![\"Age](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/AgeOfCreativity.png\")
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This 5 post series addresses as to how\u00a0“we are facing exponential threats from resource crunch and environmental degradation\u00a0and in response, we are inventing a new idea age”.<\/p>\n
There are a bunch of reason for us to believe that we have entered a new age of creativity. Another renaissance. But in its scope, this one will be like no\u00a0other. By the time it has run\u00a0its course, humankind would have, I speculate,\u00a0made a clean break with the past.<\/p>\n
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Creativity is a process of combining existing ideas\/knowledge in a new\u00a0and useful way. The process of creativity can be thought of as forming new connections in a network of ideas.\u00a0In a network, addition of\u00a0a new node encourages\u00a0sprouting new connections (image below).<\/p>\n
![\"Network](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/NetworkWithNewNode.jpg\")
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If we are considering idea generation at social level, then we can treat each human being as a node in our network.\u00a0As we have\u00a0seen in an earlier post<\/a>, bigger human population\u00a0creates more new nodes.<\/p>\n But if we ignore the physical containers of idea\/knowledge\/information,\u00a0every\u00a0new discovery\u00a0or idea\u00a0becomes another node in the fabric.\u00a0When a new node is added to a network, it makes new pathways possible (image below).<\/p>\n Birth\u00a0of an node\u00a0(idea) increases the number of existing connection (ideas), which in turn increase the possibilities\u00a0of several more connections (ideas) germinating.<\/p>\n Thus,\u00a0the new ideas increase exponentially in quantity! Today, we are seeing important new ideas coming in every day, with each new\u00a0idea begetting even more ideas.\u00a0We are getting inundated with creative opportunities. Understand the idea-inundation is key to preparing for the age of creativity.<\/p>\n New ideas have another interesting effect. When we come across novelty, it\u00a0increases\u00a0the levels of a brain chemical called dopamine. Among other things, dopamine inside our brain\u00a0increases the alertness and focus.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Brains are built in such a way that we love to work\u00a0with novel\u00a0stuff. Novelty tickles our brain cells into working with them. With so many new things\u00a0popping up all around\u00a0us,\u00a0we are all gradually becoming idea generating machines (the only way to work with a new information is to integrate it with the rest of our knowledge base, which is same as forming new connections to the novel idea).<\/p>\n Vast majority of younger generation is familiar with tools for data analysis, visualization and\u00a0(product) design. These tools are helping us to\u00a0combine\u00a0ideas much more easily, and with\u00a0far less\u00a0resources and time.<\/p>\n We also have massive interest-groups online, who come together to create, fine tune, implement and exploit new ideas. Idea generators get almost instantaneous quality feedback.\u00a0Instantaneous feedback is\u00a0the corner stone building expertise in any domain.<\/p>\n Today, we not only have more than 7 billion brains in the network, these brains are also inter-connected in a way that was unheard of even 25 years ago! While internet is\u00a0the pipeline\u00a0through which the connectivity happens,\u00a0we have several internet-dependent devices that improve the quality and pay-off of the connections.<\/p>\n Social media is one such device that helps us extract more juice out of global connectivity. The world has now become a\u00a0huge\u00a0monkey-see-monkey-do society, with each of us\u00a0learning from everyone else. Because we all show our best\u00a0face in the social media, we are learning positive habits\/attitude\u00a0from each other in unprecedented speed. And by helping us to learn to express ourselves in small steps, social media is helping us all\u00a0to become creative.<\/p>\n Other devices that help us make the world one huge melting pot are online communities, special interest groups (already discussed above), cheap\u00a0access to markets, free online education, etc.<\/p>\n We are not strangers to the win-win nature of idea sharing. However, we have had tremendous reservations in sharing ideas that brought power and money. But that has changed now.<\/p>\n Today, we have more opportunities than any one of us can handle alone. Besides, the speed of change is so rapid that there is not enough time for a single person to build sufficient expertise to\u00a0exploit a domain. Consequently, we are beginning to more freely share\u00a0all sorts of ideas.\u00a0In a world where a product has a typical life cycle of 3 to 5 years,\u00a0one lone individual trying to build an edifice out of a single idea over 20 years is often a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n We are also going through another important attitude shift: We are rediscovering the pleasure of belonging to a community.<\/p>\n We are social animals. We seem to be biologically pre-disposed to deriving pleasure from sharing. We are\u00a0taking the pleasure community\u00a0to new levels by becoming pioneers of sharing. We already share things from cars to clothes to house. Sharing, or Collaboration Economy, is becoming the next big thing and a manna for the folks keen on sustainability.<\/p>\n With the global recession, the people in the West now have more time than they have money. The resource crunch is incentivising them\u00a0to become more creative and democratizing the process of idea generation.<\/p>\n In the same time, masses of people in the developing countries across Asia and Africa are leaving poverty behind. These people now have some surplus time and money. They are beginning to explore things beyond basic\u00a0survival. There is a good chance that this population, which has leapfrogged into knowledge world, will be more adapt in working with ideas than the earlier generations that came off the boat.<\/p>\n The last factor that democratizes the idea generation process is the pressure from the serious survival threats<\/a>\u00a0that our civilization is facing presently.\u00a0Because of their exponential nature, the threats will hit us so fast that our existing creative infrastructure won’t be able to handle them. We will end up recruiting all creative faculties, every human brain that is ready to contribute.<\/p>\n In the next article<\/a> in this series, we will see what we can do to prepare for the idea age.<\/p>\n![\"New](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/NewNodeNewPathways.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNote: If you have already noticed the fractal nature of ideas, you will find intuitively understand the recursive nature of the paragraph above.<\/pre>\n
Note: Dopamine is also responsible for feel-good and libido. It also plays a major role in romance. Effect of dopamine is designed to wear off with repeated exposure. Translation: Less novelty, less dopamine.<\/pre>\n
New Tools<\/h3>\n
Global Size Melting Pot<\/h3>\n
![\"Large](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/LargeMeltingPot.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAttitude Shift<\/h3>\n
![\"Honey](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/HoneyBees.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRole of Current Economy<\/h3>\n
![\"american-financial-crisis-comparison\"](\"https:\/\/saravanan.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/american-financial-crisis-comparison.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThreat to Survival<\/h3>\n