In a weekly column, alternately written by Lucien Engelen, Maarten Steinbuch, Carlo van de Weijer, and Tessie Hartjes, E52 tries to find out what the future will look like. All four contributors – sometimes accompanied by guest bloggers – are working on technologies that can provide solutions to the problems of our time. This Sunday, it‘s Lucien Engelen’s turn.
Here are all the prior editions of [TOMORROW IS GOOD]
You must be aware of it: someone’s phone number is at the tip of your tongue or you forgot about it all together. Technology makes our brain lazy, some say. Others say new skills take the place of old ones in our brains. Whatever may be the case, with forms of external memory like smartphones, QR codes for websites, voice recognition for orders etc, our whole communication model is changing. More and more we will use databases that are unlocked in some form, and as a consequence, we need to remember less.
Perhaps we can make what’s left of this more creative. Moreover so, because something special is occurring related to creativity. It even effects the children at school, according to Sir Ken Robinson in one of the most viewed [TED talks]. For example, when learning to read, we are taught not to let our little finger follow the text for better concentration, while just a few years ago when I attended a fast reading course, it cost me a lot of money to be ordered to do just that. And beautiful, shiny companies now take their teams out to luxurious resorts for a day of creativity…
If we would just accept that we do not have to remember everything and can google whatever we want, and we would be less concerned with systems and fixed paths and would focus more on creativity, we would certainly be less disappointed in our work because of a lack of creativity.
