Traveling stars © by ` TheDreamSky

How can we create (anything) if we are not connected?

DS106 asks this question right away in the way the students of the course spend the opening weeks connecting to the content, the faculty, and each other. It isn’t an outright question but rather one of an assumed response; you can’t. We need to be connected to our work, our world, and each other in order to create.

Steven Johnson, in the video below, describes the world today as a distraction when not coupled with the intent to create. When we connect to the world around us with the idea of creating something then it becomes an rich soil in which we can grow new ideas and creations.

This notion summarized my thinking about the gathering of new ideas and toys. That when linked to the intent of creating something they move beyond clutter to invaluable tools. I connect to my world in many ways and those connections become the generator that powers my life and creativity.

“Chance favors the connected mind”

I look at my daughter as a terrific example of how connectedness and creativity work in the purest sense. As she grows and experiences the world, she strives to connect all the things in her mind to each other, the new thing, and sometimes things that don’t quite exist yet. It is how the human brain naturally works. She is pure knowledge and creation and it is wonderful. Steven Johnson talked about this in terms of how new ideas form. First, Johnson says, we have a hunch about something and when incubated are born into ideas. He continued to suggest that when our incubation is coupled and mingled with other hunches, ideas, notions, and knowledge our hunches become powerful ideas. This mingling happens in a connected world.

Robert Hughes, through the lens of art, touches the idea of pure children are in terms of creation and ideas.

Hughes calls the connection children have with the world direct, sensuous, and complex. Anyone raising young children can see this everyday. My Olivia is a remix master and the ideas she generates are wonderful and exciting. I see it in her art, her stories, her learning, and her interactions. With an unknowing nod to Steven Johnson, Olivia seeks out new connections to people, places, ideas, and things just to expand her world. I’m often in awe of her.

“Daddy, can I get a Twitter account to stay in touch with my friends too”

I’d like to think that Olivia inspires my own connectedness. I am continually adding tools and connections to my world through people, ideas, knowledge, tools, and other resources. People wonder about what kind of time I spend building this repertoire of connectedness but often find that creating a connection to me supports their own creativity. In a very real way, they connect directly to my matrix and become part of my creativity. Being a two-way connection my matrix grows exponentially, as Johnson implies, by colliding and remixing hunches into new and powerful ideas.