CIM406 Blog Post 1: Curiosity

To start; a question I can not google.
This was a quick thought for me, as for years I have had a ridiculously frustrating thought stuck in the back of my head; "How did Time start?". It makes no sense. We use time to measure things, and to define where things start. So, without time, how did time start. Its not like there could have been time passing before time began... So we then move onto whether time has been around forever, and thus, has the universe been around forever, etc, etc, my head hurts. One thing is for certain, while google may give me many opinions on the matter, there is no answers.

The TED Talk by Chris Wire talks about curiosity, and its link to creativity. On the whole, I am in total agreeance with the concepts proposed by Chris. Curiosity today is less than it has previously been. This is affecting our cultural identities and our individual identities. There were a few points that I disagreed with however.

The first, that technology is responsible for this decreased curious activity. I am in direct opposition to this in fact. I believe that having such easily available fact finding facilities at our disposal, will increase our curiosity. When I was younger, and I was curious about a fact, I would have to ask my parents, my teachers, or find it in a book. This led to many facts remaining unanswered. And after a while, I would forget the question and go about my life. But by the time I was reaching year 4/5 at ~ 11 years old, I was beginning to ask less questions. Not because I was being told "be quiet", or berated for my questions (I was, but that didnt stop me), but because I wasn't getting any answers. With the advent of smart phones, google and all that came with them, my curiosity resurged. Because now all of my questions could  have answers. And I believe that this was not just the case for me, but a global phenomenon. Thus, I reject the proposal that we were all so curious before technology, as Chris hasn't given me any evidence or reason to believe that this statement is true.

The other point is that children are naturally more curious than adults. As a STEM (Digital tech) education provider, my day job is to go to schools and teach kids to program, to make a circuit, all the fun tech stuff. However, on the whole, my kids aren't bursting full of questions and curiosity. I show them a new piece of technology, and often I will not get any questions. At most, a "cool, how does it work". Kids arent interested in the broad applications of software, or the different things they can do with it. Kids like to find a single use for an object and slam all their attention into it. Give a child the internet, and they will not spend time on google asking questions, they wont even go looking for new activities. They will go to the same activity they did yesterday, and every day before.

Which, if my experience serves me well, will be some sort of gaming. Or pictures of cats (kids seem unaware of the irony of just using the internet for kitten pics).

In regards to the creative quiz at https://hbr.org/2015/12/assessment-whats-your-curiosity-profile, my results came back in 3 categories.

1. Unconventional Thinker
2. Intellectually Hungry, and
3. Adaptive to New Situations.

Unconventional Thinker
I like to think in my own way, and my own way is often different from those around me. However, I believe this is true for many people, and I don't believe it really makes me unconventional. I am not one of those people who makes wild leaps of thought to strange areas (I think). In my life, it has been the direction of my thought, not the variability of it that has been different.

Intellectually Hungry
I can agree with this. Learning and progression are large parts of my personality makeup, and are aspects that are often forwarded into my work. They are possibly what makes me enjoy my work so much, as progression of character and player is one of the greatest aspects of game design.