I was recording a podcast with Dennis Van Staalduinen and Mark Blevis when it happened — I had an idea.
The phrase “the tyranny of the app” seemed to come up out of nowhere as we talked about creativity and the way people learn.
It was a minor epiphany, or so it seemed to me at the time. And I do think it actually has a little impact, so I’m going to expand on it here.
The backstory: while I’m one of three boys in my family, I was fairly distant in age from my brother — six and 12 years. So in some ways I was an only child. And what did I REALLLY love when I was a kid? Lego (or Legos, as I referred to them then).
Back then (the 1970s), Lego blocks were … blocks. There was the occasional curved piece. But most of them were slaves to the 90 degree angle. Squares, rectangles. Flat ones for foundations, bricks for building, long ones that joined structures together or served as wings… When I got one of these:
Image may be NSFW.
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I was done. That was IT. The world had provided a great gift to me (or at least my parents had).
The point of Lego in those times was to build things. I can remember getting small kits of things that made model helicopters or the like. But most of the time, it was to create a microcosm. A world, a building, a place. And it came out of my brain.
As I aged, I grew out of playing with my Legos. And by the time I started to buy Lego for young people in my life, it had changed. The Bionicle. The Lord of the Rings sets. Harry Potter. Mindstorms.
And as I watched kids put the kits together, the idea wasn’t to create a world, to create; it was to replicate the picture on the box.
What does this have to do with the “tyranny of the app?”
We have two ways of learning, two ways of interacting. We can create, or we can complete. We can follow a plan, or we can make a plan. We can build according to our own vision and desire, or we can take the instructions we’re given and complete them.
Either way, we make something. It’s up to you to decide which way of making something is more significant, more important. Better.
Tomorrow, I’m going to talk about escaping the tyranny of the app.
