“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”  – The Little Prince

We recently attended TEDxUSC, an event co-produced by our friend Elisa Wiefel Schreiber.  It was a day of uniformly brilliant presenters in fields like virtual reality, health care, music, and innovation and creativity in the fashion industry.

One of the more profound presentations belonged to Al Seckel, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of The Ultimate Book of Optical Illusions.  The presentation basically consisted of his thesis statement–”One cannot trust one’s perceptions, because perceptions are not reality”–followed by a series of illustrations and short film clips proving the thesis.

The context in which we receive information shapes the information.  The implications of this idea are far-reaching and deep, and touch on everything from politics to product design.

The more ubiquitous information gets to be, the more valuable our ability to contextualize information becomes.  More importantly, if one does not have the ability to think critically about context, to ’see the game,’ he or she will be setting themselves up for manipulation, and will be more likely to act on someone else’s manufactured perceptions than on reality.  And that is where trouble begins.  If you don’t see and act on your own reality, you will surely be subjected to someone else’s.

Look at this.  Then move 15 feet away and look at it again. 

Which line is longer?

Does the horizontal bar in this drawing change color?

(It does not.)