Why, 50 years after Osborn's book, do I find that brainstorming, far from unleashing hidden originality in me, blocks and banishes all my most interesting ideas?
The author then fingers the internet as to why the creativity has gone out of brainstorming. I'm not convinced. In my experience most of the problems with 'mindshowers' [as I now hear them called] is that users generally lack the discipline, understanding or both to use them. It seems too hard for people simply to call out ideas and not to comment or prejudge others' ideas. Many people seem to lack the ability to let an idea go so that once it is out there it is no longer 'theirs' but independent. I'm not convinced that the internet has made that kind of difference. The article, however, is an interesting meditation on how the internet can allow us to depersonalise our own thinking and so fulfil at least some of the functions of the brainstorming session but with a crowd of one playing different personae. If that's so, it may be a driver towards individualism but a multiphrenic individuality rather different to the monarchic ego of modernity. Yet the paradox would remain that it would be in interaction with others' personae that the whole thing comes to life. So the communal nature of the internet is what would enable this fractured individualism. In fact we may be left with a more dissolved self than ever.
My issue with this as a Christian [at least I think that it's faith driven], is what is the shape of discipleship in this? I have tended to feel that the call to integrity and wholeness implies not going in for pseudonymity and having a 'net footprint that is transparent. But is that really so? Is there a positive Christian value in cultivating different personae for different purposes on the 'net?
I'm really still thinking about it, that is not a rhetorical question...
Wired News: The Problem With Brainstorming:
Filed in: brainstorming, group, thinking, creativity
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