Smart World

by Richard Ogle

This book is very underappreciated. Ogle translates some of the ideas I’ve been talking about into the world of business and creativity. He popularizes the work of philosopher Andy Clark, who says ideas don’t just exist in one head, but in a whole bunch of minds at once. Ogle argues that we’re embedded in “idea-spaces” and creativity comes from idea-spaces merging together. The simple illustration is Picasso, who existed in the culture of western art, but came across a separate culture, of African masks, and merged the two to create Cubism. Ogle’s book is about how that happens, ranging from Picasso to the invention of the personal computer.