About NonToxin.com

Who should read NonToxin.com? What purpose does it serve?

1. What is NonToxin.com NOT About?

29 June, 2007: Apple launches iPhone.

30 June, 2007: Gazillion people blog about it!

Everyone is chasing the hot new thing out there and blogging about it. As a result, the world is drowning in non essential information. Its time to downgrade information and upgrade wisdom. Enter NonToxin.com

NonToxin.com promises to never publish hot-now-gone-tomorrow posts. No tech. No gossip. No politics.

2. What is NonToxin.com About?

“When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines and cultures, you combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas! Innovations and creativity flourishes at the intersections.” – Frans Johansson (The Medici Effect)

Merging two products to come up with a new innovation: the butter stick!

Henry Ford revolutionizes the automobile industry because he looks outside his industry and learns the trick of using an assembly line from the meat-packing industry.

Normal people become geniuses when they stumble upon intersections of two different fields.

NonToxin.com walks through the road less traveled. It covers various different esoteric and random fields and subjects that main stream press stays away from. So that you can find your own intersection and come up with your own revolutionary idea.

3. Why Should You Read NonToxin.com?

Its 1931. Norman Maier at the University of Michigan wants to explore how people solve problems. He attaches two cords to the ceiling of his lab and asks people to tie the two ends together. The trick is that the two cords are just far enough apart that, while holding on to one cord, you can’t reach the other cord.

To help participants out, Norman places some objects around the room which people are allowed to use. There are extension cords, poles, clamps and weights. Most people quickly work out that tying an extension cord or a pole to one of the cords solves the problem. These seemingly obvious answers doesn’t satisfy Norman though… he is looking for a specific, simple and elegant solution. (Swing the damn rope).

So what he does is he keeps asking people to come up with new solutions. When they attach the extension cord, he’d say: “OK, now do it a different way.” And he keeps doing this until they run out of solutions. Most people then just stand there – stumped.

When people would run out of solutions, Norman would accidentally brush against one of the ropes and set it swinging. Within minutes of the accident, most people would come up with the new solution themselves: they would attach a weight to the rope and set it swinging. They would then grab the other rope and reach for the swinging rope when it comes towards them and tie them both together.

The twist of this experiment is: when Norman interviews the participants later on and asks them how they thought of swinging the rope, only 1/3rd of them say that Norman’s accident gave them the clue! 2/3rds came up with their own alternate reasonings!

You may think that NonToxin.com’s eclectic mix of posts may just be entertaining. But they work as clues. Clues that will make you more creative… smarter… and help you find ingenious solutions to difficult problems – most of the time without your conscious knowledge.