6533b82afe1ef96bd128ca72

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Looking at the Nature of Ideas Through New Lenses

Pertti Saariluoma

subject

Social PsychologyBig IdeaCommunicationScale (chemistry)media_common.quotation_subjectSocial changeMultitudeEnvironmental ethicsIdeal (ethics)Human-Computer InteractionLawExaggerationSociologySWORDmedia_commonSimple (philosophy)

description

What sets humans apart from other animals is not the use of technology: Many mammals are innovative in making simple tools to assist in life. But it is the sheer scale of technological development that distinguishes humans. Over the millennia, people have invented technologies, used them, and enhanced them. The once-innovative technologies become mundane elements of everyday contemporary life as human societies progress. The technological developments of the last decades have dramatically altered most humans’ way of life and perceptions of the myriad elements of the immediate and distant environment. It would not be an exaggeration to view humans as standing at the cusp of profound social changes that are in line with those following the invention of writing or the steam engine. Therefore, now is a good time to stop for a moment and ponder the forces that make such new developments possible. What should we pay specific attention to when we attempt to make sense of where we have succeeded as a species, and where we have failed? Certainly this complicated, multifaceted, and intangible question cannot be answered in the next three pages, or even in a thousand times that many: There are simply too many interrelated forces that form the necessary conditions for progress. But I can isolate one particularly relevant force to contemplate, one that underscores the human role amid the multitude of other factors: That force is the reception of new ideas. Humans are a creative sort, continually imagining new ideas to address common and uncommon problems in daily life. But the success of an idea depends not solely on its conception: An equal partner of the potential of an idea is its social acceptance. The lack of ideas is certainly not an ideal situation, and one must remember that even a bad idea is better than no idea at all. Many bad ideas have been rethought, reworked, and reinvented into pretty good ideas. But new ideas are also a double-edged sword: While innovative thinking may propose a solution to a perceived problem, the inventor often finds that his or her “big idea”

https://doi.org/10.17011/ht/urn.2006516