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The freedom to pursue creative fulfillment is very unusual in human history.

The vast majority of the time it just takes far too much time and energy to survive.

On very rare occasions, people have enough time to create art. An example I can think of is the native Americans in the pacific north west, before the arrival of Europeans.

The unique combination of:

Seasonal salmon runs - very good calorie rich food that's easy to catch.

A mountainous geography - keeps population reasonably small.

Resulted in a societies that could quickly catch and store enough food for the whole year.

And they ended up with a surplus of time and energy - free time.

Unsurprisingly that led to a staggering amount of art. Sculpture - totem poles, music, dance, etc.

But again, that's very unusual. The only other example I can think of is ancient Greece and they had a lot of free time thanks to slavery.

The one entrepreneurial solution to this, that I can think of is robotics.

I already have a dish washer and a roomba, but those only save a few hours a week. To really free up my time I need something that will do my work for me, like a robot that can code in C++.

I just hope the robots don't rebel or something like that.

Well said.. its interesting, a surplus in groups is created by the need to survive and a stroke of luck. With this excess, groups of people could dedicate some time to song, dance, art, and other expressions - initially used solely for the purpose of communication and passing down communication between generations. This is likely how the human mind evolved language processing abilities (http://www.amazon.com/Singing-Neanderthals-Origins-Music-Lan... and http://www.amazon.com/World-Six-Songs-Musical-Created/dp/052...)

It wasn't the only choice though. Maybe some members of the tribe used their free time to kill more salmon. Maybe they killed all the salmon because it was so good, or because they could bag the prettiest girl in the village because they had all the fish.

One way (song/dance/art), you are enhancing survival for the group and future generations. Another way (using survival skills to create excess), you are profiting in the short term.

Hundreds of years from now our era may be remembered as the generations that killed all the fish, and took all the paint brushes to make more fish hooks and spears.

And then again, the United States has 200,000 professional artists, who earn a living from their craft:

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos092.htm#projections_data

It seems a recurrent mistake that people underestimate how truly unprecedented and awesome our society is.

Also, a large, dense population with lots of wealth is much more art-friendly than your sparse, idyllic native American population. The Indians didn't come up with Beethoven, and there's a reason for that.

Thats an interesting explanation for how art comes to be. It reminds me of the novel 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', in which the author talks about the beauty and art in technology, and fixing motorcycles.

From what I've read, a lot of studies of "indigenous peoples" contradicts what you are saying. Especially regarding the time spent on necessities. I read an ethnographical book about how tribal peoples in the jungle 'worked' for at most half the day on their basic needs.

Granted, the jungle is also plentiful (altho hazardous.)

But the masses of people who have to walk hours for water, in Africa and parts of the Middle East, is also a modern thing. Before modernish times, that would be totally untenable. Either they would move on, or they would all die, rather than this in-between state they occupy now.

The majority of cultures since the Great Leap Forward seemed to have created quite a bit of art, music and myths, but many of them were trasient and impermanent and so left no trace. And apparently a lot of it was "practical," in terms of beautiful clothing, vessels, "magical" items and weapons.

But I don't think I'd call those things uncreative because they were also useful.

I should have been more specific. Clearly almost every people has created art.

It's hard to dig almost anywhere in the world and not at some point hit some magical amulet or wonderfully decorated pottery art, or something like that.

My point was about the rather unusual situation of Leonardo, and even more so, jonmc12 question on how to allow more people the same freedom Leonardo had.

The large degree of time and effort devoted to art, by a large part of the population, is unusual.

Clearly every society has art, and often individuals, shamans, singers, etc, can be full time so to speak. But it's rare that most people can devote most of their time, to activities other then survival.

What was the cause of the prosperity that generated these customer dollars? Isn't it arguable that with enough people with excess wealth, patronage of the arts/science is inevitable?

With the wealth of today's first world, anyone who wants to be a passionate creative can be. And many are. Money isn't the problem; gumption is.

I think the article is a bit ridiculous at the end, about how the man is keeping academics down - if it weren't for the university, why academics' genius would flower. Blaming is the opposite of problem solving.

I would say it is the place of the passionate creative to be entrepreneurs.

An entrepreneur who caters to something other than a "customer driven market" is a rare one. And even if an entrepreneur can create a whole new market on their own by innovating, it will soon become customer driven.

I am betting on the theory that entrepreneurship itself provides much more space for creativity than most other professions and if you succeed, you'll have a lot of money and time to pursue creativity full time. I have also read about a lot of successful entrepreneurs who discovered that they really need a startup to give direction to their creativity. Thus, serial entrepreneurs are born.

pg is one of the few entrepreneurs I can think of who didn't become a serial entrepreneur in the traditional meaning of the word but still found great outlets for their creativity. Although, at least one of pg's outlets - YCombinator can be thought of as a startup.

The best creations are the ones inventors are making for themselves. I was reading the interview with Steve Wozniak in Founders at Work, and what most struck me was how he talked about Apple's biggest innovations as being things either he or Steve Jobs made for themselves, because they wanted their computers to be better.

The guys at 37signals made their products so that they could use them. Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook for himself and friends. I'd imagine the thought process was something similar at Google.

The best creations are the ones inventors are making for themselves.

I agree with this, and this is something many successful entrepreneurs have said. But here's the dilemma I was pointing out (maybe not so clearly) in my previous comment: After your initial success, when your customers clearly want you to add widgets A, B and C but you want to work on innovative product Z instead, it takes a visionary and gutsy person to do that. I realize that there isn't always such a clear cut binary choice.

While it might not be an either-or proposition, many if not most entrepreneurs find their interests diverging from that of the business after initial success. If you're acquired, this is almost guaranteed.

37 signals, Facebook and Google all have one thing in common: the founders are still in control but it's hard to argue that Google still builds what Larry and Sergey want to build for themselves. At best, Google now builds what its employees want to make for themselves. I can assure you that day to day, Larry and Sergei's jobs look very different from their jobs in 1998.

Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook for himself and friends.

That's not quite true.

First of all, not all of his "friends" agree that Z "made" rather than "stole" Facebook. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU

Second, whether or not there's anything to the ConnectU case, Facebook is a commercialized version of HarvardConnection.

So, the model seems to be:

    1. (get someone else to) Create something you need.
    2. Take it.
    3. Sell it.

Either (a) Zuckerberg is a douchebag who stole the site, or (b) the ConnectU folks are douchebags who want to mooch off of Zuckerberg's idea. The morals of these potential stories seem to be:

      a) Douchebags will steal from you.
      b) Douchebags will try to mooch off of you.
    a+b) Don't associate with douchebags.  (And if you do,
         then at least make sure to get rich and win the 
         lawsuit.)

you've nailed it just perfect with that.

If you want to be successful, make something that YOU need, then find others with the same need and market it to them.

And failing that do something that gives you joy, quite often that leads down fruitful alleys as well.

I think to some extent it depends on the kind of thing you're doing that necessitates the additional activity of a startup.

Linus did not start a startup to make Linux. He still hasn't bothered with one, though he certainly could have done so at various points. Similar stories exist with a huge number of open source projects.

Basically it seems like you only have to start one if:

-You don't get enough time any other way.

-You need additional resources to build the project.

-You like the people and energy.

-You want the money.

it is the high degree of division of labor that gives society enough surplus man-hours to drive creative and scientific endeavors.