In May of 2011, at a San Francisco CreativeMornings event, Kevin Kelly delivered a talk entitled “Possibilities” in which he delivers a wonderful shake up of creative inspiration. A recording of the presentation is embedded below. I’ll reserve further comment until you’ve had a chance to view it clean.

On the surface of it he just reads for several minutes arbitrarily arranged sentences accompanied by a slideshow of random images. This is at least what it feels like at first. After listening, thinking, and watching for a while, though, you’re taken in by this oddly intriguing, strangely inspiring flow of information.

One of the most peculiar things about the way Kelly delivered these bits of insight is that he did so without attribution. Hearing quotations without any indication of where they came from strips them of a potentially distracting layer of information.

The images add another dimension, appealing to the senses in a way that colors the ordinary way in which we evaluate information coming in the form of proverbial quotations.

The content of this “scrapbook,” as Kelly describes it, while it is not addressing exclusively the topic of creativity and inspiration, lends itself to having the kind of effect upon the hearer that engenders creative thinking and problem solving. The quotations come across as proverbs of a sort. They cause sparks and flashes of light. They knock down the cobwebs clogging the less trafficked hallways of the mind.

Two more things stand out to me about this experiment in presentation, which I believe can shed some light on how we understand creativity and the inspiration it emerges from.

Art as Event

Kelly says in reply to the first question from the audience, “I think the act of me presenting it made it into something more than what it was, even to me.” Artists have used time in a number of ways to create and display art, and it seems to me Kelly has hit on an intriguing way to do art as an event.

Public speaking like this tends to carry with it such a calculation of knowledge and conclusion based explanation that it is rarely an opportunity for discovery, certainly not for the speaker. The {presenter = teacher : hearer = learner} model is certainly a useful one, but not the only useful one. Kelly has assumed a special kind of humility here in taking his “scrapbook,” a simple artifact of his own curiosity, and making it into the centerpiece of his presentation in a way that was able to surprise even him.

I wonder how else this type of experimental presentation might be used. What other topics are there, with respect to which we have too high a presumption of understanding?

Everything is a Remix

Another noteworthy aspect of Kelly’s presentation is the way in which he blatantly steals the content. Copyright legalists of course cringe at such things, but it draws attention to a now quite commonly recognized fact: little if any creativity is entirely original. Most, in fact, is to some degree copied or stolen. As it was once playfully expressed by Picasso, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.” Or in the words of Kirby Ferguson, “Creation requires influence. Everything we make is a remix of existing creations, our lives, and the lives of others.”

Every creative act depends upon the materials available to the artist and the store of previous work from which they might lift an idea, an approach, or a spark of inspiration. In proper perspective we find that copying and theft are not so much a blotch on the character of creativity as they are a part of the very nature of art. They are, as it were, proverbial elements of the wisdom guiding all creativity.

Billy Collins, one of the greatest genius-thieves in contemporary poetry, describes it eloquently in The Trouble with Poetry:

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

If you want to dwell a little longer on Kelly’s proverbs of creative wisdom in the old form of the written word, here are some of my favorite statements from the presentation, for some of which I found the original authors–couldn’t resist my curiosity (:

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. – Albert Einstein

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification. – Karl Popper

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. – Philip K. Dick

Fun is better than winning. – the Oaqui

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls, and looks like work. – Thomas Edison

Specialization is for insects. – Robert A. Heinlein

The future is the only thing we can improve.

Open criticism is the only anecdote to error.

Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before. – Dwight Eisenhower

Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing. – Wernher von Braun

Man is a genius when he is dreaming. – Akira Kurosawa

Art is in the omission …

One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas. – Victor Hugo

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard

The way to do is to be. – Lao Tzu

We are prisoners of our own metaphors, metaphorically speaking. – R. Buckminster Fuller

You mean my whole fallacy is wrong? – Woody Allen

An invention should make simple things easy and hard things possible.

Never mistake a clear view for a short distance. – Paul Saffo

Technology is anything that was invented after you were born. – Alan Kay

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. – Winston Churchill

When you are through changing, you are through. – Bruce Barton

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m not that smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. – Albert Einstein

The distance between insanity and genius is only measured by success. – Bruce Feirstein

Of all lies, art is the least untrue. – Gustave Flaubert

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life. – Oscar Wilde (this one seems like the aesthetic version of Marshall MacLuhan’s famous remark about technology: “We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.”)

Size is the enemy of growth.

The line dividing the real and the imaginary is more imaginary than real. (reminds me of Waldo Emerson’s lines on the division between human and divine: “Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, | Severing rightly his from thine, | Which is human, which divine.)

The present is pregnant with the future. – Voltaire

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done. – Henry Ford

The future always arrives too fast, and in the wrong order. – Alvin Toffler

If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said “faster horses.” – Henry Ford

If you’re not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original. – Sir Ken Robinson

The chief cause of problems is solutions. – Eric Sevareid

Life is a near death experience.

It’s not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas. – Edwin Land

It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. – John Andrew Holmes

I criticize by creation – not by finding fault. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. – Freeman Dyson

Keep making new mistakes.

Never waste a crisis.

The more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards. – Arthur Koestler

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad. – Salvador Dali

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything. – Thomas Edison

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me. – Sigmund Freud

Every person takes the limit of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. – Arthur Schopenhauer

Embrace the alien within.

The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. – William Gibson

Institutions are halfway houses for the temporarily uninspired.

What is best in music is not found in the notes. – Gustav Mahler

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. – Scott Adams

Small minds are amazed by the extraordinary. Great minds are amazed by the ordinary. – Blaise Pascal

Are we being good ancestors? – Jonas Salk

Put on your armor.
Take up your arms.

