In 1959, DARPA (then just ARPA) approached Issac Asimov in an effort to gin up some “out of the box” thinking about ballistic missile system design. Although Asimov was initially interested in working with the high-tech organization his contributions were limited on account of his desire to continue writing with unbridled creative freedom. According to those familiar with the arrangement Asimov was worried that any work with top-secret technology would hinder his ability to think and write about science’s implications for our society.
While Asimov was assuredly right about national security cramping his style, he did leave ARPA with one parting shot, an essay titled “On Creativity”. In the short piece Asimov concentrates on how, where and under what conditions people generate new ideas. The thrust behind Asimov’s argument is that people should be given plenty of time to play, and that artificial timelines and pressure are a hindrance to creative thought:
“The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren't paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.
To feel guilty because one has not earned one's salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either.
Yet your company is conducting this cerebration program on government money. To think of congressmen or the general public hearing about scientists fooling around, boondoggling, telling dirty jokes, perhaps, at government expense, is to break into a cold sweat. In fact, the average scientist has enough public conscience not to want to feel he is doing this even if no one finds out.
I would suggest that members at a cerebration session be given sinecure tasks to do—short reports to write, or summaries of their conclusions, or brief answers to suggested problems—and be paid for that; the payment being the fee that would ordinarily be paid for the cerebration session. The cerebration session would then be officially unpaid-for and that, too, would allow considerable relaxation.”
Good advice, or bad?
Source: MIT Technology Review