Do you have any ideas?

The Machine Stops (E M Forster, 1909) is an enormously prescient sci-fi dystopia. Everyone lives in isolation, with the titular Machine responsible providing for all their needs, and communication done via video calls. It’s incredibly accurate for predicting some aspects like the internet, social media and AI. But other aspects, like humanity’s total surrender of control to the Machine, have yet to come to pass. But one aspect that always fascinated seems to be on the verge of becoming true. The citizens of Forster’s story are obsessed with new ideas. They are constantly trading them, and people’s chief activities are “eating, or sleeping, or producing ideas”. The implication is that the omnipotent Machine, which supplies everything needed to the citizens, is sterile. The citizenry still depend on each other to keep life interesting. I don’t think current AI is sterile, exactly. They’re capable of remixing and random exploration, which is a large fraction of the creative process . But they are weaker at novelty than some of their other strengths. The result is a curious inversion of the usual supply-and-demand for creative content. In the past, “ ideas guys ” were reviled as the lo