Want to think? Get a mask.
Mar. 28th, 2006 06:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe Problem with Brainstorming is my new Wired piece (also available as a husky podcast). It's about a "creative ideation" or brainstorming session I participated in a couple of weeks back in a prestigious hotel on Park Avenue. At first I didn't want to do it (a friend recommended me -- as a "creative person" of repute -- for this brand-enhancement and extension exercise), but the gig was farcically well-paid and I'd noticed cash machines getting a bit iffy with their cash, so I agreed.
It began somewhat farcically, too. Crossing the darkened, chandeliered lobby in my sky-blue plastic Japanese fishmonger's pants and hoody, I was intercepted by a detective (heads of state stay here) and asked my business. "I'm here to help determine the future of this hotel," I said, rather grandly. The detective fixed me in a stare of utter disbelief, as if to say "Nobody who looks like that is going to determine the future of this hotel, dude!" Only after examining my invitation did he let me proceed to the elevator and ascend to the 18th floor, where brainstorming "facilitator" Mike was warming up a dozen "creatives", most of whom seemed to have come down from Connecticut for the day.
To be honest, I don't think I gave great value over the next eight hours. I suggested that the hotel might put plasma screens on its ceilings and project the Sistine Chapel. I suggested that they could make a VR HUD helmet which would give you the impression of being in the luxury of their hotel even when you were actually in the Bronx. I thought they might start an airline with beds and butlers, but didn't dare to tell anyone because I thought someone else might already have suggested it while I was daydreaming, gazing out at the Chrysler Building, or scribbling notes.
And what notes they were! Full of moral indignation, full of exactly the sort of judgementalism that brainstorming is so intent on suspending. It seemed to me that this hotel wanted to put its private brand on things that weren't yet owned, or were publicly owned. This seemed to me immoral, so I was working on ways for that to come full circle back to public ownership. How about if the hotel started its own nation, and everything it owned became the property of every citizen? The word "exclusive" came up time and again in people's ideas, so I wondered how "exclusive" might be pushed so far that it became "inclusive". Surely when more than 50% of the population of Hotelland were enjoying its "exclusive" products, they'd have to be considered "inclusive" products? I also thought about how the hotel, rather than concentrating on "guilty pleasures" and "the decadence of luxury", ought to be projecting an ethical image in order to become a good object for tender and liberal-minded people who care about stuff like the environment. I mean, even the wealthy need a world, right? Air, sea, that sort of stuff?
None of these perspectives got aired in the session, because none of them fitted the brainstorming model. When you're brainstorming, you suspend self and work in teams. That means you censor your moral, ethical and political beliefs, and all the interesting ideas they lead to. You can be collective when you're brainstorming, but you can't be socialist.
Let me just say that although I'm bad at brainstorming, I don't think I lack ability to come up with lots of ideas. I like to think I can take a "Uses of Objects" test into regions of the surreal with the best of them. Yes, this brick is going to be an object of worship to a Melanesian cargo cult and an ear plug for some being with only one big square ear. My problem with brainstorming -- or this particular session of it -- is that all the ideas inevitably led towards money-making schemes. I was certainly (if grudgingly) impressed by how good the Americans in the room were at thinking this way. They had practical business plans ("in the $300 to $400 million a year range") all mapped out within seconds of putting two ideas together ("dog kennel" and "cruise", for instance). They'd obviously been thinking this way for a long time, whereas my thinking was all about why such schemes wouldn't and shouldn't work. I felt very Calvinist in my grey "Nein No Non" t-shirt.
I have to face it, I'm just not good at suspending moral judgement. The silver lining is that I don't believe that because I'm judgemental I'm any less creative. In fact, being judgemental, being prejudiced (and this ties in with Malcolm Gladwell's ideas in Blink, I think) and trying to be ethical are ways for me to link unrelated things and come up with surprising new perspectives. Judgementalism is also a way to become emotionally invested in the subject, which, as I know from intense online debates, is sure to give me tons of motivation to think energetically about it. As a tiny example, bluesky brainstorming probably isn't going to produce an idea like "let's compare music gridlock to car gridlock", but judgemental thinking (by which I mean moral, ethical and political thinking integrated by a persona) may well.
It seems to me that whereas brainstorming breaks down the individual ego and gets people working in teams, judgemental thinking is personality or persona-based. You heighten and exaggerate certain facets of your real personality when you make an argument online, write an editorial, or haul yourself astride some highfalutin' moral horse, ready for some moral crusade. It seems to me that when you suspend moral judgement you suspend the integrated personality, or even just the useful fictional form of that, which is what we call "persona". And I believe that this suspension, far from facilitating originality of thought, cripples it.
