It used to be that creativity was a big problem. Probably it’s been a problem ever since the notion of creativity was invented, in different ways for different reasons. It’s a problem now, too, but it’s a different problem than it was before. Put on your time travelin’ pants, we’re going to the past. Creativity in a time of Ford (and I don’t mean Ford Prefect) Before, back in the twentieth century & up until its last several decades the industrialized Western world had this thing called Fordism and mass production. Mass production promised things like standardization, efficiency and the democratization of consumption. The price of this promise was creativity in the workplace, and the cost was paid by workers. This is because mass production entailed de-skilling. Workers, once artisans laboring with their colleagues to craft marvelous modern contraptions such as automobiles, were stuffed into tiny boxes of standardized labor power and made to perform tiny movements in isolation from each other, over and over again, on the assembly line. Think about what kind an angry dance such a change would do to your spirit, if you were one of those workers: once a skilled craftsperson, with a skilled craftsperson
