quoting the smart (7)

"Why is the creative mind so important? Because if it can be done by a machine, there’s no need for you to do it. So, more and more the rewards will go to people who can go beyond what is known, go beyond the algorithm, go beyond the already extant computer program. The cliché that’s typically used is thinking outside the box, and you’ve all heard that phrase. But what I bring to that conversation is you can’t think outside the box, unless you have a box. And the discipline and the synthesizing are the box."

-- Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This quote was taken from a podcast of his Big Ideas lecture for TVO. The lecture contains lots of fascinating thoughts on the nature of human creativity and its relationship to synthesis of past creativity.

Gardner has written Five Minds for the Future and the more recent Responsibility at Work. Two of the five minds Gardner discusses in this lecture, the "ethical" one and the "respectful" one are, I think, increasingly important.

quoting the smart (6)

"What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance."

-- Neil Postman, from Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. When I read this quotation, I see Karl Rove chuckling to himself as he watches skateboard wipeout videos on YouTube.

quoting the smart (5)

"I'm strongly opposed to carrying over from one domain of phenomenon to another a model which works in one domain but not in the other. I wouldn't want to carry over nuclear physics to the organization of society, nor even to biology. I don't want to carry over Darwinian evolutionary principles to historical changes in human societies. They're not the same.

... that's why I'm so disdainful of people who talk about cultural evolution or linguistic evolution. Why evolution? Culture has a history, language has a history; but the minute you say it's evolution there's a certain implication that the structure of Darwinian evolutionary theory can be laid on; and I, as an epistemologist, dislike that."

-- Geneticist Richard Lewontin, interviewed for CBC Radio's Ideas: How to Think About Science. I'm pretty sure he's not talking about how frontier, free-market, deregulationist capitalism is being applied to the business of cultural creation on the Internet. But what if he was?

quoting the smart (4)

"The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?"

-- David Brooks, New York Times op-ed columnist, and one smart conservative. The first candidate, Republican or Democrat, to really listen to him will win the presidency. And the country that encourages -- or demands -- intelligent, responsible digital interaction will truly advance in the "cognitive age."

quoting the smart (3)

"Now I don't personally support the idea of people using peer-to-peer technologies to commit acts that are considered illegal. So I'm not interested in peer-to-peer surviving for the purpose of enabling copyright infringement. But I am really eager that the technology be allowed to exist so that the many legal uses that it will encourage--including uses that will support the remix culture--will be able to take off."

-- Lawrence Lessig, in a 2005 interview with Richard Koman on oreillynet.com, showing how he makes a necessary distinction between sharing and taking.

quoting the smart (2)

"The fact is, the species is evolving along the airwaves, and natural selection has let me go. I dare say that, as an early life form, I'd have roared with uncomprehending rage when all my friends wanted to to leave the sea, or eat meat."

-- Poet, Hugo Williams, reflecting on the advance of technology, in his regular Freelance column in the Times Literary Supplement.

quoting the smart (1)

"The apparent democracy of today's digital networks is an artifact of their infancy. Sooner or later, all social organisms move from anarchy to hierarchy..."

-- Jonathan Franzen, Imperial Bedroom, an essay in How to be Alone