I actually don't make much of a distinction between personality and persona; they're both fictions. Mostly, we try to make both our masks and our faces consistent, attractive and characterful, and this straining for consistency and conviction involves us in making efforts of associational creativity, efforts of imagination, that wouldn't otherwise happen. In fact, it seems to me that the idea of persona suspends the "rockist" part of the idea of personality (in other words, the idea that personality is authentic) in the same way that Alex Osborn's idea of the suspension of judgement liberates invention from the need to be practical.
In the Wired piece I point out how the masked ball nature of the internet -- it's anonymous and largely risk-free -- has led us towards a persona-type creativity rather than a brainstorming-type creativity. Brainstorming and "freewheeling" may have been hot in 1953 (freewheeling was still hot enough ten years later for Bob Dylan to drop the 1950s ad executive's favourite phrase into the title for his second album), but the internet has changed the way we think. We're all self-mediators now, free to split ourselves into numerous avatars. These avatars (what's your LJ handle? Is that the same as the person your parents named?) aren't quite fact, but they aren't quite fiction either. They're selections, edits, 100x100 pixel crops of our real faces or masks we find appealing. Battles, stories, relationships and contexts form around our avatars, giving them an ersatz reality which may come to exceed the reality we feel surrounds our actual names.
Want to think? Get a mask.
It began somewhat farcically, too. Crossing the darkened, chandeliered lobby in my sky-blue plastic Japanese fishmonger's pants and hoody, I was intercepted by a detective (heads of state stay here) and asked my business. "I'm here to help determine the future of this hotel," I said, rather grandly. The detective fixed me in a stare of utter disbelief, as if to say "Nobody who looks like that is going to determine the future of this hotel, dude!" Only after examining my invitation did he let me proceed to the elevator and ascend to the 18th floor, where brainstorming "facilitator" Mike was warming up a dozen "creatives", most of whom seemed to have come down from Connecticut for the day.
To be honest, I don't think I gave great value over the next eight hours. I suggested that the hotel might put plasma screens on its ceilings and project the Sistine Chapel. I suggested that they could make a VR HUD helmet which would give you the impression of being in the luxury of their hotel even when you were actually in the Bronx. I thought they might start an airline with beds and butlers, but didn't dare to tell anyone because I thought someone else might already have suggested it while I was daydreaming, gazing out at the Chrysler Building, or scribbling notes.
And what notes they were! Full of moral indignation, full of exactly the sort of judgementalism that brainstorming is so intent on suspending. It seemed to me that this hotel wanted to put its private brand on things that weren't yet owned, or were publicly owned. This seemed to me immoral, so I was working on ways for that to come full circle back to public ownership. How about if the hotel started its own nation, and everything it owned became the property of every citizen? The word "exclusive" came up time and again in people's ideas, so I wondered how "exclusive" might be pushed so far that it became "inclusive". Surely when more than 50% of the population of Hotelland were enjoying its "exclusive" products, they'd have to be considered "inclusive" products? I also thought about how the hotel, rather than concentrating on "guilty pleasures" and "the decadence of luxury", ought to be projecting an ethical image in order to become a good object for tender and liberal-minded people who care about stuff like the environment. I mean, even the wealthy need a world, right? Air, sea, that sort of stuff?
None of these perspectives got aired in the session, because none of them fitted the brainstorming model. When you're brainstorming, you suspend self and work in teams. That means you censor your moral, ethical and political beliefs, and all the interesting ideas they lead to. You can be collective when you're brainstorming, but you can't be socialist.
Let me just say that although I'm bad at brainstorming, I don't think I lack ability to come up with lots of ideas. I like to think I can take a "Uses of Objects" test into regions of the surreal with the best of them. Yes, this brick is going to be an object of worship to a Melanesian cargo cult and an ear plug for some being with only one big square ear. My problem with brainstorming -- or this particular session of it -- is that all the ideas inevitably led towards money-making schemes. I was certainly (if grudgingly) impressed by how good the Americans in the room were at thinking this way. They had practical business plans ("in the $300 to $400 million a year range") all mapped out within seconds of putting two ideas together ("dog kennel" and "cruise", for instance). They'd obviously been thinking this way for a long time, whereas my thinking was all about why such schemes wouldn't and shouldn't work. I felt very Calvinist in my grey "Nein No Non" t-shirt.
I have to face it, I'm just not good at suspending moral judgement. The silver lining is that I don't believe that because I'm judgemental I'm any less creative. In fact, being judgemental, being prejudiced (and this ties in with Malcolm Gladwell's ideas in Blink, I think) and trying to be ethical are ways for me to link unrelated things and come up with surprising new perspectives. Judgementalism is also a way to become emotionally invested in the subject, which, as I know from intense online debates, is sure to give me tons of motivation to think energetically about it. As a tiny example, bluesky brainstorming probably isn't going to produce an idea like "let's compare music gridlock to car gridlock", but judgemental thinking (by which I mean moral, ethical and political thinking integrated by a persona) may well.
