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Inventing Creation
What is the
link between biotechnology and creativity?
The coming
Biotechnology Age is an opportunity to reinvent the world in which
we live in ways that have never previously been available to us.
It is potentially an Age of Creation.
Contemporary thinking suggests that our personal experience as human beings in our daily living, is shaped by the distinctions we possess in the language we think, listen and speak.
Inside this dialogue, we have the capability to alter our thinking
moment by moment. This is not a small undertaking. Perhaps it is
equivalent to the mighty and often lifelong quest of the Zen Master
who seeks that one moment of enlightenment with the possibility
that they may silence their thoughts and simply ‘be’.
The
Role of Language
In this way,
our language is both a trap and a pathway to freedom.
As a trap, once we learn language, we cannot unlearn it. If you
are reading this you can never again experience the world without
this capability. We cannot turn off the inner dialogue that speaks
incessantly and shapes every sound and word we hear. It is also
a trap in that our language is transparent; for it is only when
we speak about our language deliberately and consciously that we
become aware of it. More so, we can only discuss language through
language - a conundrum indeed.
Our language is also a vehicle for freedom. Our language gives us
the capability to create our reality. In particular, stop and look
around you… the evidence is everywhere - everything you see
has been shaped by language. More specifically, all that has been
created in our world has been created as a function of our exquisite
power of language.
Our
Language Capacity
At a biological
level, our capacity for language distinguishes us from the other
living beings on this planet. This language capacity is expressed
in the world of objects and things that we have created, the things
that surround us, that give us our lives and allow us the freedom
to live longer than ever before.
Again witness our relationship to things in the world relative to
the other creatures we share our planet with. Consider for a moment,
we are the creatures that can fly through the air faster, higher
and further than any other. We are the creatures that can move across
the ground faster and further than any other. We are the creatures
that can move through water faster, further and deeper than any
other. We are the creatures that have the capability to talk at
normal volume and be heard by others on the opposite side of the
planet. We are the ones that can wipe out entire civilizations with
the press of a single button. We can create life, extend life, revive
lives, save lives and take life away.
Our power and influence dominates our planet. We have the power
to alter the climate of our planet and we have the power to travel
beyond our own atmosphere.
We do this all through our language and the things that we create.
Our language is our ultimate technology.
Pattern
of Creation
As we contemplate our future, how we create things will become one of the essential questions addressed by human thought.
The history of our civilization has progressed from a daily struggle
simply to stay alive to an Agrarian Age where food was produced
on a vast scale for the first time. During the Industrial Age, we
developed the capability to create mass quantities of goods. During
the Information Age, we are developing the capability to make personalized
products that have intelligence and the ability to interact with
the user. Whilst these steps have been dramatic, they merely hint
at what is to come.
The emerging Biotechnology Age presents the opportunity to create
things at a level that is unprecendented. This is an extraordinary
claim. To think that as a single species we yield the power to eliminate
all the other species on the planet (and unfortunately we continue
to do this daily somewhat blind and ignorant to the possible consequence
or with any great urgency to alter this pattern.) Yet ironically,
as we wipe out so many species that have taken thousands of years
to evolve, we are on the verge of unleashing technology which will
allow us to create new species as easily as we currently make new
consumer products for our daily use.
The
Creation Age
We are on the
verge of the discovery of ‘creation’, a ‘Creation
Age’.
A t designprobe, we believe an important question to askand enquire
into is "how do we, as human beings, create things?"
Inventing and uncovering the process of Creation is not a small
undertaking. It may sound like it is God’s work and in some
ways the levels of technology that we have developed already give
us an unholy power.
At designprobe, our vision is to 'invent the process of creation'. In other words, to distinguish the process in such a way that we can all invent things as easily as we currently design buildings, graphics and furniture. Our business and this website is devoted to this vision. The vision of 'inventing creation'.
Related articles:
• The
Levels of Creation: We
offer a framework for creation by proposing four levels of creation.
•
The Creation Pyramid:
In
The Levels of Creation
we considered four different levels at which creation occurs. In
this article we model this as The Creation Pyramid.
• Longitude: Four articles based upon Dava Sobel's book 'Longitude' telling the story of John Harrison, inventor of the chronometer as an insight into the invention and creation process.
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