle are robustly antidepressant, Ilardi said. In fact, the KU psychology professor mused that if the neurological benefits of exercise alone could be concentrated into a pill, it would become the best-selling, most-effective antidepressant ever marketed.

In addition to positive results from his own ongoing research study, Ilardi points to low rates of depression among contemporary peoples whose lifestyles mirror those of our ancestors. The American Amish, for example, have rates of depressive illness far lower than that of the broader American population. Likewise, anthropologist Edward Schieffelin observed that the Kaluli people of the New Guinea highlands – whose day-to-day existence of foraging and gardening is akin to that of our remote ancestors – are almost completely free of depressive illness.

For Ilardi, such findings are conclusive that depression primarily stems from modern living: social isolation, fast-food-laden diets, physical inactivity, sleep deprivation and less exposure to the outdoors.

With the explosion of social networking online, it’s obvious that today’s society is a composite of socially isolated individuals, whom through a variety of  online activities, are striving to fill a common void.  Perhaps the key to truly satisfying social connection, is for online activities to serve as catalysts for individuals to come together, rather than substitutes for the real thing.

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The study demonstrates that experiential purchases, such as a meal out or theater tickets, result in increased well-being because they satisfy higher order needs, specifically the need for social connectedness and vitality — a feeling of being alive.

“These findings support an extension of basic need theory, where purchases that increase psychological need satisfaction will produce the greatest well-being,” said Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University.

Participants in the study were asked to write reflections and answer questions about their recent purchases. Participants indicated that experiential purchases represented money better spent and greater happiness for both themselves and others. The results also indicate that experiences produce more happiness regardless of the amount spent or the income of the consumer.

Experiences also lead to longer-term satisfaction. “Purchased experiences provide memory capital,” Howell said. “We don’t tend to get bored of happy memories like we do with a material object.

“People still believe that more money will make them happy, even though 35 years of research has suggested the opposite,” Howell said. “Maybe this belief has held because money is making some people happy some of the time, at least when they spend it on life experiences.”

“The mediators of experiential purchases: Determining the impact of psychological need satisfaction” was conducted by Ryan Howell, assistant professor of psychology at San Francisco State University and SF State graduate Graham Hill.

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To those who don’t know what Second Life is, I’ll quote the Wikipedia,

“Second Life (abbreviated to SL) is an Internet-based virtual world which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007.^[4][5] Developed by Linden Lab, a downloadable client programResidents“, to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another. enables its users, called ”

Second Life is one of several virtual worlds that have been inspired by the cyberpunk literary movement, and particularly by Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash. The stated goal of Linden Lab is to create a world like the Metaverse described by Stephenson, a user-defined world of general use in which people can interact, play, do business, and otherwise communicate.^[6] Second Life’s virtual currency is the Linden Dollar (Linden, or L$) and is exchangeable for US Dollars in a marketplace consisting of residents, Linden Lab and real life companies.

While Second Life is sometimes referred to as a game, it does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. In all, almost five million accounts have been registered, though many are not active, and some Residents have multiple accounts. Despite its prominence, Second Life has notable competitors, including Active Worlds, There, and newcomers such as Entropia Universe, Dotsoul Cyberpark, Red Light Center, and Kaneva.”

In such an exploratory and organic environment, is there a need for structure and information architecture? This is obviously a very relevant question as more and more people are immersing themselves in this world. The few people I have spoken to find it difficult to get started, and wonder what they should be doing, looking for, etc. Three are no inherent / provided goals to be achieved, and while this provides freedom it also removes boundaries in every sense of the word.

Regardless of how obvious or hidden, Information Architecture is in Second life — it has to exist. Whether users are aware of its organization, might be irrelevant. As long as users are finding what they want, when they want, where they want, in an efficient and pleasing manner

Historically speaking, freedom is often fought for, at the expense of structure, and vice versa. Freedom however is a fuzzy notion, or perhaps a mere perception. No matter how free you feel you are, the real universe is still governed by physical laws which include properties such as matter, time, energy and space. Yet with all these properties and laws around us, interacting with us – in fact governing us and our environment – we can still feel free. Our entire existence from a galactic scale down to a cellular level is comprised of hierarchical organization, no matter how organic it might be.

And since Second Life is attempting to mirror real life, there needs to be a similar approach to organization. At this point, I have some key questions:

• How real do people expect Second Life to be?
• How does real life culture transcend into virtual worlds?
• Do we expect to interact with the virtual environment?
• Do buildings offer similar purposes, such as privacy and shelter. Do we even need buildings?
• What is the “mother of invention” in a virtual world. Is it “necessity”, as in the real world?
• How do people choose avatars. Do they need to be human? Do they need a physical body?
• While emphasis is placed on “creating”, “building” etc, will these creations and buildings require maintenance as they age? In other words, will the property of “time” affect virtual elements?
• How will virtual worlds affect real life culture and behavior?

All these questions really can be summarized by the age-old question, “Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?”

I will be doing an in-depth User Experience analysis of Second Life, and will be following up this post with findings. If there are any Second Life residents out there, please share your experiences (good and bad) with us.

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