Rise of the Creative Class

[Oynas]

Working in the public service, I see many creative types, and they are such ******s. They have no technical skills and all decisions they make end up failing because they think high level and ignore the detail. They talk about their creativity as if it were a status symbol that makes them superior compared to everyone else.

 

[our obsession]

...also Lizzie, an even older book, (bit o' cross referencing) is:

'The Future and it's Enemies, The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress'- Virginia Postrel

Yes, it is a little of what goes around comes around (again), but hey, sometimes it does take 'time' to grasp better understandings, we can be the shifting sands ourselves when it comes to learning.

Excerpt Only:

Today we have greater wealth, health, opportunity, and choice than at any time in history. Yet a chorus of intellectuals and politicians laments our current condition -- as slaves to technology, coarsened by popular culture, and insecure in the face of economic change. The future, they tell us, is dangerously out of control, and unless we precisely govern the forces of change, we risk disaster.
In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel explodes the myths behind these claims. Using examples that range from medicine to fashion, she explores how progress truly occurs and demonstrates that human betterment depends not on conformity to one central vision but on creativity and decentralized, open-ended trial and error. She argues that these two opposing world-views -- "stasis" vs. "dynamism" -- are replacing "left" and "right" to define our cultural and political debate as we enter the next century.

...and from over a decade old, PBS interview with Postrel:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/february99/gergen_2-1.html

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Well, the enemies are people who want to either plan -- who see their future as something that must be controlled, or they value stability overall. And they sort of fall into two camps; one is your traditional what I call technocrat camp which says, "we're for the future but it must look like this 17-point plan." You get a lot of that in Washington, you know. Well, the future's great but, you know, don't let it get out of control. We don't trust you guys out there in the world." And the other is what I call reactionaries, for lack of a better term. It's people whose idea is that the future is too dangerous and that we need to go back to some sort of imagined past.

So it's kind of a further 'context' exploration to the 'creative aspect' of your original book and gist.

DAVID GERGEN: Your bottom line then, though, is we'll have a much richer future, a much more diverse future if we, in effect, encourage change and lean always in the favor of innovation?

VIRGINIA POSTREL: No. If we encourage experimentation and feedback -- if we allow people to try things but also allow them to bear the consequences of the things they try. I mean, one of the ways we get in trouble is by picking winners in advance, too. So I don't believe change is always good. I do think that you need to lean a little bit against the impulse that says change is always bad. And so sometimes I -- people misinterpret what I'm saying. But I'm saying allow innovation and allow people to try things in a decentralized way, where they get the feedback right away.

I would say the original 'tipping point' has passed though, 'mainly'. Pockets left of course, as is humankind. Dunno about you but the last decade here has flown. Light speed.

 

[lizzie]

Working in the public service, I see many creative types, and they are such ******s. They have no technical skills and all decisions they make end up failing because they think high level and ignore the detail. They talk about their creativity as if it were a status symbol that makes them superior compared to everyone else.

Being in the public service makes me doubt they are true creative types.

True creatives would rarely become involved in such a rigid organisation as the public service - creatives are more you freelance, project by project, mobile type.

Perhaps they are just poncing around, changing things for the sake of changing and are power wannabes who like to think they are being creative - rather than true creatives.

The world is full of pretends ... who like to think they are because they aren't.