Information overload and creativity

in pieces

Years ago, during my extended run of graduate school, I began having some ideas and pretensions about creating a "new psychology." This new psychology was built on several ideas and insights. I christened this "approach" New Wave Psychology--the "new wave" part being an attempt to align it with the creative spirit of a new genre or school of rock & roll music known at the time as "new wave" (as represented by bands like Talking Heads, DEVO, The B-52s, Blondie, The Cars, etc.). I actually don't remember which came first, the name "New Wave Psychology" or some of the loose ideas I put behind it. Eleven issues published from 1980 - 1985 #1 - reward & punishment #2 - creative culture #3 - new wave stationery #4 - organization & documentation #5 - mind & body #6 - manic games #7 - romance & depression #8 - creativity & self promotion #9 - mental illness & treatment #10 - DIY fashion #11 - language and thought online archive People and the world would benefit from more creativity One of the ideas had to do with creativity. It seemed to me that the world could benefit from more creativity, that a psychology that would help people be more creative in their own lives would have positive mental health benefits for them as well as civilization. A simple notion that creativity was good and the more creativity the better. That instead of defining and encouraging people to act "normal," psychologists should be helping them act more creativity and thus more abnormally. We psychologists should be encouraging "deviancy" rather than working to ameliorate it. I knew if wasn't being completely fair to or accurate to counseling psychology, but I was happy to do so to give my "new wave psychology" a more rebellious feeling. It's an old art student, hipster, and creativity trick: find something to rebel against (even if you have to make it up). Cognitive input and cognitive output Another idea or "hypothesis" of New Wave Psychology was that people need a "balance" or equilibrium between the inputs and outputs of their brains. I speculated that the burgeoning "information overload" and stimulation of the modern world needed to be met with a corresponding increase in mental output or it would lead to a "constipated" and unhealthy mental state. Perhaps a lot of increasing mental stress in the modern world was a function of this imbalance between sensory input and cognitive output. You take stuff in, you need to let stuff out. Seemed like a basic general systems theory principle to me. And I was pretty sure that I was hearing a lot more music (from radio, television, and my portable cassette player), that I was getting a lot more information (from news and scientific progress), and receiving a lot more varied visual stimulation (from an increasing number of magazines and television programming) than most of my ancestors ever had. I imagined that I probably had more music inputted to my brain in one week than most of my ancestors had in a year (when the only music they heard was that performed by live musicians). Maybe all this stimulation and "energy" was becoming bottled up inside of us and was responsible for some of our mental stress and psychological discomfort. If so, the solution would be to increase our "output." Maybe we needed to do more things with all this input. Maybe we needed more ways to process it and turn it into output in order to restore a "healthy" system balance. People need to be encouraged to engage in creativity more I put these two ideas together--that the more creativity the better and that people needed to engage in more "output"--and "derived" the idea that helping people to be more creative--to engage more frequently/deeply in creative activities and pursuits would be a great way to restore cognitive balance, improve personal mental health, and make the world a better and more interesting place. Maybe the universe was throwing more creativity at humans in hopes of getting humans to raise their creative game--individually as well as collectively. New types of creativity needed A third idea was that the new world of communication technology and information overload required new, expanded avenues of creativity and creative expression from humans. Humans needed new ways to be creative--new types of creative output. The old, conventional hobbies and artistic pursuits (e.g., woodworking, painting, sewing, etc.) didn't seem nearly sufficient or synchronous with this developing new world. New technologies and materials can foster new types of creativity New technologies, materials, tools provided the basis for a wide variety of new creative games, hobbies, and pursuits. One of the aims of New Wave Psychology was to encourage people to explore and develop new avenues of creativity and creative expression and to serve as a vehicle for promoting these new creative pursuits in human culture.