Welcome to Corante's newest blog: Amateur Hour by Jonathan Peterson. I'm going to quote directly from his blog mission statement here because it has important things to say about the status of creativity and innovation on an individual level: 

The rise of mass media in the last half of the 20th Century turned us all into "consumers" and took away much of the natural human inclination to be creators, performers, singers, musicians and storytellers. Today, the rapid proliferation of cheap professional-quality media-making tools, paired with the drastic decrease in the cost of content distribution is leading to a quiet, but very real revolution in the quantity and quality of "amateur" content. It's the democratization of media, the "Big Flip" as Clay Shirky calls it, and we think it's going to play an increasingly important role in how we make, share and consume media.

The innovation "industry" is full of buzzy words, metaphors and even at times solid research in an effort to puzzle out how to foster creativity and innovation at the corporate level. We are constantly told how important it is for companies to do this.

The nasty little conundrum that doesn't often get talked about is this: How can individuals who spend the majority of their leisure time (especially during the formative growing-up years) as "content consumers" manage to be creative on the job? Not talking here about "creative" types. I'm talking about regular people. Those folks who are often referred to as "consumers," which is surely the key word. Who consume content, but never learn how to truly engage what's being consuming and build on it to create something else. (Whether there's anything there worth engaging is a different question.)

My prediction:  The more we are treated as content consumers, not creators and customers, the more our creative impulses  and skills will erode. Not because that's the intent of Big Media per se, but because their business plans foster a culture of consumers rather than creators. Listen to the language we now use to talk about our formerly cherished creative processes -people who used to be called writers and editors are now content providers and content programmers.

IMHO, the antidote to this: stop consuming content and start creating it. By "stop consuming"  I don't mean stop buying, or stop viewing, listening, reading, gaming. I mean start approaching the music, films, books, games, etc., as the outward manifestation of someone's creativity rather than as a product to be used up and thrown away. Approach it as something to become engaged with. If there's not enough "there" there to engage, then don't even go there in the first place.  And by "start creating" I mean make your own content, your own writings, photos, films, multimedia projects, web pages, computer programs, whatever. Start a blog! Give yourself permission to do this. You don't have to be good, you just have to do it. If you're already doing this, do it more. Encourage children to do this, however and wherever you encounter them. Encourage your employees and co-workers and neighbors to do this.

Read Amateur Hour. He's onto something. Let's encourage the creation of tools and technologies and policies that foster creativity. Let's not slip any further down the "content consumption" slope. Because the bottom is a mighty uncreative place, I fear.