Let’s imagine?!
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Today I watched, probably for the fifth time, a talk (you’ll have to use the provided subtitles, unfortunately, since it’s in Greek) that Dr Eugene (Eugenios) Trivizas gave to TEDx Athens back in 2013.
Dr Trivizas is a very famous Greek fairy tale writer and a professor of Criminology. He has taught Criminology in the University of Reading and later as a visiting professor in Panteion University of Athens. Needless to say, I grew up with many of his books and stories, like many other generations of children that are raised in Greece. Some of his stories had some success abroad.
The talk he gave in TEDx Athens was titled: ‘Let’s imagine’. He argues that all children are born with a natural charisma for boundless imagination. As children grow up, imagination is contained, restricted and eventually ceases to exist. Dr Trivizas considers that the educational system, which mainly favours those of us that can memorise faster, is one of the leading causes for that.
If you were to ask my 5-year-old self what I want to do in life, I would probably say (amongst other things) that I want to become an architect and build tall skyscrapers. Now, of course, I realise that architects don’t build skyscrapers alone, it takes a few different professions to do so. I would tell you though that I would hire helicopters and that they would carry big steel columns and that they would attach them to the frame as the building was becoming taller and taller.
I guess cranes are a much better way to build the frame. Helicopters would probably be too expensive. But at the time I had no idea how skyscrapers are being built. I still know very little. I do, however, know enough to limit my imagination to ‘reasonable’ guesses.
Dr Trivizas gives countless examples of how imagination in adults has led to some of the greatest inventions. From mundane things like hoovers to advances in fundamental science.
I am not saying that I will build skyscrapers using helicopters in the future. I could use drones though — are there any VCs interested?
I am wondering how life would be different if we were to use our imagination more. In little things like making pastries. In big things like shaping our democracy. How would it be if instead of being penalised for making up things that don’t exist we were rewarded.
I am not five years old anymore. I am 26, and I work as a software engineer. Building software is very much like building things that don’t exist. You can’t touch software. The whole concept of software requires a fair amount of imagination.
Building software is also about building things that make our professional or personal lives better. From enabling introverts, like myself, to reach an audience to helping enterprise system administrators to operate a cloud computing platform.
We build software based on abstractions. Abstractions that other people built for us. Very smart people, don’t get me wrong. This though may be a limiting factor to our imagination’s reach. We mostly design and build software by starting from “what can we do?” and then answering “what should we do?”.
Even worse, we build software that mimics other software. It’s easier that way because then you can put labels on software and when you can label something you can build a market for it. But then, sometimes, we end up having to come up with novel solutions to problems that have already been solved. Or, improve on the existing solutions — which is not necessarily a bad thing at all.
Again, don’t get me wrong, I love my job and I love building software in today’s world.
I just can’t help but wonder. If tomorrow you were to turn up to your workplace with a groundbreaking solution to the problems you are trying to solve, to the use cases you are trying to enable, would anyone listen?