It seems to me that whereas brainstorming breaks down the individual ego and gets people working in teams, judgemental thinking is personality or persona-based. You heighten and exaggerate certain facets of your real personality when you make an argument online, write an editorial, or haul yourself astride some highfalutin' moral horse, ready for some moral crusade. It seems to me that when you suspend moral judgement you suspend the integrated personality, or even just the useful fictional form of that, which is what we call "persona". And I believe that this suspension, far from facilitating originality of thought, cripples it.
I actually don't make much of a distinction between personality and persona; they're both fictions. Mostly, we try to make both our masks and our faces consistent, attractive and characterful, and this straining for consistency and conviction involves us in making efforts of associational creativity, efforts of imagination, that wouldn't otherwise happen. In fact, it seems to me that the idea of persona suspends the "rockist" part of the idea of personality (in other words, the idea that personality is authentic) in the same way that Alex Osborn's idea of the suspension of judgement liberates invention from the need to be practical.
In the Wired piece I point out how the masked ball nature of the internet -- it's anonymous and largely risk-free -- has led us towards a persona-type creativity rather than a brainstorming-type creativity. Brainstorming and "freewheeling" may have been hot in 1953 (freewheeling was still hot enough ten years later for Bob Dylan to drop the 1950s ad executive's favourite phrase into the title for his second album), but the internet has changed the way we think. We're all self-mediators now, free to split ourselves into numerous avatars. These avatars (what's your LJ handle? Is that the same as the person your parents named?) aren't quite fact, but they aren't quite fiction either. They're selections, edits, 100x100 pixel crops of our real faces or masks we find appealing. Battles, stories, relationships and contexts form around our avatars, giving them an ersatz reality which may come to exceed the reality we feel surrounds our actual names.
Want to think? Get a mask.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 12:04 pm (UTC)great
Date: 2006-03-28 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 12:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 12:23 pm (UTC)I agree except I don't
Date: 2006-03-28 01:33 pm (UTC)Just my two cents.
Pat O
pdohara@practicalprogrammer.com
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 01:54 pm (UTC)Incidentally I was once invited to one of these brainstorming/market research thingys and when they asked me what I imagined Sony would look like personified all I could think of was an older man in a suit.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 02:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 03:05 pm (UTC)Yuck. I had no idea it was coined by an ad guy in the 40s. What I thought was brainstorming wasn't brainstorming at all.
Sounds completely unappealing.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 03:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 03:50 pm (UTC)Keith Johnstone, improv + mask work
Date: 2006-03-28 04:00 pm (UTC)Another useful Johnstonian point that relates to brainstorming is the idea of "yes and," where you can create things (in this case scenes, but in general use, anything) out of whole cloth merely by responding positively to the other participants and then adding something of your own, in a sort of positive feedback loop, where the word "no" is banned. It's all too easy to say "no" to get a laugh, but it can kill a scene stone-dead, as the actors all jockey for position to be the alpha/high-status character in the scene, or as people jockey to be the "authority" or high-status person in a brainstorming session or other meeting.
It seems very much like this session had a predetermined outcome and they were trying to work backwards to it, instead of explore possible scenarios or truly think imaginatively. I imagine this sort of thing happens at all of Apple's competitors whenever they come up with some new, paradigm-shifting product...they try to find better ways of doing the old thing, when it's clear the old thing is dead.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 04:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 04:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 04:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 04:53 pm (UTC)In defense of brainstorming...
Date: 2006-03-28 04:59 pm (UTC)It seems to me your problem is not with brainstorming... it's with trust. You didn't know or trust the people you were invited to brainstorm with so you were uncomfortable sharing your moralistic reservations.
On the other hand... brainstorming with a familiar group of co-workers that you know and trust can be an excellent way to flush new ideas out of the thickets. Perhaps especially if there are a few martini's involved.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: In defense of brainstorming...
Date: 2006-03-28 05:14 pm (UTC)You do have a point there about trust, but as I understand it, moralistic reservations aren't allowed in brainstorming, or at least not until the very end of the process, where there's a selection and editing of all the ideas. Also, collectivism is very much the style in brainstorming, you're constantly chopped into teams, asked to pitch someone else's ideas, re-teamed with someone else again... There's no chance to build up an integrated ethical perspective. In fact it's actively discouraged.
In the Wired article I go in more detail into how persona can free people up to find new ideas within themselves, with reference to the work of psychologist Liam Hudson (who unfortunately died last year, he was a bit of a hero of mine).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 05:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 05:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 06:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 06:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 06:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-28 06:34 pm (UTC)