There’s a fascinating brain study about jazz musicians that shows them reaching a state when they improvise, where the part of the brain that regulates and censors behaviour goes dark, while the one responsible for self-expression lights up, essentially allowing them to improvise completely unique, personal melodies. I ran into this gem while doing research earlier this year, in the hopes of improving my ability to generate creative ideas faster. This, then introduced me to the concepts of convergent vs. divergent thinking, which it turns out, explain a perfectly vital part of the devolution of the Web.

To put it simply, convergent thinking is more conservative and focuses on finding the one ‘best’ or perfect answer to a problem, while divergent thinking is non-linear, non-judgemental, and focuses on finding as many alternate possible answers as possible. So, it’s the difference between going out into the forest to pick berries from a specific tree using the most efficient known path, and aimlessly frolicking around the forest hugging trees, napping on a log, and talking with the Fae Folk.

In contrast to the Web of today, where there’s templates and ‘best practices’ (ick) and social media sites and moronic design trends introduced by awful big companies and then blindly mimicked by conformists with no ideas of their own, the old Web, for a time, effectively had nothing. Forums existed as a lower-effort way to get a voice in cyberspace (FAR more than you may imagine if you weren’t around then. The Old Web had more watering holes than a home improvement store’s shower aisle.), but otherwise, the only way you were going to get a megaphone (shower nozzle?) online is if you got some hosting (thankfully for many, Geocities, Angelfire, etc were around for free hosting) and then learn enough HTML and, optionally, CSS and graphic design (or, alternately for the last one, obtain shovelware clip-art CD or snag some from other websites) to put together your own website using your own wits.

The Web was a brand new frontier at the time, and people were figuring it all out on their own, which resulted in a golden age of totally unique and creative websites because people had no choice but to machete their own, personal path through the thick, dark jungle growth. The highway hadn’t paved through said jungle yet. Everyone was taking the test alone in a room with the teacher, and copying off of someone else’s answer wasn’t possible.

The reason for convergent thinking being so prevalent is simple: brainpower is a lot more expensive than it may feel. Our brains use about 20% of our body’s energy. That means reliable shortcuts, even despite the negative effects they might have, are a boon whenever possible. The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence-generated content (that no one looked at, verified, or accurately labeled as being AI-generated), flooding the Internet like an unmonitored assembly line going rogue and somehow unleashing a grey goo apocalypse is basically just the latest manifestation of that on the Web, but that is a nuanced subject for another article.

Time/energy saving is only a part of it, of course. It’s silently drilled into people, from schools prioritising reciting the one correct answer over ambiguity and critical thinking, to companies insisting on having one correct process for everything that everyone must follow to avoid unforeseen consequences. The conspiracy theorist in me even wonders if that’s why recess (spontaneous, unstructured play) is effectively replaced with gym class after elementary school.

The push for having one right solution to everything is especially insidious in light of how increasingly difficult authentic, personal Web 1.0 sites have become to find, in comparison to the Wal-Marts of the Internet (r*ddit (as an addendum to what I already said in the aforelinked article, I contend that one would likely utterly fail to awe a group of uncontacted people with the wonders of computers and the Internet, if r*ddit was used to demonstrate it.), Quora, etc).

I still remember an old Web where, if you looked up a show you liked, you’d find 20 different and UNIQUE websites made by passionate fans. Really. You can still get a glimpse of that era at Olda’Vista. But anyway, now, you get a subr*ddit, a Wikia, and sponsored results offering to sell merchandise to you. No room for vibrance or originality here, take your prescribed Wikia nutrition pill and sod off so the line can keep moving. No strawberries for you.

The end result of all of this is that we probably already have at least one or two generations that have never seen or experienced what the Web used to be like. Their Overton window for what websites can be is basically the same old hideous ‘clean, minimalist design’ with all of the soul of a demonic spreadsheet, because they’ve never seen anything else. They’re born in a mental prison without even knowing it. As Garfield would put it, whoever invented this crappy modern flat aesthetic should be drug out into the street and shot.

But enough fear-mongering rambling on a Web 1.0 site, how does one go about curing or circumventing such a crippling creative calamity? I don’t have an answer that will work for everyone, because such a thing doesn’t exist, but I’ll give the best advice I can personally think of. I’ve run across oodles of good basic ideas like no-censorship brainstorming sessions, stopping oneself from making assumptions, and so on, and all of those are wonderful suggestions.

For me, I think what works the best is the same thing that has always worked. That is, creating via exploring and playing (I’ll soon clarify exactly what I mean), either via daydreaming or via jumping straight into an endeavour with little to no planning or ideas and just experimenting until something cool comes together.

