The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes The World

Published by Catapult catapult.co Simultaneously published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Brandt Copyright © 2017 by David Eagleman ISBN: 978-1-936787-52-4 Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West Phone: 866-400-5351 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959435 Printed in Great Britain 987654321 To our parents, who brought us into a life of creativity Nat & Yanna Cirel & Arthur our wives, who fill our lives with novelty Karol Sarah and our children, whose imaginations summon the future Sonya, Gabe, Lucian Ari and Aviva CONTENTS Introduction: What do NASA and Picasso have in common? Part I: New Under the Sun 1. To innovate is human 2. The brain alters what it already knows 3. Bending 4. Breaking 5. Blending 6. Living in the B-hive Part II: The Creative Mentality 7. Don’t glue down the pieces 8. Proliferate options 9. Scout to different distances 10. Tolerate risk Part III: Cultivating Creativity 11. The creative company 12. The creative school 13. Into the future Acknowledgments Image Credits Bibliography Notes Index INTRODUCTION WHAT DO NASA AND PICASSO HAVE IN COMMON? S everal hundred people scramble in a control room in Houston, trying to save three humans ensnared in outer space. It’s 1970 and Apollo 13 is two days into its moonshot when its oxygen tank explodes, spewing debris into space and crippling the craft. Astronaut Jack Swigert, with the understatement of a military man, radios Mission Control. “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The astronauts are over 200,000 miles from Earth. Fuel, water, electricity and air are running out. The hopes for a solution are close to zero. But that doesn’t slow down the flight director back in NASA Mission Control, Gene Kranz. He announces to his assembled staff: When you leave this room, you must leave believing that this crew is coming home. I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before … You’ve got to believe, your people have got to believe, that this crew is coming home.1 How can Mission Control make good on this promise? The engineers have rehearsed the mission down to the minute: when Apollo 13 would reach the moon’s orbit, when the lunar module would deploy, how long the astronauts would walk on the surface. Now they have to shred that playbook and start over. Mission Control had also prepared abort scenarios, but all of those assumed that the main parts of the spacecraft would be healthy and the lunar module expendable.2 Unfortunately, the opposite is now true. The service module is destroyed and the command module is venting gas and losing power. The only working part of the craft is the lunar module. NASA has simulated many possible breakdowns, but not this one. The engineers know that they have been dealt a nearly impossible task: save three men locked in an airtight metal capsule, hurtling at 3,000 miles an hour through the vacuum of space, their life support systems failing. Advanced satellite communication systems and desktop computers are still decades away. With slide rules and pencils, the engineers have to invent a way to abandon the command module and turn the lunar module into a lifeboat bound for home. The engineers set about addressing the problems one by one: planning a route back to Earth, steering the craft, conserving power. But conditions are deteriorating. A day and a half into the crisis, carbon dioxide reaches dangerous levels in the astronauts’ tight quarters. If nothing is done the crew is going to suffocate within a few hours. The lunar module has a filtration system, but all of its cylindrical air sc