Increased technology leads to an age of creativity
Jason Takahashi
Issue date: 2/27/09 Section: Opinions/Editorial
There is a lot of talk about how future historians will define the 21st century. Many wonder if this is a time in which diversity and tolerance, as defined by the recent presidential election, will begin to cascade over society.
Others ask if it is the century in which the human race finally twists the knife we have placed into the belly of Mother Earth a full 360 degrees. I think the most viable description, however, is that this will be a century defined by creativity - that we stand to play ball with the inherent invisible architecture of this world and relentlessly create with superb beauty and intent, not only to redefine this world, but to reclassify what it means to be human.
Masahiko Inakage, Dean of the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, writes in a message to prospective students about the nature of this transition:
"We are witnessing the emergence of a 'creative society,' a world in which creativity, rather than productivity or efficiency, is the driving force of the global economy ... In the 21st century, the emergence of digital technologies has reduced the impediments to human creativity. As these impediments are eliminated, our industrial foundations are changing; the potential for a creative society is now emerging. Fifty years ago, industry began to introduce digital technology as a means of improving productivity and rationalizing distribution.
"The growth of the Internet, increasing computer processing power and decreasing prices empower us to utilize this technology to change the foundations upon which our lives are built. Today, virtually anyone can, very easily, engage in the same creative activities that were only open to the world's top creators during the industrial age of the 20th century. We now have a society in which we are able to make unrestricted use of our individual abilities. Nothing illustrates this more than the world of the Internet, where users freely create and distribute to the world their own content."
I often times find myself envisioning a digitally sophisticated society with free and safe Internet access, that knows how to grow its own food, harvest its own rainwater, renew its energy resources, and recultivate life on this planet. A society which could freely explore nature and knowledge simultaneously, and begin to bridge the gaps that have been created throughout the historical process between nature and ourselves.
Such a society could digitally consolidate the current obsession with material things, and develop a system of economics and trade that was not about scarcity and dependence, but abundance and support. We would have to work very hard, but it wouldn't be like the work we have always known. The widespread mental and emotional disequilibrium of our current society could begin to be healed as we reconnected with the nurturing spirit of the Gaian mind of which we are all shadows of; the matrix of creative energy itself.
America, if anywhere, undoubtedly has the resources and talent to make something like this occur, but it seems that we must be willing to see ourselves and this world in a new light.
First off, the idea that we are separate from this planet and one another is no longer relevant; digital communications have illustrated this profoundly by ushering in the age of the global village and to deny this fundamental aspect of reality will most likely lead to mental and physical illness on monumental scales.
Secondly, each and every human being has a place in this world and a talent to share; education as defined by the 20th century, with overemphasis on testing and attention spans, continues to undermine the capabilities of the human mind, unnecessarily rendering individuals inoperable. Lastly, nature is intelligent and it has given the talking monkeys the tools to think for themselves.
We should take this as a great honor. In geological time, we have made a 4.7 second dash 50 yard dash from nomadism to high-technocracy, but if we cannot take the time to listen to the music and not just the words, much will be lost.
Jason Takahashi is official Seeker of the Skidmore Quidditch team and keeper of the Room of Requirement at DATDA.wordpress.com
Others ask if it is the century in which the human race finally twists the knife we have placed into the belly of Mother Earth a full 360 degrees. I think the most viable description, however, is that this will be a century defined by creativity - that we stand to play ball with the inherent invisible architecture of this world and relentlessly create with superb beauty and intent, not only to redefine this world, but to reclassify what it means to be human.
Masahiko Inakage, Dean of the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, writes in a message to prospective students about the nature of this transition:
"We are witnessing the emergence of a 'creative society,' a world in which creativity, rather than productivity or efficiency, is the driving force of the global economy ... In the 21st century, the emergence of digital technologies has reduced the impediments to human creativity. As these impediments are eliminated, our industrial foundations are changing; the potential for a creative society is now emerging. Fifty years ago, industry began to introduce digital technology as a means of improving productivity and rationalizing distribution.
"The growth of the Internet, increasing computer processing power and decreasing prices empower us to utilize this technology to change the foundations upon which our lives are built. Today, virtually anyone can, very easily, engage in the same creative activities that were only open to the world's top creators during the industrial age of the 20th century. We now have a society in which we are able to make unrestricted use of our individual abilities. Nothing illustrates this more than the world of the Internet, where users freely create and distribute to the world their own content."
I often times find myself envisioning a digitally sophisticated society with free and safe Internet access, that knows how to grow its own food, harvest its own rainwater, renew its energy resources, and recultivate life on this planet. A society which could freely explore nature and knowledge simultaneously, and begin to bridge the gaps that have been created throughout the historical process between nature and ourselves.
Such a society could digitally consolidate the current obsession with material things, and develop a system of economics and trade that was not about scarcity and dependence, but abundance and support. We would have to work very hard, but it wouldn't be like the work we have always known. The widespread mental and emotional disequilibrium of our current society could begin to be healed as we reconnected with the nurturing spirit of the Gaian mind of which we are all shadows of; the matrix of creative energy itself.
America, if anywhere, undoubtedly has the resources and talent to make something like this occur, but it seems that we must be willing to see ourselves and this world in a new light.
First off, the idea that we are separate from this planet and one another is no longer relevant; digital communications have illustrated this profoundly by ushering in the age of the global village and to deny this fundamental aspect of reality will most likely lead to mental and physical illness on monumental scales.
Secondly, each and every human being has a place in this world and a talent to share; education as defined by the 20th century, with overemphasis on testing and attention spans, continues to undermine the capabilities of the human mind, unnecessarily rendering individuals inoperable. Lastly, nature is intelligent and it has given the talking monkeys the tools to think for themselves.
We should take this as a great honor. In geological time, we have made a 4.7 second dash 50 yard dash from nomadism to high-technocracy, but if we cannot take the time to listen to the music and not just the words, much will be lost.
Jason Takahashi is official Seeker of the Skidmore Quidditch team and keeper of the Room of Requirement at DATDA.wordpress.com
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