Imagination: blessing or curse?

By Tony Kirby

Imagination - blessing or curse? by Tony Kirby, Price $2.99 USD. 27,000 words. Language English.
America's first computer journalist offers an anecdotal approach to the "adolescent" years of the computer industry (1960 to 1980) plus a journey through subsequent years when imagination played a roller coaster role in his many entrepreneurial endeavours. Some good advice for aspiring entrepreneurs plus many print-oriented ideas that could be converted to the web.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tony Kirby
• Release date: Apr 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780973156218

Tony Kirby

Location Canada Member since April 03 2013 Tony was America’s first computer writer, having followed computer/communications technology since its birth. He has worked in all areas of print journalism from newspapers, magazines, publicity and publishing and has been involved in numerous entrepreneurial ventures. His current interest is in advising young people who want to go into business for themselves. Born in England, he now divides his time between Canada and New Zealand. To contact Tony go to : [e-mail]

Book preview

Imagination

blessing or curse?

By Tony Kirby

Copyright 2013 Tony Kirby

Smashwords Edition

####

Price of book: $2.99

ISBN number: 978-0-9731562-1-8

Cover photo by Robert Murray

####

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1. What is imagination?

Chapter 2. Improving one’s focus

Chapter 3. Works starts at age 14

Chapter 4. Return to Fleet Street

Chapter 5. Emigration to Canada

Chapter 6. Vancouver beckons

Chapter 7. Back to business magazines

Chapter 8. Automation and early computers

Chapter 9. A competitive marketplace

Chapter 10. Small computer applications

Chapter 11. M.A.I. – a mover and shaker

Chapter 12. Conflict of interest

Chapter 13. Technology sidelines me

Chapter 14. Invest Canada makes its mark

Chapter 15. The business opportunity market

Chapter 16. Canadians are too nice

Chapter 17. Unsuccessful ventures

Chapter 18. Vancouver improves with age

Chapter 19. Leaky condos, forestry and fishing

Chapter 20. Semi-retirement

Appendix A Games and sports ideas

– game preferences in relation to other skills

– digitizing golf course greens

Appendix B Technology now (2013 - ?)

– The technology-addicted

– Extinction of electronic data?

References

Preface

This is a business memoir, but it=s mainly about ideas.

An Aentrepreneur@ is a term usually applied to one person but it=s actually many people: the inventor, the innovator, the manager, the administrator. Only a few people have all these qualities.

I believe the inventor is the most important person in the mix but he or she is not going to get very far without some of the other skills.

In the early days of the Canadian computer industry quite a few initiatives came out of the universities and a few of these new companies were headed up by academics. This usually proved to be short term and it wasn=t long before they stepped aside and a marketing person took over.

Academics are smart people but they=re not business administrators or marketers.

One idea of mine created a steady and highly profitable business for 20 plus years. But when technology brought me down I had to rely on a fertile imagination to generate income, and it wasn=t easy.

Hopefully, what happened to me will help others on the entrepreneurial path see their way through specific situations, and to realize that they can take chances and go out on a limb for something they believe in.

I believe that Canadians are as entrepreneurial as Americans but they face some extra roadblocks: a far smaller market for the same amount of effort, too much government competition with the private sector, and a business mentality that is nice instead of direct.

Finally, if you fancy yourself as an innovator please feel free to take any of the ideas in these pages and run with them

####

Chapter 1 – What is imagination?

Definition of imagination from Webster’s New World Dictionary:1. a) the act or power of forming mental images of what is not actually present b) the act or power of creating mental images of what has never been actually experienced, or of creating new images or ideas by combining previous experiences; creative power. 2. anything imagined; mental image; creation of the mind; fancy. 3. a foolish notion; empty fancy. 4. The ability to understand and appreciate imaginative creations of others, especially. works of art and literature. 5. resourcefulness in dealing with new or unusual experiences 6. (Obs.) an evil plan or scheme.

The term hyperactive wasn't used when I was a kid but one of the end-of-year reports from my boarding school days had the following comment under General Conduct: Oscillates violently but tends to stabilize on a line fair to middling.

That says an awful lot about a nine year old! Fortunately, the headmaster's concluding remark took some of the sting out of this: He's a nice boy.

I don’t recall being particularly different when I was younger but I do know that my imagination flowered early. At eight years old I had written a play, The Mystery at St. Bernard's, performed by my relatives to modest success.

I was a cocky kid and possibly more imaginative than most. Did this mean I had a bright future ahead of me? A common assumption is that imagination is a good thing but looking back on my career I am a lot less certain about that.

Some 72 years have slipped by since I penned that boyish play and I still know very little about imagination. Where does it come from? Is the right brain or left brain involved? A result of divergent or convergent thinking? Intuitive or analytical thinking? Is creativity always part of the imaginative process? Is imagination inherited?

The dictionary definition says imagination is the act or power of forming mental images of what is not actually present.

Is this referring to the small number of people who are clever enough to think up truly revolutionary ideas (e.g. Einstein, Edison, Watt)? Or does it also include people with brilliant evolutionary ideas (e.g. Steve Jobs)? Successful people...

But the same interpretation could also refer to people who are imaginative enough to see an end result clearly but lack the skill, tools or motivation to achieve that result. Possibly failures.

The other definitions for imagination are all over the map.

Great minds from the past are of little help. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes at times came near to equating imagination with madness; he simply assumed that imagination was pretty much the property of children, lunatics and the uneducated ¹.

Author Patrick Harpur says Hobbes contemporary, philosopher John Locke, revived Aristotle’s idea that the mind was a tabula rasa , a blank slate like white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas on which experience writes.

David Hume, Locke’s 18th century successor, had a more sensible explanation. While admitting that the ultimate causes of our mental actions are impossible to explain, he believed that imagination reproduces the sensory experiences impressed on the mind so that we can think about them when we are absent:

Its creativity is limited to moving these impressions around and constructing new configurations.

I can relate to that.

The curse of imagination is being ahead of your time and wasting time and resources pushing a product or service that the market is not ready for.

It seems too obvious to say that imagination comes from our brain but the brain itself is still an inexact science. I faced one of its mysteries on a trip to New Zealand some years ago when I visited a country restaurant cum art gallery and near the counter a pleasant woman in her 60s was painting a tall canvas. The subject was a woman on a mountain top and the artist was obviously very professional.

You must be a spiritual realist? I suggested to her.

Nobody has called me that before, she said smiling.

Further conversation revealed that she had been painting just a couple of years; and only discovered that she had artistic talent following a serious brain injury. Later my niece, a doctor, pointed out that this was a fairly common occurrence with brain injuries.

Then there’s the woman who changed her brain ². Author Barabara Arrowsmith-Young writes: "I would do (the) exercises every day for up to 12 hours a day. The work I did with flash cards activated that moribund part of my brain, getting the neurons to fire in order to forge new neural pathways.

An amazing example of supreme focus.

Trying to pin a definition on something that involves your genes, your education, your environment, your personality, is virtually impossible.

My own conclusion is that imagination is (1) inherited – my father was very imaginative and this was reflected in his business life, and (2) imagination is selective and focused.

My imagination was focused on business opportunities. It could just as easily have been directed at devising plots for novels. We all know people with multi-skills who have a number of talents in different fields – all above average – but often real excellence seems to elude them. Focusing on too many things? Too much