Recently, a thread came up over at the GearSlutz electronic music forum that I think posed an interesting question, but sadly was met with little fanfare. I think in a lot of ways, what we think about we are doing, is just as important as what we are doing and the brief discussion that ensued from the above question was an important exploration of the topic.

The conversation essentially boiled down to examining the premise that in simply being able to log onto the internet, ask a question and get a response in return, is actually damaging the learning and exploration processes that have been the foundation of well, just about every form of creativity since before the age of the internet. Now think about this for a minute, when you sit down an open a manual or a book, you find and read other things as you flip through the material to find what you were originally looking for. These new things you accidentally found may spark new ideas and new questions within you, which may in turn lead to new works of art, fiction, musical compositions, technological advancements and well, you get the idea. Imagine now, how the one invention that was supposed to have leveled the playing field by providing equal access to all knowledge, has essentially erased an innate process that has driven humanity on it’s course for that last upteen millennia.