Posted by Gavin Doughtie
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:04:00 GMT
Creativity is in the air.
Jill is writing her novel for NaNoWriMo, and Paul Graham is talking about new ideas for startups.
Me, I’m just trying to catch up after blowing off nearly all the boring, responsible stuff in my life to prep demos of xdraw for Web 2.0 and RubyConf.
At work, I’m derriere-deep in Purify and Valgrind, hunting down memory leaks.
Something I’ve noticed about creativity. It often needs to be preceded and followed by periods of “plain old work.”
Somewhere in the repetition, and boredom, and frustration of just working through something, you think “a #@!# computer could do this.” and POW!
That’s where they come from, for me, anyway.
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Posted by Gavin Doughtie
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 21:32:00 GMT
I remember I met a mainframe programmer once who could compile IBM assembly code in his head.
Do you think he really misses doing that now?
People are creative, resourceful, pleasure-loving, inventive and funny.
So, why do we ennoble jobs that turn these wonderful creatures into interchangeable machines? Why do we fight to make assembly-line jobs high-paying?
We should be fighting to make it unprofitable to employ human beings in any endevour that is unpleasant, dangerous, demeaning or dull. Ancient Greek steam engines were never adopted because slaves were too cheap. Let’s go the other way, now that we live here in the future. Let’s push to make automation so cheap that even slaves are more expensive. (That way, you see, there’s no reason to have slaves).
Posted in Creativity, Software | 2 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Gavin Doughtie
Thu, 13 Oct 2005 22:38:00 GMT
This morning on NPR I heard a piece about Chicago’s famed Second City improv comedy group teaching their techniques to Fortune 500 groups.
They mentioned the principle of “Yes, and” as opposed to “No, but.”
Macolm Gladwell talks about this in Blink
. When improvising, if another player offers you a situation (“It seems as if your head is on fire.”) you must accept the situation and build on it (“Yes, can you put another log on it?” rather than “My head isn’t on fire, it’s your eyes that are burning.”)
I think the current entrepreneurial boom is a movement of “Yes, and” rather than, “No, but.”
Yes, we can make that happen. AND we can do it quickly and cheaply. AND we can build upon software that is freely available.
Funny how things can work out.
Posted in Creativity, Web 2.0 | 2 comments | no trackbacks
