Creativity NOW!

About this chapter:
I have mixed feelings about how the inter-net has shaped our cultural. On one hand I admit the potential that the inter-net has to truly democratize creative outlets, taking the means of widespread distribution out of the hands of large companies and placing it in within the reach of every person who can obtain access to a computer. I once read an interview with Francis Coppola in which he commented on how cheap home video recorders would revolutionize film and create a scenario in which the masterpieces of the future would be created outside of Hollywood. They would be composed on farms, in people’s bedrooms, and on city streets; wherever people lived art would be born.

My conflict with the inter-net is found in its compartmentalization of information. I feel that the inter-net’s ability to tailor information to meet a specific request has damaged the creative pursuit of knowledge. The quest for information is no longer a creative process in itself; it is simply a means to an end. When I was a child I ran away from home and hid in the public library. I lived there for 4 years, taking change out of the fountain and feeding myself from the vending machines. I washed in the men’s room and at night, after the doors had been locked and the lights shut off, I crawled beneath the reference desk to sleep. The night guard was a drunk who slept through his shift so my presence went wholly undetected. I feared exposure during the day and never left the building. This was in the olden days before the inter-net and I was forced to bide my time among the shelves, reading from what ever book was colorful enough to attract my attention. I don’t know why my parents never came looking for me, but anyway you could never get away with that shit today because computers and the inter-net has made security at libraries so much tighter.