The wisdom of crowds has become a modern motif, a “cultural mantra” adopted with zeal across party and discipline lines, Jonathan V. Last observes for In Character. Conservatives clicked with its endorsement of the free market; liberals connected with its egalitarian appeal. “And nearly everyone associated with the Internet glommed on because they understood that it was, in large part, an exaltation of the new medium that placed the World Wide Web near the center of an entire world view,” he writes.

However many good things have come from crowd-sourcing, though, Last cautions that we devalue the wisdom of individuals at our own peril. Sometimes, for example, crowds are fooled: Enron’s stock was valued at over $40/share just months before the company declared bankruptcy, he notes, proffering the parallel tale of six Cornell business school students who, studying Enron for a research project in 1998, “concluded that the company was a house of cards.”

What appears to be crowd consensus can also be skewed by a handful of vociferous or aggressive members. Those rating systems on sites like Amazon.com? “New research confirms what some may already suspect: Those ratings can easily be swayed by a small group of highly active users,” Kristina Grifantini reports for Technology Review.

For Last, the real loss is creativity: “Even if crowds can reach wise decisions, they don’t create,” he writes. “Genius and inspiration are the province of individuals.”

Sources: In Character, Technology Review

Thinking about love makes people better at creative problem solving, while sex is more shortsighted. That's according to research highlighted by Miller-McCune. The idea is that love “is dreamy, and dreams are linked to creativity. Sex, on the other hand, is about achieving an immediate goal.”

Source: Miller-McCune

Image by  JLStricklin , licensed under  Creative Commons . 

Creativity is not a trait that people either have or they don’t. It’s surprisingly orderly, it can be learned. Robert Epstein told the Scientific American, “I think that the fact that creativity is orderly is good news, because it means we can all tap into this rich potential we all have.”

One way to boost creativity is by thinking about problems as abstract. Studies cited by the Scientific American found that picturing problems as more distant in time or space can lead to more creative solutions. In one study, researchers asked people to devise transportation solutions for different cities. The participants who were asked about distant cities came up with more creative solutions than the people who were asked about cities that were close to them.

The Scientific American reports: “Although the geographical origin of the various tasks was completely irrelevant – it shouldn’t have mattered where the questions came from – simply telling subjects that they came from somewhere far away led to more creative thoughts.” 

This research suggests that problems may be solved simply by thinking about them as further away. It also suggests, according to the article, “traveling to faraway places (or even just thinking about such places), thinking about the distant future, communicating with people who are dissimilar to us, and considering unlikely alternatives to reality” would likely make people more creative.

(Thanks, Kaeti.)

Source:  Scientific American  

Image by estoril, licensed under Creative Commons.

It seems unfair: Why can some of the greatest creative minds produce masterpieces while under the influence, while others simply end up with drivel? Apparently it’s genetic. The British magazine Prospect reports on a 2004 study that found “around 15 percent of Caucasians have a genetic variant, known as the G-variant, that makes ethanol behave more like an opioid drug, such as morphine, with a stronger than normal effect on mood and behavior.” This allows some “to remain healthy and brilliant despite consumption that would kill others.” But if you happen so be so fortunate, don’t get too carried away—as with any alcohol consumption, there is a fine line between optimum creativity and exceeding your limits.

Source: Prospect

Image by preater, licensed under Creative Commons.

When you write do you need to sit at a desk? Or, are you a lie-on-the-bed, laptop-on-your-chest kind of writer? George Pendle writes for Cabinet that when Gustave Flaubert declared “One cannot think and write except when seated”, it so inflamed Friedrich Nietzsche that he attacked Flaubert in his book Twilight of the Idols: “There I have caught you nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.”

Nietzsche’s rant against what he perceived as cultural decadence sparked a debate about the ideal physical mode for inspiration that has spilled into our modern ideas about work. Hemingway proclaimed that “writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.” He was joined by Virginia Woolf and Lewis Carroll in his Nietzschean preference for active creativity. But Mark Twain, Marcel Proust, and Truman Capote liked to write while lying down. Indeed, Capote called himself a “completely horizontal writer.”

In 1968 designer Bob Probst unwittingly echoed Nietzsche when he bemoaned the grid-like layout of American office spaces, which “blocks talent, frustrates accomplishment. It is the daily scene of unfulfilled intentions and failed effort.” So, he designed the Action Office System, whose moveable partitions were intended to inspire workers to stand and move around. When it came to the link between creativity and physical engagement, it seemed, Nietzsche was right.

