Benjamin Banneker (American mathematician and astronomer, 1731-1806)
Lady Ada Lovelace (English program creator, 1815-52)
Boogie Down Productions is made up of teachers. The lecture is conducted from the mic into the speaker.
- Boogie Down Productions
Creativity is a state of mind that never rests. It moves from place to place, from individual to individual, and from individual to community. It is constantly in motion, as we move from one web site to the next, one application to another, one digital file to a grander pattern revealing previously unseen structures. The computer can help us to navigate, but new technology is meaningless without reassessing the metaphors for its use—unless these metaphors enable us to reinforce the patterns of working and living that weave us together as a culture. The questions where we are going and how do we go there are issues that arise from a quest for understanding. This quest can be undertaken only if one is guided by fundamental values that enforce and encourage the convergence of ideas, to amalgamate the elements of culture so we may create a dialog that furthers the story of culture.
We all possess the creative charge of being learners and teachers, for learning is not simply the process of finding the right answers, but of asking the right questions. History recounts the numerous people, places, and ideas that are models for negotiating the realm of the circuit—from Socrates's (Greek philosopher, 469-399 BCE) Academy to the modern Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. We can't know everything, but we need to find the paths that allow us to associate between the great libraries and museums of the World Brain. Those who facilitate this—programmers, teachers, composers, the system humanists—should be celebrated. Creative interlocutors are the champions of the circuit, utilizing multimedia interactivity that transforms data into knowledge, which will then be redistributed and reworked by others.
A creative interlocutor—the twenty-first-century artist—is the product and producer of an enlightened engagement within the realm of the circuit, fostered by an educational system that is trans-disciplinary in nature and values the management of ideas as much as the nurturing of them. We define the creative interlocutor as a person (or group) who facilitates the exchange of ideas between one need and another. This person is a navigator, helmsman, producer, director, and organizer of the infinite digital library. More specifically, the creative interlocutor is an editor, collector, and curator who makes, weaves, welds, builds and, finally, is a distributor of inspiration. The creative interlocutor is also also programmers, inventors, and researchers who negotiate the revolutionary associations of the digital file with us and for us.
