Friday 24 October
5.55am
posted 17.15
We have had no internet connection at home since Tuesday evening. This has left me with no chance to write this blog since my usual blogging times are late at night after the working day when I have some peace and solitude. However, it occurred to me last night that I could write something anyway and take it into college with me and send it from there. It is interesting how not having an internet connection made me feel that I couldn’t write anything at all. I even considered writing something in an notebook to be typed up later as if I were unable to use my computer at all without internet access.
Anyway, it’s been a very frustrating experience not to be online (as it always is now) and it makes me realise how dependent on the internet I have become. At the beginning of the week I developed some thoughts that I wanted to tell you about but the energy of that thinking seems to have dissipated somewhat and I haven’t been able to do the research (another late at night activity) to back it up.
It was to do with a news report I heard on R4 about The Foresight Commission which has come up with evidence of the links between a ‘mentally healthy’ populace and the economy. The representative of the research was speaking quite shamefacedly about how what he called ‘mental capital’ pays directly into the economy as revenue to the government. This, in conjunction with all the government sponsorship that is going into researching what creativity is led me to see how ideas are the next booty to be plundered by governments. As natural resources dwindle and it becomes increasingly perilous to get our hands on them without costly and unpopular wars we have to find another kind of asset to translate into dollars and what better material than people’s ideas. So I came up with the idea of ‘intellectual colonialism’ for this approach. I seem to have had several conversations with artists in various situations over the past year or so about our creative processes and have often detected a reluctance to give up the goods (as if they were secrets) of what one’s processes actually are. There is plenty of money going into university and schools projects aiming to find out what creativity is. Since the thinking goes that if we can turn ideas directly into capital in this technological age then to wrest how those ideas come about from creative people is the key to future economic wealth.
As I say, I have to research this more myself to see if there is any basis for some kind of theory. But if you have heard anything that would back this up then do get in touch.
