Dimension switching and scaling

Imagine you are holding an object in your hand. It has visible properties such as color or size. It can be heavy or light. In your mind you can make it smaller or bigger, blue or green. You can feel the texture of the object, make it rugged or smooth, cold or warm. You can smell the object, you can even taste the object. Go on, this is just a thought experiment. It might make you smile but it’s not that dangerous.

Now, drop the object. Does it make a sound when it hits the surface? Is the sound quiet or loud? A light soft object falling on a soft ground makes a different sound than a fragile glass object falling on a stone floor. Add a time dimension. Think about someone who did this experiment a hundred years ago, who did it repeatedly for ten days and never cleaned up the broken glass from the floor.

The more angles of an issue we want to consider, the more properties with their effects we want to identify. A property can be a simple sensory experience, like a color, loudness, softness or weight. It could also be a more abstract concept, such as time, richness or complexity. Each property you add to an idea brings a new dimension to it. When you reduce or increase the value of a property, you are scaling it down an up.

First, learn to recognize these dimensions and then play with them to see how you can generate new ideas by altering them. You can imagine all sorts of things with a little practice. Switching between dimensions and scaling them up and down works like an exercise for your imagination.