There’s a joke traveling the Web about comments made by the Supreme Head of Microsoft, concerning GM, and the riposte given by the Supreme Head of GM:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, GM issued a press release stating (by Mr. Welch himself):

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought “Car95” or “CarNT.” But then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five percent of the roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single “general car default” warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Every time GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You’d press the “start” button to shut off the engine.

The joke comparing Microsoft and GM is at least 5.5 years old—I’ve found a copy dating from 1999—but the conflict between the two major industries points at a larger conflict within our society as our society has changed direction on how it views the idea of creativity, which goes beyond any consideration of Microsoft and GM.

A time existed when people spent far more time constructing their own tools than shopping for tools created by others. There is another joke, one about rednecks that I hear often enough in my hometown in the Ozarks of Missouri, which states that pretty much anything can be repaired with duct tape: laugh as we might, the joke would not exist if not for the preexisting notion that some people spend their time on finding creative solutions for their own problems when they could be shopping for solutions devised by others. Before the massive industrialization of the world, farmers and others had to repair their own tools and tools were limited to what they could repair or recreate. Homemakers had to create their own bread, quilts, and other necessities for the home. In today’s world, however, much of this creation is handled at a distance, some by industrial workers but much of it by machinery that handles the creation for us.

Creativity has undergone a change. A recent thread of conversation on Alan Sullivan’s blog Fresh Bilge, referenced here in a recent post, mentioned in passing the distinction we make between different meanings for the word “heart.” A heart is the muscular organ that circulates the blood in our bodies, but it is also the emotional center or volitional center of a person’s psyche: “I had no heart for it” or “His decision broke my heart.” A similar bifurcation in meanings was mentioned in the thread at Fresh Bilge about the various meanings of the Hebrew word “ruach”: breath, wind, spirit. We can find similar examples throughout our language; for instance, when we “aspire” to do something, we are breathing on/into our goal, and when we “expire” our breath is leaving us: one is metaphorical whereas the other, expire, has a more literal meaning.

Creativity suffers a similar diffusion. The act of creation in its most literal sense would mean the creation of a physical object—a car or a computer—but the creation of a poem, an ideology, or a joke is metaphorical creation. The old paradox, “If a tree fell in a forest and no one was around to hear it…” speaks to this diffusion of meanings: If I build (create) a cabin in the middle of the forest and no one is around to see me do it, the cabin will still be there if I die and someone happens upon it; but if I create a song in the middle of the forest, singing to the birds and beasts and myself, it will not be there after I die even if someone should happen on the exact spot where I created it.

We see a confusion of meanings of the idea “creativity” in our society. Some of the confusions are understandable; for instance, if I create a poem and put it on paper or on the Internet, I might die but the poem will continue to exist. Or will it? Much is made in the community of poets of the transitional quality of poems: each new person or new generation “sees” something in the written poem that is particular to that person or generation. Here we have a metaphorical sight, unlike the literal sense of sight. I have spent an extraordinary amount of time working on the stylesheets for Phatic Communion, but what have I created? I’ve created a particular use of a particular language—a computer language—which will render a particular output depending on the particular browsers and computers which render that language. (And, Microsoft IE works to destroy the intent of my creation daily.) We call such obsessive maneuvering “creation,” say “I have created this web site,” but what is really created?

In today’s society, much emphasis is given to the metaphorical idea of creation—an actor creates a character, Congress creates a law—while our devotion to actual acts of creation decreases. If a natural or man-made catastrophe should destroy our means of actual production or our means for transporting produced goods, how many people would be able to create their own food, clothing, shelter?

Recently, Microsoft chose a neutral position on an anti-discrimination bill in the Washington state legislature that would have protected gays and lesbians from being discriminated against in the workplace; the bill failed by one vote in the state Senate. Now, after protests and even letters from his own employees, Bill Gates says that Microsoft will rethink its position:

“Next time this one comes around, we’ll see,” Gates said in the story published Tuesday. “We certainly have a lot of employees who sent us mail. Next time it comes around that’ll be a major factor for us to take into consideration.”

Microsoft, one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits to gay employees, has denied that the pastor or anyone else outside the company influenced its decision. Gates said executives weren’t expecting a backlash.

“Well, we didn’t expect that kind of visibility for it,” Gates told The Times. “After all, Microsoft’s position on a political bill, has that ever caused something to pass or not pass? Is it good, is it bad? I don’t know.”

We see the conflict in the controversies concerning gay marriage and homosexuality in general: A heterosexual couple, barring physical hindrances, may “procreate,” which is the actual creation of other humans, but what may a homosexual couple create? It is odd that our society as a whole has moved from a focus on actual creation to a focus on metaphorical creation yet maintains a bias for physical creation.

It is even odder that the metaphorical creation of the World, via God, is given such unstinting devotion and support by those who claim that homosexuality is a dead-end route. Yes, homosexuals create theater, poetry, computer programs, and other entertainments—as do heterosexuals—but some of them work for GM, too. Who knows, but maybe God created homosexuals for a “non-creative” purpose: i.e., to show humanity that love can occur between any two individuals.

—but this isn’t the nuts & bolts kind of creation, is it?

Addendum and Correction (4-27-05): I’ve realized that I may have confused with my late reference to gays who work for “Microsoft and GM, too,” and have corrected the line. I had inadvertently implied that workers at Microsoft create computers when that company focuses on the creation of software, not hardware. The split between Microsoft and GM is directly related to the divergence of meanings of creativity.