Disposability
I used to paint in my childhood. I still remember a set of oil paints gifted to me by my parents, and how thrilled I was to use them on a canvas. However, even though the paint tubes were in sufficient quantity, the canvases were not. So if I screw up any painting, I had to start all over again, or had to figure out how I could recover from the mess I had done on the canvas itself. Similarly, I learnt typing at a very early age (I can type very fast, without looking at the keyboard at all and by using all the appropriate fingers for the correct keys, lol). We used to have a mechanical typewriter at home and the look of typed letters always fascinated me. I am fanatic about fonts, and that was my first introduction to standardized lettering on paper. However, even with the typewriter, if I typed any word incorrectly on a page, I had to start the page all over again. It was kind of natural at that time to do so, and I never realized at that time that all of this would go away sometime in the future.
The power of ‘undo’
The digital revolution was just starting when I was growing up. I used to visit a newspaper stand near my house, and always grab a computer magazine every month. I was not interested in the magazine itself, but the CD that used to come at the back of the magazine was something I was looking for. That CD had trial versions of different softwares such as Corel Draw, Aldus Pagemaker, a variety of sound editing and animation softwares. I used to spend hours creating digital paintings, letters with 3D effects, using several fonts to write essays by using those trial versions. I remember getting yelled at for making the only 486 computer we had at home the slowest machine in the world because I installed too many programs on it.
But once I started it, I never came out of digital content making. Even during college, I used to make jingles, posters, and even small movies using a variety of softwares. After starting with simple softwares such as MS Paint, I eventually graduated towards using Adobe Photoshop and started making even more complex creations. One thing that attracted me the most in digital content creation is the ability to create non-destructively. You could undo almost anything. The most important thing that it did was it allowed me to fail, and fail often. I could spend an eternity in perfecting my creations, creating versions of them, and trying out different things. Sky was the limit (well actually, the power of the computer, RAM and the disc size was the limit.)
When I started making films, I had to use even more complex softwares. Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro were the industry standards. I had to learn how to edit digitally, and how to add special digital effects. Creating an alpha channel (making part of an image transparent) in an image, cloning parts of an image to hide objects became imperative for compositing and I had to depend on sophisticated softwares to achieve that effect. These softwares were installed only on certain powerful machines in my school. My personal laptop was far too poor a machine for such ambitions. Therefore, I had to book time on those school machines to achieve creative satisfaction. Eventually my laptop and my desktop became smarter and powerful, and I could enjoy creating at home. But still, I was tied to a machine. If the machine wasn’t with me, I could not create. I could fail in my creation, but I could only fail on my machine. Nowhere else. And if the machine failed, I lost my work.
Don’t delete anything
All of this changed when web 2.0 came into effect. Cloud computing was on the rise, and online services to create content started becoming increasingly available. You could write documents on Google docs, you could create posters on Google slides, even create images with alpha channel on Google drawings. You could record audio online, you could edit audio online, all you needed was a computer and access to the internet. With the advent of smartphones, you could create content with just a phone in your hand.
Once again, the floodgates for creativity opened for me. I could not only create non-destructively, I could create literally anywhere where there was access to the internet. I could start your work on one machine, leave it in the middle, and continue at another place on another machine. I was not tied to a machine. I was free.
I moved my entire screenwriting portfolio online. Moved most of my image creation processes online. I started creating podcasts without having to install any audio creation and editing softwares. Everything was in the cloud. Just open the browser, and create.
Because of this, I started making an immense amount of content very fast and with large volumes. I started observing that I did not have to delete anything, or undo anything. Everything was getting saved the moment it got created, and therefore I could access almost anything in its original form anytime. Because of the large volume of the content getting created, I started observing that the content was getting extremely disposable. I did not have a need for version control at all. I just started accumulating libraries and libraries of my content.
Creativity vs Disposability
When I was doing my engineering, I used to take notes of every single word that came out of my professor’s mouth in the class. After the class, my notes for copied time and again for my colleagues. In the class, my friends used to see me write, and then go to sleep because they knew they would get a photocopy of my notes to study later. When I recently took a data science course after many years of leaving college, I started making notes in the same way because I thought it would help me later. But later I realized that there are so many amazing articles, videos on the internet that I just needed to do a good search for what I wanted to learn. I didn’t have to write anything. The knowledge was accumulated in an incredibly large volume and everything was disposable.
This sparks a huge debate in my head. I have always thought and observed that you become creative when you are constrained. Within constraints, you are forced to come up with radical solutions for the most difficult problems (refer to my essay on automating the screenplay breakdown). However, with unlimited access to resources where everything can be reversed or preserved, would you become less creative? Or since you have an opportunity to fail fast and often, you would actually become much more creative than you thought you would be? I kind of think that you catch up with your resources, and then you start discovering your constraints, and then it challenges you to be more creative.
If you do not feel limited by the resources you have at your disposal, then you are not creative enough. There is still room. Be more creative!
Would love to know your thoughts.