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The Generative Pattern 93
PowerPoint slide show and the straitjacket of some of its most favored templates).
69 These rules might ensure a certain minimum competence in the
preparation of a hamburger or of a business presentation precisely because they
discourage what might be unhelpful or unskilled freelancing by the people implementing
them. However, the regularity needed to produce consistent sandwiches
and talks can actively discourage or prevent creativity. That drives critics
of technology like Neil Postman, author of such evocatively titled books as
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century 70 and Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture
to Technology, 71 to argue that the ascendance of engineering and information
technology is making sheep of us.
However, this understanding of technology stops at those systems that are
built once, originating elsewhere, and then imposed (or even eagerly snapped
up) by everyone else, who then cannot change them and thus become prisoners
to them. It need not be that way. Technologies that are adaptable and accessible—not
just leveraging—allow people to go a step further once they have
mastered the basics. The Lego company offers suggestions of what to build on
the boxes containing Lego blocks, and they even parcel out a certain number of
each type of block in a package so the user can easily produce exactly those suggestions.
But they are combinable into any number of new forms as soon as the
user feels ready to do more than what the box instructs. The PC and the Internet
have been just the same in that way. The divide is not between technology
and nontechnology, but between hierarchy and polyarchy. 72 In hierarchies,
gatekeepers control the allocation of attention and resources to an idea. In
polyarchies, many ideas can be pursued independently. Hierarchical systems
appear better at nipping dead-end ideas in the bud, but they do so at the expense
of crazy ideas that just might work. Polyarchies can result in wasted energy
and effort, but they are better at ferreting out and developing obscure,
transformative ideas. More importantly, they allow many more people to have
a hand at contributing to the system, regardless of the quality of the contribution.
Is this only a benefit for those among us who are technically inclined Most
of Mill’s passion for individuality was channeled into a spirited defense of free
speech and free thinking, not free building—and certainly not free programming.
However, as Benkler’s linkage of the Internet to cultural expression suggests,
the current incarnation of cyberspace offers a generative path that is not simply
an avenue of self-expression for individual nerds. Generativity at the technical
layer can lead to new forms of expression for other layers to which nonpro-