Creativity Adventure

The lecture last week likely drew up an overall picture of a design process. Those who do not want to work fixedly could somewhat imagine their future job. The three previous posts did summary the lecture’s contents sufficiently well; for that reason, in this post, an adventure of creativity is presented to clarify the process.

The following Greek mythology gives us a fair example of the adventure.

Perhaps being the namesake of the Greek city, Athens, best honours Athena, but it was her creativity that allowed the city to keep the name. The Greek god of the sea, Poseidon was jealous of this, so he challenged Athena in a contest to give the Greeks something. The winner would become the city's final patron. Poseidon gave the residents a saltwater well. Athena topped him by providing a very creative gift: an olive tree, which provided shade from the sun, oil for lamps and olives to eat. Her multipurpose gift illustrates her brilliance. The olive today is of course associated with Greece (Donna Talarico, 2007).

As the story presents, the adventure begins with an idea. Generating an idea is not such a hard work since it is not necessary that the idea be significant. As long as humans still demand, there are a lot of things to do to meet their needs. The first try should take place from the daily life where some improvements should be carried out. Observing and questioning can also help. Besides, the idea should be new and interesting. It is because: Thinking is the door, but creativity is the key.

In the second part, the idea now needs analysing. What is its purpose? How can it give improvements? How about its feasibility? What are its affects against society and vice versa? The answers can only be objective if they are obtained from other people. Both experts and civilians will give distinctive answers to the idea. Interviewing, in this case, is more useful than thinking. Finding out about social feedback and challenges extending into contemporary society must not be ignored.

The final stage of the process is bringing the idea into life after a lot of considerations. It does not matter which way it is conducted or how long it takes, but it should not be done without passion. During the work, obstacles and criticisms may slow down the speed or even cause diversion. Like Galileo centuries ago, he kept his determination against all other harsh prejudice. Aspirations could be fulfilled with patient and persistence.

A design process which could be innovative requires creativity, feasibility and determination. “Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe”, said Gail Devers.

The need for being creative and innovative

The three professors discussed the problems faced by engineers from the different perspectives. The first speaker, professor Macelo Ang, shared with us some very creative inventions which made us ponder whether the creations would be accepted by the public. For example, airplane was one of the greatest inventions in the 19th century. Airplanes had quickly become a way of transportation because they made our lives much more convenient. Hence, it was a successful invention. On the other hand, however, the full length umbrella is indeed a better way to shield us from rain, but it may not be accepted by majority of people. Thus, we should ensure that the products invented must suit people’s needs well.

While the need for being creative had been emphasized, we must also be aware of the social factors. As being mentioned by the second professor, the invention of picture phone was definitely a breakthrough during that period. However, it had eventually become a failure because of the fact that users may want to keep their privacy while they are talking over the phones. Therefore, sometimes the products or inventions may not be commonly adopted if we ignore the social external factors.

All in all, as an engineering student, it is important to be creative and innovative at all times. Nevertheless, we must also take into considerations about the external factors which may possibly affect the products. Lastly, as being mentioned by professor Seah, we need to have passion for what we aim to achieve

On technology and meaning

I would like to refer one of the issues brought up by guest speaker Marcelo H Ang Jr on Friday 28th August 2009 regarding the philosophy of life and technology.

Marcelo had brought up a series of questions and interpretations on the earlier half of his presentation. One of which struck me most was the issue of the purpose of life. In his presentation, he made a loose allusion between the meaning of life, perfection, human drives and solving problems. While he mentions that without challenges and strives for perfection life would hold little meaning, he acknowledges that a life strived just for the creation and solving of problems is no different from reaching out to an ever shifting goalpost. Personally, I believe that these words do hold very good sense.

Now, as we strive towards success by come up with solutions to counter yesterday's problems, a fundamental question arises: what does engineering and technology have to do with the meaning of our lives?

Indeed, we can generally agree that much of our world is far from perfection. Asthetically, we see an impaired world as a reflection of our impaired selves; hence from engineering we sought solutions to enhance ourselves. With our advances in technology, we have made our lives more comfortable, and at the same time took a step in the direction of perfection. Glasses help us to see when our eyesight fails; the motor car allows us to travel further than our legs can carry us. We build buildings to protect ourselves from the elements, as well as infrastructure to facilitate development within our society.

But even so, we cannot say that the strife towards technological advancements is the sole purpose of our lives. We know that the purpose of life transcends this one-dimensional issue of merely creating and solving problems. As observed by Marcelo with his analogy of the shifting goalpost, such ideals to achieve perfection by solving problems would only lead to the creation of other problems. Moreover, it is not until we are infinitely successful do we see a purpose in living. If it is so- then it can be argued that life itself is meaningless.

So what can we conclude? It would be impossible to make a hasty philosophical conclusion today on what the true meaning of life is. Similarily, it would be equally unwise to state that our inventions have brought us nowhere. (After all, it is evident that the quality of life has improved over the past few decades with technology.) Perhaps our true purpose in life is to make use of the time that has been bestowed upon us to improve- not only technologically speaking, but also in a metaphysical sense. Technology, being what we do best, then becomes an important channel and medium for that 'holistic' improvement towards perfection.