For a straight cut answer: End users are NOT CREATIVE.

Regards, Joey

p.s: I would want to know what's "bgeh" answer for the question posed.

This post has been edited by Joey Christensen: Aug 20 2009, 10:38 AM

We don't know it. That's why we cannot judge it BEFORE we know whether they are truly creative or not. Give them the benefit of the doubt maybe?


Creativity starts from idea. Let's say last time people think "how to save our energy in traveling from one place to another?", then came out the bicycle. Everything starts from idea.


The world is changing fast man... People changing to money-centered. You can't blame them either. Perhaps you will understand more when you've become parent, you want the best for your kids, you want them to be comfortable without worrying about the money and want them to study until they get at least a degree.


Why not enough for survival? World now is all about qualification. If they doesn't even have a proper cert, how are they going to compete in this highly competitive society? Unless you want them to become farmer, which they don't even have to go to primary to become one.


I GOT it. That's why I said the world now is different from yours. You learned how to survive the HARD WAY, that's why the parents now don't want their kids to SUFFER, they want them to have a BETTER life. If I let you choose, will you choose the HARD way or the COMFORTABLE way now like almost every kids having?

Why not? They might be lazy in doing things but doesn't mean they are lazy in thinking. Although they thought of it they just don't work it out, makes them only have CREATIVE MIND but not action. Still, we don't know the exact situation until 10-20 years later when they've grown up.

If a person is lazy to learn, work and think, what kind of creativity is there? As far as I know, to materialize creativity is to derive ideas and realistic idea require knowledge. To acquire knowledge is hard work, so a lazy person who lack knowledge can only think of indecent activity than to innovate.

Criminal master head are genius too, they created mafia community and able to bridge both legitimate and the not where money and human weakness is the medium.

My profession don't rely on cert / diploma / degree, non of those will get a job that require both knowledge and practical skill that provide solution and that is how I create my presence in a no demand job condition. I wasted 20 years working hard alone until I rediscover creativity that were lost in reality. So, instead of trying to define creative ability, we should elaborate on how to harness the ability. Everyone have made their points, lets fine out how to promote and practice creative thinking, shall we?

jiaxun,

<<They might be lazy in doing things but doesn't mean they are lazy in thinking.>>

How do you know they THINK at all??

<< makes them only have CREATIVE MIND but not action. Still, we don't know the exact situation until 10-20 years later when they've grown up.>>

By that time, they have a HABIT of doing NOTHING. It will be TOO LATE to change.

<< The world is changing fast man... People changing to money-centered. You can't blame them either. Perhaps you will understand more when you've become parent, you want the best for your kids, you want them to be comfortable without worrying about the money and want them to study until they get at least a degree.>>

I am a parent. I want the BEST for my children. I want my children to SURVIVE. Hence, I want them to worry about money. I want them to know how to manage money. My son knows how to play and win Cash Flow 101 since 12 years old.

<< And, that is NECESSARY but INSUFFICIENT for their children survival.
Why not enough for survival? World now is all about qualification. >>

How long have you worked?? I have 20+ years of working experience.

Dreamer

Then how do you know they didn't think at all? As I said, give them the BOD.


It's never too late to change as long as they change. Unless they die before they change, that we can call too late.


So you are saying by playing Cash Flow 101 can makes them worry about money? Games will stay as games when they don't involve REAL money. Ask them to play with real money and I will say they are managing money. Even if they use the real money, it will be money from you, the parents, not the real hard earn money from themselves.


You have more experience in working more than I do. But is it that WORKING EXPERIENCE the only criteria in assessing someone's thinking?

This post has been edited by jiaxun: Aug 20 2009, 11:55 AM

Small boy back then, what can I do Doesn't mean I didn't watch Discovery Channel & NG.

Update :
One of the causes of, and I can agree with you. Personally, though I am very well blessed with a loving family and being well to do, I really never had the luxury of having a sibling to play with till I was 7. Even then, my brother was too young to understand anything I wanted him to understand. Early on, both my parents were working, leaving me at home ALONE with the maid. Frankly, she had household chores to take care of leaving me alone. From there, I had to come up with my own ideas for games, often involving me, my mind and my toys. In one way or another, such circumstances make us think to compensate for things we lack.