At the heart
of the status quo
you will find all the things that
resist all the changes
the world needs
from you.

Put on your armor.
Take up your arms.

Horace Vernet, "The Soldier on the Field of Battle" (1818)

Put on your armor.
Take up your arms.

It isn’t you
who believes this
is just the way the world works.
You know what has to change.
You know what has to be done.
You live
in a world of need, yours
and everyone else’s, and you have weapons
for this war.
You have work to do,
and whatever it is to which you are called,

Put on your armor.
Take up your arms.

for the tyranny of the game
the powers of this age
want you to play
will not go away and will not be shut down
until you

Put on your armor.
Take up your arms.

Inspired by Sacha Dichter‘s #Trust30 prompt, Call to Arms:

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the “call to arms” note you’re sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, Board) charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next 5 years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see, preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.

You’re just written your own job description. You know what you have to do. Go!

(bonus: send it to the CEO with the title “The things we absolutely have to get right – nothing else matters.”)

Here’s how Think Watson describes it:

Not every job requires you to be a great critical thinker, but most do! Of course doctors and judges need above-average critical thinking and problem solving skills, but did you know critical thinking is just as important for archeologists and school counselors? Athletic trainers, sales managers, and real estate appraisers also need to know how to evaluate both sides of an issue, draw logical conclusions, and make good decisions.

There are some pretty significant deficiencies here, however. It’s difficult to judge, though, since no clear rationale or criteria are given to explain what went into the selection of titles, where the data came from, or of what kind it is. It actually looks as though critical thinking may have been confused with levels of education and compensation associated with various occupations. In fact, the thin bit of background information given at the bottom of the page suggests just this.

Another problem, as indicated in the comments on Think Watson’s own article, is that several professions are not clearly identified, and others are left out altogether. This may be due in part to the fact that many professions have only the managerial positions within them represented. This is somewhat misleading given the vast differences between management and non-management work. Being a Marketing Manager, for instance, presents a very different set of challenges and responsibilities than does the “lower level” work of a Marketing and Advertising Design. If the graphic included a section for Graphic Designer, this distinction might be overlooked, but it does not. The same goes for Sales Managers and Salespeople.

Here are some of the listings I believe would need to be included for this to a more accurate and reliable visualization:

• Teachers & Professors
• Creative Professionals (designers, artists, authors, etc.)
• Military Officers
• Politicians (congressmen/women, governors, etc.)
• Investors (e.g. venture capitalists, angel investors)
• Marketers & Advertisers
• Salespeople
• Clergy
• Entrepreneurs (e.g. small business owners)
• Philanthropists (e.g. charities, non-profits)

A more thorough list of jobs would take this the fist step in a better direction. The most challenging step is finding a more trustworthy way to measure the degree of critical thinking each profession does indeed require, and figuring out how to quantify that.

I think Think Watson has given us a good solution to the design challenge, though. The visualization is engaging, and it does illustrate the general but crucially important point that skills in critical thinking are required in nearly every job and profession. The more adept at it you are, and I would add the more attentive to developing and applying it you are, the more likely it is to improve your work performance, possibly even your life.

Citation via thinkwatson.com

Update

I received a kind response from one of the folks at Think Watson indicating they agree with this analysis, and are planning to update the graphic soon. Stay tuned for the new version.

I used to believe that
escaping the world and fading
into the powers of the mind
was the way
of enlightenment,
the way of discovery,
even truth.

But the mind is a puzzling body
of flickers and flame, its history
a gallery of artlessness,
and people
more the products of powers that surround
and grab them
than the expression of
their own or others’
thoughts.

Gradually
its most compelling attractions
all began to fade:
the heart, the mind, the soul,
the will with its obsessive self-fulfillment,
the spirit and
the consciousness of
self.

Then freedom, the greatest
power of them all,
rode in on a pale horse through
the clouds
in the end times
of the mind.

Inspired by Laura Kimball‘s #Trust30 prompt Speak Less:

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know I. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I once received a fortune cookie that read: “Speak less of your plans, you’ll get more done.” What’s one project that you’ve been sitting on and thinking about but haven’t made progress on? What’s stopping you? What would happen if you actually went for it and did it?

What is truer than truth?

The Story.

Visions are realized
more often as disappointments
than fulfillments
even when they turn
out, as we hope,
to be true.

Dreams are the stuff
of what we are
made of,
or have not made
yet.

I told her
the first time we ever spoke
on the phone
they are ghosts these things we seek to meet
in the dimly lit forest of the
future,
they wait
like the leaves for the fall
to divide the truth
from its author.

Something changed then.
I cannot tell even now
how it came about, but
the visions began to fade and
the dreams went back to their
children,
and we
were brought together like
paper and pen.

Inspired by Jonathan Fields‘ #Trust30 prompt, Alternative Paths:

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world buzzes about goals and visions. Focus. Create a vivid picture of exactly where you want to go. Dream big, then don’t let anything or anyone stop you. The problem, as Daniel Gilbert wrote in Stumbling Upon Happiness, is that we’re horrible at forecasting how we’ll really feel 10 or 20 years from now – once we’ve gotten what we dreamed of. Often, we get there only to say, “That’s not what I thought it would be,” and ask, “What now?” Ambition is good. Blind ambition is not. It blocks out not only distraction, but the many opportunities that might take you off course but that may also lead you in a new direction. Consistent daily action is only a virtue when bundled with a willingness to remain open to the unknown. In this exercise, look at your current quest and ask, “What alternative opportunities, interpretations and paths am I not seeing?” They’re always there, but you’ve got to choose to see them.

Blood in the urine,
a tingling down the left arm.
Walk it off, Grandma!

It’s not quite the same without the dramatic presentation, so:

Watch the full episode @ColbertNation.