"We'll know we're doing it right when half of the pages are ugly."

In this video of his talk at PSFK CONFERENCE NYC, Clay Shirky talks about the work of Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. After working there as an assistant professor for almost ten years, Shirky describes five student projects that he thinks are pushing the creative boundaries - from interface design to how people cluster to build new work. At the end of the talk, the technology thought-leader compares creatives as members of a philharmonic orchestra and wonders if any rules can be drawn from looking at such an ensemble.

That's all well and good, Chris Rock says—as long as D actually releases his music. "You've got to earn it, man," he tells me, adding that the only reason fans aren't disappointed by Jeff Buckley, the celebrated singer-songwriter who recorded just one album, is that he drowned. "Body of work, babe. It's all body of work at the end of the day. I mean, the only way D's going to be a great artist with the output he has now is if he dies."

So how do we spot the future—and how might you? The seven rules that follow are not a bad place to start. They are the principles that underlie many of our contemporary innovations. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/ff_spotfuture/all/1?utm_source=WhatCountsEmail

there would come a time, especially playing with great musicians, that something magical would happen, something, that if you named it, could vanish in an instant. You would watch it, feel it, know it was there, but, somehow, you knew not to acknowledge it, because the moment you did, you would spook it and it would be gone.

It's an amazing preamble to a great photo.