RWL Newsletter #144 - robot nurses, you can draw, & forgetting
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! Hard to believe we are already at the half-way mark of the semester. I’m really pleased with my students this year - they have been working really hard. In a way, I’m lucky that I teach the same cohort of kids both finance and management (not sure they are lucky) because I get to see them exercising different parts of their brains - quantitative reasoning in one class, analytical thinking, public speaking, and teamwork in the other. We’re into our second round of presentations in the management class, and I can already see the growth. It’s seeing the growth that is the best part of teaching.
On to the links!
Read
What: Fast Company, Meet Moxi, a robotic nurse assistant with heart eyes
Why: This is a cute article that demonstrates the economic concept of the substitution of capital (technology) for labor (nursing staff) in healthcare. There are two interesting points to take away from this article. First, the substitution part - the robot is capable of doing some of the routine, low level tasks that allow human staff to function closer to the top of their license: “nurses don’t even have to remember certain tasks that used to be part of their daily job, which is a meaningful way to reduce their cognitive load”. Second, and more subtle is the human reaction to the robot - this thing is clearly a robot, and it does not in any way have feelings, but with its cute heart shaped eyes, it makes people feel better, even people who were initially skeptics. To me, that reveals how hard-wired our emotional structure is that even when we know something is a machine running on a program, it can still trigger social responses.
Watch
What: TED, Why People Believe They Can’t Draw
https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_shaw_why_people_believe_they_can_t_draw
Why: If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know that I’ve been working on doing a daily sketch for almost two years now. Mostly I’m self taught - the last art class I had was in 1988, during my freshman year of college. In between then and now I’ve had a few stints of trying to get back into drawing, but never done it for a sustained period. I started my drawing discipline almost two years ago because I could feel a part of my brain was atrophying. I was spending a lot of hours thinking about my work, about writing and teaching, and I knew I wasn’t engaging visual and motor skills. I could also feel I was burning out.
In this video, Graham Shaw shows the audience how to draw some simple cartoon figures in a matter of a few minutes. If you listen to the video, pay attention to the audience’s reaction as they pick up pen and paper and start following along. What you hear is a steady flow of laughter as the members of the audience realize that they can, in fact, draw. There is a joy that is present when Shaw gives them permission to make art. There’s a lifetime of practice between drawing “Spike” and the Mona Lisa, but someone who draws is an artist. The difference between being an artist and being a great artist is that lifetime of practice and study, but an artist is one who makes art. Anyone can be an artist, and making art opens a door to a different part of the brain, and to the joy of creating.
In the last part of the video, Shaw shows how even people who have suffered stroke-induced aphasia (the loss of ability to understand or express speech) can learn to draw. Once again, the joy is palpable.
If you’re looking to add a little joy to your life, I encourage you to check out Shaw’s video and consider spending a little time drawing. It’s important to exercise different parts of your brain. Most of us work in knowledge roles that exercise particular parts of our brain. But I think we need to consciously exercise as much of the brain as possible. Otherwise our brains start to look like a weightlifter who only exercises his upper body and never his legs - all out of balance - capable of less than is possible.
Listen
What: First Person, Why for Some Spaniards the Wounds of the Civil War Never Healed
Why: This summer my wife and I visited Dublin, Ireland for the first time. I have to admit, I know very little about Irish history. We learned a lot about the process of the country’s independence and came to appreciate how important those events are to determining Irish identity today. I was reflecting on that as I listened to this story about how Spaniards are still trying to get on after the legacy of Franco’s fascism (he came to power in 1939 with the help of Hitler and Mussolini and stayed in power until his death in 1972). I also have to admit I know very little about the Spanish Civil War and the history that followed. This podcast talks about trying to knit back together a country that was divided for decades, with gross injustices having been perpetrated by government leaders even well after Franco’s death. In order to return to democracy and to prevent another civil war with the victims trying to punish those who held power and committed atrocities under Franco and his followers, the country adopted a deliberate policy of forgetting. The podcast refers to it as a culture of forgetting, as if the years of dictatorship just never happened. How else can you go on living next to the people who might have been responsible for or benefited from the murder of family members? And yet, the only way a society can move forward from something like that is to have a degree of letting go of righteous grievances - because the alternative is civil war. However, the podcast specifically talks about a filmmaker who is trying to investigate and expose some of the injustices. As I listened to this discussion, I couldn’t help but think about how any society deals with history like this. On the one hand, a society has to let go of righteous grievance in order to move forward, on the other, forgetting is its own injustice.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
Have a great weekend and do amazing things!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." - Henry David Thoreau