From Bruce Townsend, Actinic
I’m suffering from Facebook Fatigue and Twitter Block. I don’t know what to say any more. I need inspiration, and guess what? Technology isn’t providing it – quite the reverse. There seems to be something horribly soporific about my laptop screen, and the longer I sit in front of it, the duller my mind becomes.
Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever getting a great deal of creative inspiration when sitting at my computer. Doodling on bits of paper, yes. Or bouncing ideas around with friends and colleagues. Even catnapping and daydreaming. But not sitting at a PC. Maybe I just haven’t got the right software, or my brain doesn’t work the right way. But that’s how it is, for me at any rate.
Perhaps it’s no great surprise, though. When did you last see Google make an intuitive leap, or Excel have a hunch? The truth is that even the best data-mining applications and the most advanced artificial intelligence programming cannot approach the subconscious creative power of the human brain – especially multiple human brains interacting together.
So I say ‘vive la technologie!’ and long may it advance. But if we try to rely on it too much, our ideas may dry up and our marketing stagnate, while more inventive, free-thinking competitors forge ahead.