However, the ideas behind the Action Office System were quickly co-opted into a means for cramming as many workers as possible into one space. The dream of active work turned into the dreaded cubicle. Sedentary inspiration, it seems, has prevailed.

Sources: Cabinet, The Rumpus (reprinted original article, which is otherwise not available online) 

Synesthesia is the source of near-endless fascination for neuroscientists. It’s “probably the sexiest neurological phenomenon around,” Michael Mays observed on Studio 360 last February. Synesthetic people tend to reflexively blend their senses together, seeing colors in response to music, for example, or link shapes with specific tastes.

A new study, highlighted by the New Scientist, documents the first known cases of an unusual form of synesthesia where textures blend with emotions. For these synesthetes, corduroy may produce confusion, while dry leaves might trigger disgust.

For the study, neuroscientists V.S. Ramachandran and David Brang tested their subjects twice over the span of eight months to confirm that they felt textures in emotionally specific ways. Their associations stayed the same throughout the tests: One woman described the sensation of sandpaper as “telling a white lie” in the first round of tests, and said she felt “guilty” after touching it the second time, “but not a bad guilt.”

The study follows only two subjects, so this particular form of synesthesia is likely rare, but it’s more than a curiosity. Neurologist Richard Cytowic estimates that 1 in 23 people experience some kind of synesthesia.

Ramachandran theorizes that synesthesia may be an evolutionary adaptation that helps people think creatively and metaphorically. He describes synesthetic experience as a spectrum, where nearly everyone has the ability to make some form of synesthetic connections. For example, he sees traces of tactile-emotional synesthetic thought in the widespread use of phrases like “sharp criticism” or a “rough night.” In fact, Ramachandran thinks that studying synesthesia could help explain some key milestones in human evolution, like the development of language. 

Image courtesy of Djenan Kozic, licensed under Creative Commons.

(Thanks, Seed.)

In a commencement address at Harvard this spring, excerpted in Greater Good, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spoke about the unique power of human imagination to change the world. Rowling said that when she worked for the human rights organization Amnesty International in her early 20s, she shared office space with former political prisoners and read the testimonies of torture victims. The experience made her realize that imagination is what allows us to empathize with people who have suffered horribly and to act on their behalf. The danger of inaction, Rowlings said, comes from people who “prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all”: 

They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages. They can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally. 

Rowling urged the Harvard graduates to “retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages.” To change the world, she said, all that we need is “the power to imagine better.” 

To read more about the need for imagination, see the creativity package in the July/August issue of Utne Reader.

More important than long division and the Great Gatsby, an education is meant to teach children how to think. Unfortunately, teachers today are “educating people out of their creativity,” according to Sir Ken Robinson, speaking at the TED conference (video available below). Rather than teaching children how to think, feel, and move, students are taught, “progressively from the waist up,” neglecting dance, arts, and other subjects that encourage creativity. 

That loss of creativity threatens to undermine the current generation of young people in America. In an article reprinted from the Rake in the latest issue of Utne Reader, Jeannine Ouellette wrote that “it’s questionable whether tomorrow adults are learning to use the tools they’ll need to succeed.” Over-booking children’s schedules without leaving room for unstructured play time is threatening American innovation, and—possibly most importantly—it’s just no fun.

Inspired by the elaborate competitions between color-coded teams at summer camps, Color Wars is a diverting repository of ingenious games and artistic challenges created by web developers Ze Frank and Erik Kastner. “It’s just like summer camp,” the site’s banner reads, “but not really.”

Either way, Color Wars appeals to the playful, creative preadolescent we hope isn’t buried too far inside all of us. Among other curiosities, there’s an audio library documenting a nerd rap battle, the results of a 600-person bingo game played “live inside of Twitter,” and a reverse-caption contest where contributors stage photos to accompany a predetermined caption.

The site closed the first round of games in May, but its wild success (nearly three million page views) all but ensures another round soon. My personal favorite category is Young Me Now Me, where contributors recreate childhood photos of themselves:

Even though the competition is over, this is such a good rainy-day activity that I might still do a Young Me Now Me of my own the next time I’m bored and want to indulge my inner summer camper.

Image by  Paul Downey , licensed by  Creative Commons .