Photo by State Library and Archives of Florida
There are over 6 billion people in the world. Very conservatively speaking, at least 1%, or 60 million, of us must be involved in some kind of creative work. That’s a lot of people. If everyone just had one brilliant idea in their lifetime, say once in 100 years, that should mean 600,000 ideas a year, or at least one brilliant idea every single minute of every day.
So why is progress so darn slow? Why isn’t there a breaking discovery every day in the news? Why are there so few new ideas? Why are so very few new products interesting, or even novel?
I suspect that a big reason is that we have become too synchronized. Too much into the herd mentality. We aren’t venturing outside the bounds of what has been done before. Rerunning the same ideas over and over again instead of testing new ones.
For the only known sentient beings in the universe, this is truly sad.