The Idea

What is an idea? Is it a thought? An initiative? A plan? Or is it something more complex, more mechanical? Is it the outcome of innumerable hours of thought and incalculable journeys through mazes of imagination? Or is it just a sudden and simple whim of fancy?
To me, as a teacher, I feel that an idea is the fundamental premise of our history as a people, a race, an economy, as pioneers of creativity and as architects of the world we live in. That is the reason why an idea fascinates me. It makes me look back in amazement at what we, as a people, have created; it makes me look ahead with optimism at the possibilities that are yet to be. Why? Simply because the magnitude of an idea knows no bounds and it is the DNA of human existence as we know it today.
Yes, an idea is the genetic material from which every single device we use today was born. It is the gene from which inventions have sprung – and continue to do so; it is the gene from which human thought mutates and transforms inventions into shapes, sizes and colours that the original inventor would never have dreamt of. After all, did we not, at one time get cars in any colour we wanted as long as it was black? Yes, an idea not only gives birth to a device; it also helps that device grow and mutate with time. And that is why an idea is at the very top of the hierarchy of human development.
The idea of the alphabet has made communication possible, not just in the original tongue of the Semitic-speaking people who lived on the coasts of East Mediterranean Sea circa 1700 – 1500 BC, but in as many languages as there are races and regions in this diverse world that we live in. That idea has made it possible for me to sit and communicate my thoughts on a device that has mutated ever since Messrs. John V Atanasoff and Clifford E Berry made possible an idea that intrigued scientists for quite some time before the year in which it was invented: 1939.
Imagine the first photograph ever taken all the way back in 1888! It was a most revolutionary idea at that time, I am sure. Look around at the photographs we now have. We can carry them in our wallets, develop them instantaneously, store them digitally on our computers and our mobile phones, and even transfer them to other devices without cost or complication! I am sure Mr Eastman would never have envisaged the manner which his little idea could possibly have mutated to a degree such that taking and developing a photograph is – literally – child’s play!
Would the skyscrapers we have, with their bustling offices and teeming residents, ever have been possible if it weren’t for the invention of the toilet and plumbing? An idea that was born in middle sixteenth-century England still has ramifications all over the world, even in this day and age. Little wonder then, that an Aboriginal invention created approximately 15000 years ago, is by itself an icon in the sports-entertainment industry: the boomerang. Yes, an idea is born and it grows, sometimes by itself, sometimes by riding on the crests of other ideas.
Yet, an idea is not an idea – it is not credible until and unless it is acted upon. It is on this premise that I suggest that an idea gains function only when it Implements Design, Exercises Action. Yes, we live in an economy of ideas, we have grown because of an economy of ideas, capitalism takes it roots in the wealth of ideas and has grown due to the same. Nevertheless, commerce – as we know it today – would not have evolved and created the economic growth that this world has experienced if one did not Implement Design, Exercise Action