I believe that the only way you can know which way to go is to look as forward as you can.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Contemporaneous definition of human intelligence


Old definition: with the minimum of knowledge you obtain maximum of efficiency. In other words, I would say do all you can with the things you learned. So we have:
intelligence + knowledge => solutions + innovations
This was so true 200 year ago when Lord Isaac Newton discovered g while resting in his garden and watching the apples falling. The thing is the knowledge of man kind is growing and growing. People are requested to do things on the run… knowing nothing about them. They simply are able to get the necessary information during the development phase and make there the improvements, find the solutions and yes, invent.
Classically, it all should be clear at design time but... the projects are larger and larger. It became somehow utopian to have the entire solutions from the start.This was the case of the world's biggest-ever passenger plane, the Airbus A380. They had two limitations: the time and the resources.
So nowadays the equation becomes:
Time + intelligence + resources = solutions + innovations.
We have economical plans, we have budget, so we have deadlines.The resources are limited either by the budget either by simply the real world limits.
The ultimate intelligence would be to use at maximum the resources that we have. Look at the picture! Two PET bottles transformed ingenuously into slippers. All the nowadays intelligence signs: limited budged, limited resources, fast implementation and a great solution.
Yes, the picture is very funny... but beyond this…I find it brilliant...I think this is the contemporaneous definition of the intelligence.