Mental Mashup

I like a phrase in the latest HP commercial with Gwen Stefani in it.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FhiIV6srJ0

She says that creativity is a mash-up of all these things you collect in your mind. She also says that creativity can't be turned on and off, it just sort of comes out.

I've often wondered about where ideas come from. I used to find that I would come up with revelations at odd times. For a few years there, they always came during gardening, but I've also had bouts of driving and running inspired creative thought.

I like to absorb as much information as I can. I admit, I'm an information junkie. When I was younger, I read books, magazines, and newspapers. Now I also browse the internet and listen to podcasts. Notice I don't list television as a source there. That's probably not entirely justified, but I just don't feel like it has much to offer in feeding the mind. It's more for turning the mind off and relaxing. I listen to so many podcasts now that I can't keep up with the rate they are generated. I find it very odd and gratifying from time to time when two or more podcasts, sometimes of very different genre, discuss similar ideas. Sometimes it's obvious, it's actually the same subject, but often, it's just analogous, which is more interesting.

I was inspired by the movie Good Will Hunting, of all things, when it came to education later in life. This guy is brilliant, and he taunts a Harvard or MIT student that what the student got for $100,000, he got for $1.65 in late fees from the public library. The movie Phenomenon also has a character that expands his mind simply by going to the public library. Actually, Thomas Jefferson had a great love for books, and was a voracious collector. He had a large collection of books that was amassed over his life which he donated to the government and started the Library of Congress. American founding fathers were well read, and wanted others in their nation to enjoy that same privilege. What inspired me about these examples is that the knowledge of the world is available to anyone with the time, desire, and devotion to simply pick up the books and start reading them.

How much information can we hold in the human mind? I've often wondered if the mind can actually get full. I know when my computer hard drive fills up, I have to start saving the stuff I need on other storage mediums and start deleting as much as I can so I'll have room for more. Does your brain work that way in some respect? If it does, I hope it's only deleting the stuff that is least used, and not anything important. I know if it does, it's not a process I'm in control of. I wonder if you do indeed have all the memories that you've ever accumulated locked away in your brain. If this is so, think of what happens if you die, how much knowledge dies with you.

Until that time, I plan on continuing to feed more information into the pile to see what grows out of it.