I just read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Blink, which is a wonderful exploration of our ability to "thin-slice" the world around us: to rapidly make judgements at an intuitive, almost instantaneous level. I expected, but never encountered Pascal's quote "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

One of the issues that arises in a world full of real time information feeds is how to thin-slice when we are attention-starved. I have written a lot about continuous partial arttention, which sounds like a disorder, but is actually a winning strategy for thin-slicing many different information feeds on a time-sliced basis. However, effective CPA will require more technology better suited to thin-time-slicing than conventional technologies geared toward traditional full attention modes of use.

One simple example are the increasingly prevalent "tombstones" -- those small, transient windows that emerge from the toolbar on your PC -- that indicate some state change of interest: a friend has come online, an appointment reminder has come into a warning state, or your MP3 player's sync has completed. They come, you momentarily shift attention to register the snippet of info, and then shift back -- or maybe follow that info nugget, by IMing a buddy who has just come online.

But the other side of our brains -- away from text and foreground focus -- haven't really been tapped very well in the business context.

I stumbled across a piece in Wired about Accentus, who is trying to help financial traders thin-slice using music. In lieu of graphs, charts, and text -- which are based on using eye focus and reading centers of the brain, Accentus software indicates various sorts of state changes in the financial world through different sorts of musical sounds. This exploits a rich "vocabulary" of music innate in people's (except for the tone deaf) brains.

Scott Kirsner

[from Listening to the market]

You hear: Staccato G, B, and C coming from a bassoon
It means: Dow Jones is up 50 points on the day, most recent move up 10.

You hear: Harpsichord playing two notes, second higher than first
It means: German DAX index just ticked up.

You hear: Short ascending clarinet melody
It means: Canadian dollar gains 0.1 percent against US dollar.

You hear: Lush strings, punctuated by ascending double bass notes
It means: Trade made on options portfolio; risk position moved up by $6,000.

Years ago, when I was a researcher, I could could tell if my compiling of a program had been successful or not by the noise that the Unix hard drive made. Our ability to make sense of subtle auditory feedback cues will be a huge area of growth over the next few years.

This is probably another are that we should look at massively parallel online games for innovation: whatever becomes commonplace there will be adopted by business, in some form, by the end of the decade. The idea of playing an online game without instant messaging is inconceivable; while many in business still operate without it, as if that makes sense today.