Creativity: The endangered key to our future

Originally posted: 05 December 2018

Creativity is pretty unique… no matter how intelligent computers get, I believe they will always lack the creative gene, that creative spark, the ability to make the illogical leap to say that two plus two can equal five, if we redefine what a two is.

A computer can’t be programmed to be creative, because creativity requires the intangible, the ethereal.

So, while the jobs of the future will be taken by machines, or outsourced to the developing world, the one thing that will secure the future of the developed world.

Right now, we have programmers at the top of the pay scale, and artists at the bottom, but we will live to a time where we will see that flip.

Programmers will become a dime a dozen, and creative people will be called on to provide the answers to the questions of the future.

We are already seeing this in a small way in web development.  With the rise of services like Squarespace and Wix, the programming is all the same, but it’s the design that makes a template worth more.

The question then becomes, how do we make sure we don’t kill off our creativity before we need it to save us.

People like Sir Ken Robinson has been preaching this for years over multiple TED Talks. A popular one is even titled ‘Do schools kill creativity?’, spoiler alert, the answer is Yes.

We need creative people in each Department and Agency thinking of creative solutions to our problems.

We need creative people at the Department of Energy to think about using sea currents and ocean waves for power generation.

We need creative people at the Tax Office to simplify the tax code in ways no one has thought of before.

And most importantly we need to ensure that Creativity is fostered in our schools, and to ensure our future leaders and thinkers aren’t “educated out of being creative.”.