And that's the crunch there. The problem lies with the fact that the younger generation of children has everything laid out for them. Born with a silver spoon in their mouths or so you can say. I may be hardly one to talk, being only 19 this year. But certainly I can see the degradation in creativity here. The problem doesn't lie with the children not having it. It lies with them not using it! Why? Because they don't have to! Typical parental response to their children ;

"Go study first, worry about that later".

How to promote their mental growth if you do not encourage them?

This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 02:02 PM

lol so much dissatisfaction here

we can all agree that 10 years from now, the world in general would have progressed forward, with newer innovations, right? hence, ppl are getting more creative.

i understand what the worry is - that kids these days just sit in front of the computer and expect awsm graphics to entertain them without them having to use their imagination. that kids graduate from school and then expect to be handed a large sum of money just because they have a degree. it's like darwin says - survival of the fittest.

among these ppl there exists creativeness.

look at yourself, for example. occasionally you do think out of the box. your brain, your mindset and your thinking is not set in stone.

That's the point in this debate and discussion. For everyone to see another opinion and benefit from it. That was my initial goal anyway.

But from the way things are going, namely our education system. There isn't much room to promote mental growth here since its all stereotyped already ; Study, study, exam, study, tution, study. More in favour of the western education system as it gives a more hands on approach and it encourages students to actually think out of the box. From what I can see, the whole thing is skewered in the direction of getting good grades and then getting your degree. No development whatsoever in the area of soft skills ; PR skills, etc.

Education does play a major role in harnessing one's creativity don't you think?

This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 02:40 PM

it depends on the kid, actually.

growing up, i remember a bunch of us learning html, photoshop and javascript coding all by ourselves simply bcos we wanted to join webrings and have cute graphics on our sailormoon "website". damn clever, morning go school, then go tuition, then take nap, do homework, do tuition, then drink kopi while trying to figure out programing. no one asked us to learn, we wanted to do it ourselves. i can't imagine what kids are learning these days all by themselves.

and then depending on your school, a kid could join choir, debate, chess, etc etc to learn extra skills while having fun. it's all up to the kid, in the end. those who improve, will win.

if it's any consolation, i've read that just recently, one of the local uni is starting a aquaculture business in the uni, run and profited by the students, in order to let them learn how to do business

as a teenager, are u saying that most of ur peers can't think for themselves? so good kid? not rebellious at all?

Plenty of them yes. Once I went to college, no. At least those in my class were brilliant.

Yeah! I remember messing around with C and Perl simply because I wanted to make games. Learning how to use Photoshop and OpenCanvas because I envied all those artists on dA (My account is 4 years old and barren). In the end it boils down to whether the child takes the initiative to do so.

University is a whole different ball game I think. I haven't gone to university yet so I cannot comment on that.

This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 03:20 PM

It depends on how the users use the end products frankly. But what's your definition of creativity? I'm also interested in knowing yours.

Joey: I believe that I am an extremely idle person, and I think idleness is a wonderful thing that is vastly underappreciated in today's society, given our society's capacity to overproduce goods today.

map:

Nope. Let me try to define some notion of creativity first:

Creativity is somewhat proportional to the rate that we progress forward.

The argument is that creativity is diminishing, and I disagreed with that argument.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 20 2009, 06:53 PM

jiaxun,

<<Then how do you know they didn't think at all? As I said, give them the BOD.>>

We (uncles and aunties) had sponsored many of our nephews and nieces to USA for college over the past 10 years. We had seen enough examples and first hand knowledge to know that they do not think.

<<It's never too late to change as long as they change. Unless they die before they change, that we can call too late.>>

Only a young person will say that. But, time and resources are limited. One of our nephew was TOO LAZY. Even after 5 years, he cannot even finished first year college in USA. So, we sent him back. He lost his chance.

<<So you are saying by playing Cash Flow 101 can makes them worry about money? Games will stay as games when they don't involve REAL money. Ask them to play with real money and I will say they are managing money. Even if they use the real money, it will be money from you, the parents, not the real hard earn money from themselves.>>

So, what have your parent done to teach you about money??

<<You have more experience in working more than I do. But is it that WORKING EXPERIENCE the only criteria in assessing someone's thinking?>>

No. But, it shows how much exposure that you have and the level of thinking that you are now.

For example, if you have ENOUGH exposure to ENOUGH people, you will not say

"It's never too late to change as long as they change."

