Useful Creativity

As we study Charles Babbage in class, I am struck by the foresight that this man must have had. The mind of an inventor is a special thing. It is one that both the artist and the scientist admire. It is a crossroad of utility and creativity.

There's a certain air of confidence you must have in your own ideas, a daring spirit that traverses the opinions of others. You must be daring enough and persistent enough to take your precious free time and use it for something else.

America's Inventor Magazine says that "the mind of an inventor is that of a curious child, always exploring the world around him. It is a world of wonder and wondering, asking what makes things work and why they are the way they are and do the things they do. It's a world of looking at things in a "different" way than people look at things. In the "real" world, the normal three dimensional world, people see the outside of objects -- things that have a defined shape or size, color, texture and weight -- but they always look at things as they are, not as what they can be or could become."

This seems to echo similarly with the world of the hacker, as Dr. Zappala explained him. He said that it is necessary to look at the world as a problem that needs to be solved.