On Apophenia and Separation

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.

- William Plomer

Coined by Klaus Conrad in 1958, apophenia is defined as the, "unmotivated seeing of connections [accompanied by] a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness." With increasing cultural interconnectivity due to a blurring of national boundaries and constant economic flow worldwide, apophenia becomes a more common occurrence within members of a community, especially in places where that culture is displayed with great luster and frequency.

The result? From a cultural studies standpoint, the result is an increasing sense of meaninglessness due to erroneous connections. Erroneous connections such as this:

"I kissed a girl and I like it" is here the song that the Pied Piper plays where little kids come to learn. Whether this is wrong or right, worth teaching kids or not, is not the issue that the conjoining of Katy Perry's lusty style with Elmo's fuzzy teachings yields. What it does do is raise the bar in thinking about how collective community consciousness is affected by putting together two different cultural messages into one outlet. Apophenia occurs here by fusing the budding sexuality of adolescence with the benevolence of learning the ABCs. What kind of a person is this directed to? Have adolescents forgotten their ABCs, or are babies now "experimenting?"

The interconnectedness of thought that cyberspace and the digital age have brought upon humankind is both a prosperous component to our intellectual advancement, but nonetheless poses problems that have yet to be solved. When is the abyss of creativity, that boundless realm where connections are made between the seemingly unconnected, abandoned for pragmatism? In short, when does one autonomize, and feel that own connections and own thought should take precedence over the collective melting pot of something like a cyber community?

By developing skills to turn apophenia into actualized items of commercial use, man arrives in the conversation with his new digital world. This includes business plan development, marketing strategy, and product design. Without having a working knowledge of how to turn apophenic experience into something tangible, man will become exhausted by his tailspin, lose his will, and with that his effort, his thought, and his happiness. How unique is it in the history of work that the same object used for entertainment and pleasure is also a tool for finding work? How contradictory is it that the same place where one goes to find the most whacky videos, music and images, is also where he finds his purpose?