Let us write in praise of generic works.  For a long time I have pondered the disconnect that exists from some critics and creative people and those who are the predominant consumers of art and music and technology.  For example, I greatly love the music of Bryan Adams, but if one watches music critics, one will regularly find his songs put on various worst of lists of any year in which they appear on the year-end hot 100, both because of his soft rock approach, the sound of his vocals, and the generic nature of his lyrics.  When I stopped to think about the songs I particularly loved and felt a deep emotional connection to, I realized that in many cases the songs were either deeply ambiguous and capable of many layers of interpretation that I could fill in with my interest in layers and complexity and interpretation, or that they were fairly generic songs that I could fill in with the content of my own experiences and feelings.  I suspect that this phenomenon is not unique.  There is a certain interest in understanding a songwriter’s particular feelings, but there is also a great deal to appreciate about having a fairly blank tentpeg to attach one’s own feelings and memories and experiences to, in the knowledge that they will certainly fit with the song and not clash with any of its songwriting elements.  A generic work has a far greater ability to be viewed as relatable than something that is too idiosyncratic or too closely tied to the personality and quirks of the creator.  And relatability can greatly help with popularity.

A similar problem can be seen when one looks at technology.  For some time I worked with a particular piece of data software that based its entire advertising campaign on attacking Microsoft Excel as being a terrible source of truth and information for businesses.  This had the hipster appeal of being contrary to the practices of many millions of businesspeople and companies who the startup firm likely viewed as potential customers.  And, it must be admitted, the data visualization the software offered was great, although in the case of the data I was using, the visualization itself depended on excel spreadsheets that the company was preaching against, and the main concern of business executives was not with the prettiness of the graphs or the insight one could gain from a thoughtful visualization of the data, but with the ability to filter and trust the underlying data itself.  I suspect this is a common concern.  Before one looks at the extrapolations and interpretations one can make off of visualizations of data, the data itself must be viewed as trustworthy.  This cannot be taken for granted, not least when people who are not themselves very trustworthy or error-free are responsible for creating the data in the first place and when the companies that provide key aspects of the data are themselves not very trustworthy or competent either.  Pretty graphs that depend on sketchy data that cannot be trusted do not really mean a lot.

In cases where one wants plodding reliability, generic designs can be a very good thing.  Microsoft’s Excel is a good example of a generic system, as were the spreadsheets it was based off of.  You have basic columns and rows that can be filled with information, labeled and given titles, and which can then be turned into tables and graphs that provide insights to that data that may not otherwise be easy to see that can then lead to actionable responses.  The more complex and idiosyncratic (and thus “creative”) these pieces of software, the less often they often work for the purposes they have.  It is not the creativity of the software that matters, but rather the way that they can serve as a generic but powerful means of providing for the creativity of the user.  Like generic music, their purpose is not to draw attention to itself but to provide something that can be used and related by a wide mass audience that lacks the time and interest in creating for themselves and wants something that will allow them a tentpeg to work out and solve their own problems in a convenient and straightforward fashion, whether that problem is determining the conversion of a particular lead source or the complex workings out of a romantic relationship.

We must be sensitive to the needs of the audiences we are dealing with.  People can win awards for the clear and smooth design of their buildings, but if this smooth design means that people cannot recognize how to open doors, or if it provides offices with uncomfortable furniture and too little insulation to preserve the right internal temperature, such creativity is an active hindrance to the well-being of the people that are being asked to use the creation.  Atonal music that throws out the pitch relationships that are standard in the Western music tradition may be very creative but also deeply unpleasant because those tonal relationships are part of the trust that exists between composers and the listening audience, and when that trust is broken the creation will not be appreciated, no matter how novel and striking it is.  Sometimes we are best served in creating not by being flamboyantly eccentric to the point where the attention is on us and how different we are than others, but by creating that which best serves the needs of those we are creating for, who are going to put aspects of their own personal and professional life into our creations and who will need something that allows them to solve problems and create something out of the works that we have made.

How can we do this better?  In many ways, we are best served not by creating that which makes us look good in the eyes of super-specialized critics or elites, but by creating genres and genre conventions that allow our works to be appreciated and used with greater ease.  When we create conventions, we lay down simple and straightforward rules by which others may use our works and create with them that allow the greatest degree of ease of use to those people.  We serve our own interests of creation by serving the interests and meeting the expectations and skill level of those we are working with.  To be sure, such creativity requires a great deal of skill in areas we may not consider all that important, like asking questions of others or being able to draw out that which other people may not even know how to explain because they understand something only on an implicit and not a formal level.  It may involve creating things that are not as flashy as we could create if that was our intent, but which better serve others and help them to solve the problems they struggle with.  For often in our lives we are not judged by the way that our creations make us look good, but the way in which they help others to live better.  So let us praise generic works, and those works which create genres by which we can communicate and live and work easier.