A belated personal note in this thread . . .
While I certainly agree that modern media have put "moderately gifted" people
into direct competition with the most highly gifted and therefore may have
blunted the creativity of some, advancing technology has other, offsetting
characteristics. Growing up, I lived in the shadow of my older brother, who
always clearly had better hard-wiring for music than I did. David is a much
better "natural musician" than me and I definitely grew away from creating
music out of the inability to play on the same level that he did. For years
after we both moved away from our birth family, my native musical talent lay
fallow because I didn't have the time to devote to music. Last year, though,
I bought a moderately-priced synthesizer that has proved to be a tool with
which what musicality I DO posses could grow again. Without the set of tools
provided by this new technology, I probably would never have returned to
making music of any kind.
The same has been true for graphic art in my life. As a boy and teenager, I
used to draw a LOT. Again, though, time and the demands of other pursuits
resulted in the level of talent I possessed lying fallow for decades in my
adult life. But the development of digital graphics tools has now resulted
in providing me with the kind of supporting environment that has allowed me
to again express myself graphically. Because of these tools, I'm now a
collaborator with the architect that is working on an addition to our home,
rather than a mere consumer of the artistic element of that project.
A similar phenomenon has happened in the realm of letters. The Internet has
fostered a kind of amateur writing that simply didn't exist before ten years
ago. E-mail lists and newer net media represent a kind of open-ended,
world-scale journal of letters in which non-professional writers express
themselves and even progress as writers in ways that previous technologies
simply didn't make possible.
The thesis of the original post in this thread is likely correct that
moderately gifted people can no longer compete in the *commercial* public
expression of artistic or other creative activities. But technology has also
allowed such people to express themselves for purely personal enjoyment and
self-fulfillment in ways that weren't previously possible.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<gburch@lockeliddell.com>
Attorney ::: Vice President, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
http://www.gregburch.net -or- http://members.aol.com/gburch1
ICQ # 61112550
"We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know
enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another
question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species."
-- Desmond Morris
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