source site - How Simplicity Can Help Creativity, Briefly

The judicious application of simplicity can help someone to create, whether that’s writing, creating art, designing, teaching, starting a small business, or in some other way making ideas take shape into reality.

People who want to create are hampered by complications — tools that are too complicated, projects that are too overwhelming, the distractions of the modern world, too many cooks, too many options, too busy.

Simplify, and many of these problems go away.

Clearing clutter is a great way to create space for new ideas, thoughts and creativity.

The hectic information age is generally bad news for creativity. We cannot run away from 24/7 service, technologies and communication. However, we can strive to do less in every area that we work on. Find non-value adding stuff. Ruthlessly chop them off.

Use technology to simplify.

Challenge everything we do. Why do we do things we've being doing all this while?

source site - Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

British reporter Riz Khan put together a nice 20 minute interview last week with Sir Ken Robinson, our favorite creativity and education expert (and famous TED presenter). Even if you've seen Sir Ken's 2006 TED presentation, you'll find this interview an entertaining and thought-provoking refresher. Rizwan Khan is a veteran of the BBC and CNN; he currently hosts the Riz Khan Show on Al Jazeera English.

i've always believed that creativity is a key ingredient to human advancements. i would also argue that mathematics and science has more in common with art - especially when exploring the unknown. check out the video.

source site - Best of Spore Creature Creator - Top 5 Sci-Fi Aliens in Spore - Popular Mechanics

Spore is finally, almost, upon us. We had a chance to play the full version at this year's E3, but on Sunday, players around the world will discover what happens when a game of epic scope and unparalleled ambition actually lives up to years of hype. Most players will be content to create a spastic race of brightly colored Muppets, or a more random, dog's breakfast of spiny bits and oddly placed eye-stalks, and dutifully grind through the various stages of the game.

spore is potentially the best and original game to come out in a long time.

We often marvel how computing technology has progressed over the years. I remember about 20 years ago, most home computers did not have much storage space, and disk(ettes) had sufficient capacity for 720 kilobytes of data. Today now one spreadsheet file can easily be 720kb in size. Computers today are on the verge of becoming a personal appliance capable of providing its user with education, information, entertainment and inspiration at a click of the mouse (or touch of the screen / surface).

Wired online magazine did an article on the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2007 recently.

I came across a BBC article on the MSC, and felt the need to say my two sen worth.

Ten years ago, the Malaysian government launched one of the unfairly labelled mega projects called the Multimedia Super Corridor ("MSC").

The project was met with either awe or criticism. It was awe inspiring in the sense that it was so visionary for a country which was still pretty much trying to compete with its neighbours for manufacturing investment on the basis of cheap labour. It generated awe because the vision was simple and held a lot of truth: if Malaysia wanted to be competitive, it needed to focus on knowledge-based resources as opposed to low cost of doing business. Today, countries like China and India are attracting most of the investment by offerring precisely the low cost environment for businesses.

One of the challenges at the office is getting the workforce to generate creativity. Our company is in the internet business, and it is therefore necessary for all of us to be dynamic in our thinking so as to be ahead of the game - or at least at the leading bunch.

However, years of rigid education system, a culture of not challenging status quo & seniority, and an evironment of feeding information (as opposed to seeking information) makes creative thinking something of a curiousity than the norm.

The pity is that all this puts all of us at a severe disadvantage compared to other nations.