As I remember it, here’s an anecdote from earlier this year that’s an example of how it works for me. I had a board in my upcoming ZZT game that I needed to make that had no real theme beyond ‘another extrauniversal place’. I was lost for ideas, but had this one cool image in my head of a cat just sitting in a hole in some rock in outer space, staring at a distant nebula, and wound up doing the bare minimum to insert exactly that into a blank ZZT game, and then just started ‘exploring’ it like a child playing.

‘Okay... so, what would I find if I turned around and went down this hall? Okay, I’ll draw it like this and then there will be... A second cat? Already? Snoresville! How about a witch? Maybe, but... she needs a unique theme. What group of people would fit? Whoa, wait, what about a Cathar witch? Yeah! Okay, so this comet/board could be like... a Dyson tree comet... with crazy magic and a medieval peasant dwelling aesthetic slightly updated for living in space!’

And so, just like that, (and after a few days of research on relevant subjects to clarify things and give me more to work with so I can work them into the overarching cosmos and plot), a major new faction was born out of nowhere.

This works for website design too, and is how I’ve created a LOT of the designs on this site. Figure out what you can immediately figure out first, perhaps what colour scheme you think would fit, how it should ‘feel’, what sorts of things you want to include and which are a priority to make sure the viewer sees if they’re in a rush and liable to leave quickly. Then... just open your editor of choice and experiment freely! Sometimes it takes a frustratingly long time to get anywhere, but it’s worth it when you finally strike gold.

I daydream what is probably a ludicrous amount of the time and always have, and often review things I’m working on in my head during lulls to find ways to improve them, or branch out into some cool new thing. Sometimes I’ll just come up with a cool thought experiment and have no idea what to do with it, only to remember it months or years later when I finally have something to attach it to. Sometimes I’ll have, say, a vague scene in mind but no good ideas for how to execute it, so I’ll just playfully daydream it, in the spirit of a child playing with toys, in a bunch of different ways until something great comes out.

I’m honestly surprised people don’t daydream more. Would you rather spend hours being present for necessary yet tedious periods of time where your brain can comfortably and safely stay barely aware, or spend hours roaming the cosmos, coming up with cool ideas for things to create, and exploring amusing hypothetical scenarios and stumbling upon something that calls to you? Any time you’re doing anything you can comfortably automate out to your subconscious, is a glorious time for that sort of thing.

I think it’s likely impossible for all or most grown-ups, including myself, to recapture the raw truly unfiltered creative level of their child or teenage self, but there’s a way to compensate for that, which brings me to my next suggestion.

Read (or watch or listen or whatever works best for you...) about a wide variety of unrelated but interesting things, especially during periods where you’re struggling for ideas. This allows one to have a much bigger and varied toolbox of building blocks to draw from, and ideally, compensate for that drawback. In my personal case, I’m fortunate in that I’m constantly barreling down the rabbit hole of one autistic special interest or another by my primal nature.

Anyhow, I may perhaps be more wired for divergent than convergent thinking, but I firmly believe that this sort of process is something anyone can do. It’s something that needs to be unlearned moreso than learned, however. Next time you’re stuck on a creative work, try taking some time to brainstorm without making any assumptions or filtering out any ideas, regardless of how ‘stupid’ they are. Don’t be afraid to make connections between seemingly unrelated things, not just in books/shows/movies/games/whatever else you may indulge in, but in everything. All of existence is one big minefield of potential ideas for you to accidentally step on.

Unlearn stomping your mental sparks out before they have a chance to reveal themselves to be glorious fires. Give them a chance to ignite, to prove themselves (or to die trying). A tiger that silently lives and dies in a zoo enclosure is still majestic and divine... but they don’t live. Some of your ideas will inevitably be rubbish, but that’s just how it goes for everyone. I think I can confidently estimate that I’ve had more idiotic ideas than at least 99.99% of the population ever does, even this far. It happens. But far more importantly, know that even rocket scientists and surgeons get it disastrously wrong sometimes. At the very least, there’s a LOT more leeway for error in the world of art. (:

The modern Web may look like something one might perhaps expect from some sort of bizarre prison private intranet with a bunch of drop-dead boring websites designed to make sure the inmates never feel any joy from browsing it, but the real overarching prison is a mental one, and that one can be escaped. Or we can keep going down the path of least resistance, which has led us to a point where over half of new articles are generated by AI.

I am personally against a future of the Web where it’s a sea of tactless swindlers abusing Artificial Intelligence to create sophisticated spam that no one even bothered to proof-read or fact check before unleashing it into the world. However, I am also equally against a future where it’s still a sea of censored corporate behemoth websites full of low effort nonsense that’s too insipid for water cooler smalltalk. The Web is art, not merely a tool, and it should be approached as such.

...Yeah, I really need to do my own part and get back to updating this website more often. Once I’m less distracted by... greener pastures.