Many people wish they were in a more creative line of work, or that they were "a creative type," or that their environment "appreciated creativity more."

 

Culturally, we have a lot of respect for creativity, and geniuses like Edison or Frank Lloyd Wright are seen as dramatically different people from the rest of us. While those guys are heroes to me, I think that the veneration of creative genius can create real barriers - making it seem as though creative expression is the privilege of a few.

 

When you really break it down, what is creativity? It is the act of making something new. This is more often a matter of assembling things that already existed in a way that is more or less novel - expressing a concept, an image, or an emotion.

 

Seen this way, creativity is everywhere. Speaking is creative. Emailing is creative. Blogging is creative. Even those blogs that just cut and paste things from other blogs are creative - just as a painter combines existing colors in a novel way, cut-and-paste blogging assembles diverse perspectives in a distinct mosaic.

 

This is recognized legally; you can actually take a collection of simple, public facts and get a copyright on the way you have arranged them. Commercial databases (like www.allmusic.com) do this all the time.

 

The revolution of blogging, rss, myspace - it's an evolution of creativity. It's a recognition that we are not a society with nothing to say, sprinkled with a few special "creative types." We are billions of people bursting with ideas and emotions that are dying to get out. We don't all have time to write a novel - but it turns out a heck of a lot of us have a few minutes a week to write a post.

 

For every 1% easier we can make it for people to create and to share those creations, we will get 100% more creative product - multiplied by billions of people worldwide. Everyone has imagined a story, dreamed up a game, and hummed an original tune. There are an awful lot of cool songs, games, and books on the other side of that wall...