Technology helps creativity explode
One of my first memories that I truly knew that technology would change my life is when my mother took me to her college professor to talk about something I had heard in the news about what I thought was a new element discovered in a newly recovered meteorite. Of course, what it was, was a mineral, not an element, and not new, but rare on Earth.
Her professor saw something in my curiousity and encouraged her to keep me interested in technology. I remember his computer was the first I had ever seen in real life. I was able to spend time on it when I went to campus with her and got to hang out at his desk becoming more and more interested in technology through that first computer.
My parents encouraged how they could. My first computer was a very basic model that integrated with a game console. It had a tape drive to back up and load programs. I was able to write programs in Microsoft Basic and Logo. As a teen, I was way ahead of my classmates in my interests in computers.
Why? I think for me, programming computers to have them do exactly what I was programming them to do made order out of chaos. I was entertained for hours on end just by programming in logo with pointer up, pointer down, and drawing lines. How math could generate such intricate designs was something very fascinating to me.
When I went to high school, the first Apple Macs emerged on the scene at the school as well. Used by the yearbook class, they featured rudimentary programs that enabled the team to build out the graphic spreads that would become the school yearbooks. I remember once having been called back to the yearbook room because a Mac wasn’t working after I used it.
Probably the very first computer problem I ever solved…. right there. I remember looking at the screen, seeing the lock symbol on the floppy disk icon, and ejecting the disk to move the physical lock tab to the unlocked position. When it was re-inserted, the disk was no longer write-protected and the problem was solved. I don’t think I did it, and I’m sure that whomever did, it was just an accident even possibly just by inserting the disk they shoved the tab to the write protect position–but it was clearly a great first computer troubleshooting exercise for me.
This was the first of a long string of Apple computers in my life and I’m sure I will talk about it in more detail in future posts. But what was awakened by all of this was a place where my creativity and technical curiosity met and my life has not been the same since. I cannot imagine how I could have existed even 50 years before I was born with so little opportunity to engage in anything even like the digital world we know now.
I think more than anything, this exploration of creativity and technology becomes a vehicle for a new Renaissance for all of us.
With that in mind, in this blog I plan to take you on an exploration of what it means to be creative and technical. We’ll talk about my career, my employer, what creativity and technological skills means to a company like IBM. We’ll talk some about how I have leveraged my creative thinking to solve technology problems. We’ll talk about the industry and how these types of people are always in demand.
We’ll talk about your career. We’ll talk about how you can build your skills and interests and either change the job you have with your creativity and technical skill or help you find a new one that has more of what you’re looking for.
We’ll move out from there and talk about how exploration of your brain will help you to live a longer, more productive life. We’ll talk about how to help others like your parents and family do the same.
We will also talk about youth and how to inspire them to develop their brains’ creative drive and their technology skills. We’ll then move to talking about how “it takes a village” you can help others’ youth do the same.
We’ll explore initiatives that you can help lead at your company to take it further and how companies like IBM invest in the community and in science, technology, engineering, art, etc. to build future employees by making these efforts to impact our communities more mainstream.
But above all, I’d like this blog to become a community effort. Write in with your ideas. Reach out if you’re looking at how your company can do this. We’ll share our perspectives and look at how we can magnify these efforts for the good of the entire world.
We’ll collectively dance all around this area in digestible bits and come and go on topics perhaps multiple times if something new comes up. Nothing is ever finished in the process of learning after all.
Looking forward to hanging with you all here. See you next time.
