Marketing and behavioural research has shown that 95% of our behaviour is based on habits and previous experiences. To a large extend, we replicate ourselves, repeatedly. Moreover, as we get older, our behavioural routines even increases. We’ll always try to map our observations to concepts we have previously learned.

Other research has shown that the minds of babies are 100% creative, as they have to start from scratch. At the age of 5, 40% of their thoughts are creative, and don’t be shocked: at 40 years of age it’s just 2%. So don’t even start thinking about the elderly and their creative mindsets. We just tend to re-use what we’ve learned by processing this into our unconsciousness. This will give us focus to learn new things and this will keep us going for a while, but at some stage, it will stop us from thinking out of the box and holds us from learning.

How are we programmed? Or: how are we being programmed? Yes, that’s right, by responding to our environment, to other human beings, and to nature and whatever happened previously in our lives. Did we come up with new solutions? Most likely not, we were just copying someone else’s behaviour and reapplied them, i.e. from our parents, friends, teachers, TV personalities or forums. We create by recombining what we’ve observed previously. That’s all. Therefore, people who are considered to be creative combine ideas at a higher, more abstract level. Although their ideas seem to be innovative, most people just simply don’t understand the logical reasoning behind those ideas.

Computers and robots will also be creative, just by recombining bits and pieces. It’s just a matter of time until this technology has matured.

Examples of creative computers are already available: Below you’ll find a picture of fresh baked cookies. This picture was processed by facial recognition software and the ‘stupid’ computer recognises a face in these cookies. Silly thing! However, that’s exactly what creativity is about: about recombining patterns, recognising similar situations, and drawing parallels. Now it doesn’t know he made a mistake, next time he does, and then it’s suddely humour. May it be visual, auditive, tangible, or abstract. It’s just a simple visual demonstration of how computers will think in the future. Which one of you would have associated this cookie with a face? Perhaps only a few of you. Computers will always keep on associating, with everything they learned in their life, but also what other computer have learned. That’s something we can’t compete with.

image once found on the Internet, source unknown