Over my many years of writing, I have become a fan of the quotes of Pablo Picasso, the famous painter and sculpture, which I find incredibly insightful. My favorite quote is: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." In a time when computers are everywhere, Picasso pegged it right. It's questions that drive our world, and the answering of them that opens new vistas. In another related quote Jonas Salk stated (my paraphrasing), "The 'Ah-ha' moment is not when you get the answer to a big problem, but rather when you realize what questions you need to ask!" Many educationalists claim we should be teaching our youth to ask more and better questions.
How about this Picasso beauty: "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." How many times have you run across variations of this theme--such as "if you want to make an omelet, you have to crack an egg". Ever try making changes in an established organization. Creating something new challenges the current paradigm, it risks breaking a whole lot of eggs!
This one strikes near and dear to my inventor-self: "The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense." You have to get into a little outrageous thinking to create something new, to engage imagination and resist the thoughts of others to tether your thinking tightly to the ground. Creativity is like soaring high and wide--your own great bird fearlessly riding the winds and thermal currents.
This Picasso quote needs no embellishment by me, or others, so here it is......"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction."
This quote strikes the educator in me......"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." My take on this is every young student has a sense of awe about learning. Why can't they remain in a state of awe their entire lifetime of learning? Do we do something to them in their educational process that reverses this awe of the world? Many of the teachers and educators I know would think so.
Maybe engineers should incorporate more "art" and artistic thinking into their designs, inventions, and interactions with the world?
Talk to you again soon...
Harry