Why are the digirati so fearful of the talented, gifted, and truly creative? These techie thought leaders seem to believe they themselves have a gift, the gift of seeing the high-tech present for what it truly is, and the ability to see our digital future for what it will truly be. So why are these self-described “futurists” so disrespectful of the notion that others could have gifts as well?

Artists have gifts. Regardless of their level of commercial success, they have a way of seeing the world that is unique to each of them. We must recognize that, and not diminish their gifts or contributions to our culture by suggesting that modern technology has rendered their gifts as no more special than someone who can learn to work Garage Band on their MacBook.

As our top scientists are discovering, creativity is not something in the genome. Here’s Dr. Rex Jung’s take, quoted recently in The New York Times:

“The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B” when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. “But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways.”

Although intelligence and skill are generally associated with the fast and efficient firing of neurons, subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that have the effect of slowing nerve traffic in the brain. This slowdown in the left frontal cortex, a region where emotional and cognitive abilities are integrated, Dr. Jung suggested, “might allow for the linkage of more disparate ideas, more novelty and more creativity.”

Our digital world is built on efficiency. Never before have we been able to get from Point A to Point B faster, whether it’s needing to know RIGHT NOW how many points “Sweet D,” Walter Davis, scored during his phenomenal career with the Phoenix Suns (a whopping 15,666), or needing to purchase RIGHT NOW a Talking Towelie Plush Doll. But much like William Least Heat-Moon taught us, the most inspiring paths often involve the “blue highways,” the ones less traveled and less “efficient.”

In the era of Classical Greece, creativity was viewed as coming from one of nine muses. Some Greeks were in touch with one or more muses, others were not. The Greeks celebrated those who were connected with muses, placing these artists among those on the highest tier of society. We know today that disembodied gods are not driving creativity, creators themselves are, but can’t we continue to value them as a group apart?

I’ve gone on this rant before, but I’m inspired to do so again because I’ve learned of an upcoming documentary that appears as if it will be repeating the meme that modern technology has made us all “creators,” and thus all peers in creativity. Jaron Lanier attacks this meme in a roundabout way in “You Are Not a Gadget,” but let me say in the strongest possible terms that creativity does not stem from technology, it stems from the creative mind.

The documentary is going to be called “Press Pause Play,” and is described on a web site as “A Film About the Change in Production, Distribution & Consumption of Creative Works.” That’s a documentary I’d want to watch. For fifteen years now I’ve been tracking the changes in production, distribution and consumption of creative works. The changes vary among creative pursuits, but they are all profound. Many are of great benefit to creators, while others have them consuming time they could be using to create to instead build a “platform” or track the digital actions of those who disvalue their gifts by taking from them.

It appears the filmmakers are interviewing a lot of informed, intelligent and interesting individuals. I agree completely with many of the comments by interviewees in their trailer, such as the empowerment of individual creators from technology and the challenge of competing against, essentially, an infinite backlist of true creative works. But the trailer also suggests the filmmakers’ bias, their inclination to the “we are all creators in the 21st Century” meme. For example, they quote Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur,” but incompletely.

They have him saying this: “Everyone thinks they have a novel in them. Everyone thinks they can make a movie. Everyone thinks they can write a song.” What they don’t show — and what I’m 100% positive he then said — is him saying that not everyone can write a great novel, not everyone can make a compelling movie, not everyone can write a moving song.

I don’t know anything about the folks behind the documentary. They don’t appear to list their names on the web site. The film is being funded by Ericsson, a maker of mobile devices that can display many types of creative content.

The filmmakers didn’t ask this artist advocate for his opinion, but here goes. Technology is revolutionizing the way artists and creators operate. As I wrote recently, we now have a 21st Century Hybrid Artist. The hybrid artist embraces every tool to advance her creativity and to share that creativity with the world (on her terms). But her art itself predates all technology.

Look at the videos in our Creators Across America series. Every artist we interview discusses how they’ve embraced technology, and every artist discusses how they follow their own muse. Bevin Carnes is a gifted computer animator. Obviously her tool of expression can’t exist without computers. Yet her art — visual arts — has existed from the very beginning, from the first cave dweller who drew in the dirt with a stick.

We revere great scientific minds like Stephen Hawking. But my ability to download software programs that can crunch complicated mathematical formulas does not mean I’m going to crack a tough nut that Hawking himself hasn’t cracked, such as the Theory of Everything. Why can I not simply be another Hawking? Because Hawking thinks in creative ways — he follows those meandering blue highways — that I cannot. I accept that, and I think most others accept that they can’t think like Stephen Hawking can.

So why can’t we accept that true artists and creators, regardless of their level of commercial success, think in different ways? Why can’t we celebrate their genius?

Share this:

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 7:22 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, creativity, creators, culture, internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.