Friday, January 1, 2016

Creative, creative--too much of a great thing?

I have not posted for more than a month...Why? Because there is too much creativity going around. It's like trying to drink out of a fire hose...


Or is it really creativity? Sometimes I see stories and programs dubbed with the Creativity description just because they are different than what the organization did before...so they got "creative."

People jump "out of the box," "get told to stay in the box," "make a new kind of box," or think up weird whimsical products that really address no real need or impulse. Examples: A gizmo to give the bike lane a green light faster when it rains...or a little rocker you can stand on at your standing desk...Both of these sound dangerous. How about those flaming Hoverboards, too?

Creativity--to me, anyhow--means conjuring something out of nothing, or destroying something harmful and putting something helpful in its place. Or maybe something just intriguing or beautiful.

The Apple watch--people had a watch to tell time. They had a phone to access the internet. The buttons were teeny...Not a huge seller...

All this wearable technology...Do you want your clothes buzzing you or bossing you around?

I saw a device the other day that will analyze what you put in a cup...The cup does it. Someone said, "So you're holding a beer, you put it in the cup and it says, 'This is beer'? So what."

So as we drag ourselves into the largely random world of news and discoveries and inventions to start another year...We need to look for the truly creative. The truly new. Or the truly new way of doing something truly old.