Thought Shrapnel

It’s one thing believing that Intellectual Property (“IP”) is absolute bollocks, and it’s another thing living your life under capitalism. It’s the reason that my doctoral thesis is CC0 licensed (i.e. “donated to the public domain”) and all of the tools I’ve been building recently are AGPL-licensed (“specifically designed to ensure cooperation with the community”).

In this essay, Jenny Odell, author of the excellent How to Do Nothing tells the story of a Japanese farmer who rediscovered the old ways, and paying more attention to the seasons. The main thrust of what she has to say, though, is about where ideas come from.

Essentially, everything is emergent, and all your brain is doing is making links between things. Which is why I don’t have any problem in using LLMs as part of my workflow.

Why is it that when we sit down and try to force an idea, nothing comes—or, if we succeed in forcing it, it feels stale and contrived? Why do the best ideas appear uninvited and at the strangest times, darting out at us like an impish squirrel from a shrub?

The key, in my opinion, has to do with what you think it is that’s doing the producing, and where. It’s easy for me to say that “I” produce ideas. But when I’ve finished something, it’s often hard for me to say how it happened—where it started, what route it took, and why it ended where it did.

[…]

Ideas are not products, as much as corporations would like them to be. Ideas are intersections between ourselves and something else, whether that’s a book, a conversation with a friend, or the subtle suggestion of a tree. Ideas can literally arise out of clouds (if we are looking at them). That is to say: ideas, like consciousness itself, are emergent properties, and thinking might be more participation than it is production. If we can accept this view of the mind with humility and awe, we might be amazed at what will grow there.

Source: The Creative Independent

Image: JACQUELINE BRANDWAYN

Related Are.na collection: How to grow an idea