Dina blogs me: Conversations with Dina
And also added a comment to my previous post.
Its amazing how much we can learn from observing children
You certainly can - I have three of them so you learn a lot about social interaction, developmental learning, experimentation etc.
Have you read the book Serious Play by Michael Schrage?
Erm.. its one of several books I have on creativity but have only really skim read a couple of chapters. I should keep up to date with my reading list but with the three children (and blogging) I haven't been creative enough to figure a way of doing it!
But undoubtedly the greatest asset of childhood is lack of presumptions which make for a great creativity aide!
Absolutely, creativity and humour too!
Avi also points to his take on creativity:
Enticing them from their own realm, we have at time trapped in the imbroglio of non-realisation, for fears of one’s own. Instead of allowing them, as ideas, to seed other ideas, we stockade them with copyrights. Leave ideas unfulfilled, unrealised, because we had doubts about our own abilities.
and
If ideas truly have a realm of their own, and we bring them across to serve our purpose, should we approach ideas with such callousness? Or should we interact with a greater degree of sensitivity? For, after all they do come in to colour our existence!
Avi has an almost spiritual wonderment about ideas and that's an interesting perspective, together with his notions about imprisonment.
It reminds me rather too conveniently about the film 'A Beautiful Mind', that I happened to watch last night. In terms of John Nash's utter desire to have an original thought and pursue it (the idea which would eventually gain him the 'Nobel' prize for Economics) and the imprisonment of his creativity through a combination of mental illness and its attempted mitigation (certainly not cure). But most importantly the fact that his original thought eventually led to other applications, to his idea being used in new contexts and its importance steadily growing from this reuse until his eventual honour and recognition.
What is sacrificed by patents and the 'stockading' of ideas? I think (and I am no expert) that Nash's theory (apparently the Nash Equilibrium) actually speaks to this. Pursuit of a selfish goal, at the expense of others will ultimately lead to a loss for the greater good and perhaps even the individual. Co-operation may see less advantage for the individual but far greater advantage for the community. (Anyway click on the link and judge for yourself - I am unfortunately not an expert on game theory!)
Posted by Paul Goodison at August 11, 2003 10:05 PM | TrackBack