"How should we create things?"

"One popular idea is that we ought to 'make' things. In books like Robert Pirsig’s 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and Matthew Crawford’s 'Shop Class as Soulcraft,' we encounter the notion that there’s something special about making things yourself, to your own specifications, with a particular goal in mind and in a particular state of mind—a kind of elevated craftsmanship. 'Craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it, because you want to get it right,' Crawford writes. He’s thinking mainly about making tough, hefty things with your hands—furniture, engines, houses, and so on.... Eno has a different way of imagining creativity.... Demonstrating some of the software he uses for creating generative music, he shows how a few elements can be designed and then put into motion—a keyboard melody, for example, can be fed through a program that randomly skips some of its notes, so that the melody renders differently as it repeats.... The idea is that the music isn’t finished. It will continue growing without him.... Applying a little Eno to my writing can loosen it up, shifting it from the precise, controlled, responsible 'making' track onto the playful, surprising, impersonal 'growing' track...."

Writes Joshua Rothman in "How Should We Create Things? In a new documentary, the musician Brian Eno shows that playfulness can substitute for inspiration" (The New Yorker).