05 Sep Creativity is the domain of white men

I’m reading The Artist in the Machine (Arthur, L. Miller, 2019), and it strikes me as a little inconceivable that it was in fact written in 2019. In the first 4 chapters on creativity and genius, it appears this is only something for white men. Emily Dickinson did get a name drop but just that. The only women mentioned so far have been wicked distractions or worse, wilful detractors of their partners’ genius. Makes it a bit hard to read.

What it has me thinking though is that I’m not that interested in thinking like (very specifically and only in this book) either Picasso or Einstein. Nor of computers that think like either of these dead white men. I’m interested in how computers might think as everyday people think. Might glitch and remember wrong, might replicate incorrect information until it becomes “correct” and all that is recorded. Might amplify our own misconceptions, and reflect a warped set of data, an image in a black mirror that’s not quite parallel.

The definitions of creativity in the book are exemplified by both Picasso and Einstein, with reference also to Zuckerberg, Jobs and Musk (among other white men). Men who bought themselves space, seemingly mostly by stealing the work of others, underplaying the support of wives and partners, and being seemingly awful people to be around. Perhaps though creativity can be what you do with the scraps of time you can buy, the materials around you, working with and around the lives and works of other people. I haven’t finished the book yet, but at present computers are moving in the direction we allow them to, mirrors of what we hold important. Maybe we need to redefine what we think of as creativity and of genius. Rather than mining bitcoin in the most efficient (and energy-depleting) ways why aren’t they running giant algorithms to best deal with climate destruction? Perhaps once we’re gone and they take over completely.