I've been meaning to ask for some time. You keep talking about creativity
and entropy production as key to self-organization (forgive me if I mess
up the concepts; I'm getting closer, I think). When I think of
creativity, I think of making (composing, performing) music, creating art
work, writing poetry, prose or essays, and the like. (I have found some
of those stimulating.) What I find helps me very much these days is
reading and reflecting. It's as if I find it very helpful to read and
consume new (to me) ideas at some stable rate and then synthesize ideas or
actions or behaviors from that. It feels as if the contribution I can
make is somehow proportional to my rate of assimilation of new ideas. (Of
course --- and borrowing from Tom Peter's "Circle of Innovation" book ---
it seems also to imply forgetting at some perhaps stable rate, too.) If I
read too little, I eventually begin to feel mentally starved.
So, is this another example of the creativity you describe? If so, is the
creativity in the synthesis? If not, how does this fit in?
Obviously, reading on this list is one example of that inhaling of new
ideas, but it's only one.
Thanks,
Bill
--
Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co.
R&D Engineering Processes Lake Stevens Division
domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330
phone: (425) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road
fax: (425) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298
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