Dreamer

bgeh,

<<It depends on how the users use the end products frankly. But what's your definition of creativity? I'm also interested in knowing yours.>>

In my definition, creator is creative. By default, user is not unless the user use the item to create something out of ordinary.

<<Joey: I believe that I am an extremely idle person, and I think idleness is a wonderful thing that is vastly underappreciated in today's society, given our society's capacity to overproduce goods today.>>

In Malaysia, we have TOO MANY lazy people. I do not think you need to worry about we overproduce anything.

<<Creativity is somewhat proportional to the rate that we progress forward.>>

This is what I disagree with.

I am engineer. I have a sense on how many people needed to create / design something. Nowaday, in most cases, for modern items, only a few people is involved in designing anything. The rest of people is just implementing the design. There is very little to no creativity involved in implementing process.

In fact, with the modern system, we have less and less people involved in any design. The reason why you see a lot of progress is because the productivity of the creators have increased an order of magnitude. The reverse is happening. Because of less people involved in creative process, less people is getting creative at work.

Dreamer

This post has been edited by dreamer101: Aug 20 2009, 07:16 PM

Do you then, have any idea how it was like in the past, or do you only have your own anecdotal data?


I think we do overproduce, even in Malaysia. But then again it depends on how you define a 'comfortable' standard of life. Sure relative to everyone else we may be underproducing but that doesn't mean everyone's overproducing anyway. But that has always been an idealist notion for me.

Define what 'creative' and 'out of the ordinary' means then.

and dreamer: You're using the appeal to authority argument against jiaxun, with the authority being you. Sure, go ahead and refute his points, but don't go around telling him that because you have xyz experience that he doesn't have, your view is 'more correct'. He might go through the same experience as you and conclude otherwise instead. Divorce the argument from the person making the argument, because you're simply making ad homs by mixing the argument with the person forwarding the argument's background.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Aug 20 2009, 08:01 PM

Dreamer~
In fact, with the modern system, we have less and less people involved in any design. The reason why you see a lot of progress is because the productivity of the creators have increased an order of magnitude. The reverse is happening. Because of less people involved in creative process, less people is getting creative at work.

A good one indeed, this is the exact extract on my conversation with my Regional IT manager today~ all trying all ways for quick fix without detail understanding of process & Implication to operations.

My definition of creativity
=> The simplest & most efficient way of satisfying a need, with the least consumption of resources; scrutinizing boundaries and pre-defined conventions.

There is no definite definition anyway, it depends on the individual who sees creativity as what it is. This is my sentiments exactly, and also part of the question. People seem to want the short cuts now, which I highlighted in my post. Many aren't thrilled by the experience of discovering and learning, on the contrary, they just want quick answers ala instant noodles.

This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 08:42 PM

But haven't people always wanted the short cuts? And by all means, are short cuts even bad in the first place? What if the short cuts at the lower levels help the person to spend more time being creative at higher levels?

Then by all means, it if benefits then why not? But for things that require learning and experiencing, it becomes detrimental already. Not all short cuts are bad, but not all are good either. If you were to thrust it from a gamer's point of view (forgive me) ; then people who use cheats to gain an advantage is bad enough. Its a form of short-cuts to being pro isn't it? But in the end, they don't gain anything from it, except maybe their own perverse satisfaction.

I quote a friend here ;


This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 08:48 PM

Then why are you only forwarding the bad side of it?

Now why are cheats a short cut to being a pro? Who calls someone a pro anyway? Wouldn't that someone then easily be defeated in a multiplayer game, or his cheats easily exposed, as would usually happen in real life if you were truly an empty suit?

ZeratoS,

You are CONFUSED about creativity. I am NOT.

<<People seem to want the short cuts now, >>

There is NOTHING wrong with that if people do not CHEAT. In fact, CREATIVITY is driven by people want BETTER and FASTER result than existing method and process can provide. They are the people that say

"There gotta be a better way!!"

Dreamer

Um, primary example is botting and hacking. Maphack being the more common one. Perhaps you could share some positive shortcuts, because I really can't think of any at the moment ^^;

Dreamer,
No no. Well I guess that was wrongly phrased. I had intended to say that people just want the end results now. But anyway yes, I may be confused about this. But that's why I posted the thread in the first place! To learn

This post has been edited by ZeratoS: Aug 20 2009, 09:00 PM