WHERE GOOD IDEAS COME FROM by Steven Johnson. How To Hack An "A-Ha!" Moment. You already see your future. Not through psychic powers, but through the lens of your memories. With every step and breath you take, your brain is automatically pulling from memories to cast quick-fire assumptions about your circumstances, the people you meet, what is or isn't possible. This "remembering the future" wiring in the brain allows you to efficiently plan, make decisions, and take action. Without it, you'd be completely incapacitated, having to acquaint yourself with everything in your surroundings at all time. No assumptions. Memories are the starting point for thinking about the future. The solution: You have to know more about more things. Because we can't beat the brain's hardwiring, we've got to train it by routinely introducing new information, people, settings, sensations, and experiences in order to expand our databank of memories.
The big payoff is what happens when new information collides with established memories. You see, the much-coveted Aha! Schedule your knit. James Morrison. The Creativity Post. In full: Open letter to Creative Scotland - News. THIS is the full letter sent to Creative Scotland, and signed by 100 Scottish artists Dear Sir Sandy, We write to express our dismay at the ongoing crisis in Creative Scotland. A series of high-profile stories in various media are only one sign of a deepening malaise within the organisation, the fall-out from which confronts those of us who work in the arts in Scotland every day.
Routinely, we see ill-conceived decision-making; unclear language, lack of empathy and regard for Scottish culture. This letter is not about money. In his address to Holyrood, Mr Dixon asked why more artists do not address their concerns to him directly: the answer is straightforward; they have. It is time for a fresh start. 1. genuinely acknowledge the scale of the problem; 2. affirm the value of stable two to three year funding for small arts organisations; 3. end the use of business-speak and obfuscating jargon in official communication; 6. ensure that funding decisions are taken by people with artform expertise;
The Role of "Ripeness" in Creativity and Discovery: Arthur Koestler's Seminal Insights, 1964. By Maria Popova “The Latin verb cogito for ‘to think’ etymologically means ‘to shake together.’” What a wonderful Rube Goldberg machine of discovery literature is, the countless allusions and references in a book guiding you to yet more great works. This was the case with the recent Dancing About Architecture: A Little Book of Creativity, which first flagged the 1939 gem A Technique for Producing Ideas and now brings us to The Act Of Creation (public library) — a seminal treatise on creativity, penned by Hungarian-British journalist and author Arthur Koestler in 1964.
In this magnificent 700-page tome, Koestler itemizes the principles of creativity — “the conscious and unconscious processes underlying scientific discovery, artistic originality, and comic inspiration” — and sets out to outline a common pattern that can be trained and perfected. But, Koestler argues, there is one necessary condition for this combinatorial creative fusion — which he terms “bisociation” — to take place. Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle. John Bohannon: Dance vs. powerpoint, a modest proposal.