The Importance of Fear, Risk and Hacking

15 February 2010 | tech | Tags: Fear, Hacking, Importance, Risk

Last week I met Gever Tulley, author of the provocatively-titled “Fifty Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do.” The book grew out of a 2007 TED talk about why embracing and exploring danger ultimately lessens it. (See! Good things do come out of TED. Let the TED-TechCrunch healing begin!) The book doesn’t advocate playing in traffic, but it does extol the virtues of things like super-gluing your fingers together, boiling water on the stove in a paper cup, and putting metal in the microwave.

He talked about the decrease in “tinkering” in America and linked it to Americans seeking an appearance of affluence, i.e. only poor people would try to fix their own sink, anyone else would call a plumber. Tulley is a big believer that this is bad for kids and by extension the country. I’ll take it a step further—I think it’s bad for American entrepreneurship.

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3 Responses to “The Importance of Fear, Risk and Hacking”

1 Mohit Says:
February 15th, 2010 saat: 11:27 pm
Letting science stay underfunded in school and letting unprovable theories creep into the educational system is also going to do a fair share of damage to public school kids from backwards parts of this country. They will be at a huge disadvantage to kids from other countries and those from better parts of America.
2 Michael Says:
February 15th, 2010 saat: 11:57 pm
I completely agree with you, I see my generation just having everything handed to them – No one takes responsibility for their actions because they will just have Mommy or Daddy take care of it for them.

None of my friends take the initiative to learn, explore and tinker, while you will see me take apart a brand new electronic device so I can see how it truly works.

It is the first hand experience that is really invaluable to learning about yourself and how to handle situations.
3 Andy Says:
February 16th, 2010 saat: 12:40 am
Good post, Sarah. The fact that there needs to be a book for kids about how to have spontaneous fun is sad.

There’s another TED talk (Sir Ken Robinson) that I loved that ties into this brilliantly. Schools are all about getting every questions right. As a result, students don’t take risks because failure is conditioned against. But innovation only comes from failure: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html