Genius

Are there any geniuses left in the world? Does our society even produce geniuses? The word geniuses is thrown around a lot these days. It is used in reference to football coaches, actors, politicians. You name it and someone has tacked the label genius onto it. And yet where are all of the amazing discoveries, works of art, or amazing inventions that the likes of Mozart, Shakespeare, Einstein, or Newton produced? Where are the Tesla's and Edison's of this generation? Where is my flying car and personal robot?

Designing a new offensive system for a football game hardly compares with developing calculus because the existing math doesn't fit your needs anymore. Yet people are always describing Bill Belichick as a genius. Newton. Belichick. Makes for a rather watered down definition of genius.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not talking about brilliant people. There are plenty of those around. Scientists, musicians, authors and maybe Bill Belichick. But there are no geniuses. In one hundred years will the Beatles be mentioned in the same sentience as Beethoven or Cormac McCarthy with Shakespeare. Will their work even be seen or heard in the years to come? Who knows.

Why are there no more eureka moments. Those moments where in a flash of incite the answer comes to you and you find yourself running, naked, through the streets shouting for all to hear that you have discovered the mystery of why the Jonas Brothers are so popular.

Maybe, and this is just speculation, there are no more eureka moments left. Maybe we have come to the end of the age of discovery and all that's left to do is fill in the corners. I hope not. I truly hope that there are future geniuses out there that will find ways to bend space, write the next Hamlet or compose the next Pastoral Symphony.

Maybe I am being to harsh but it seems to me that the I-Pod can, in no way, be compared to the electric light bulb. Things seem to be done by committee these days. Who invented the I-Pod? Where are the mad genius, ala Nicola Tesla, who create radio, AC electrical current, the Tesla coil? I know that most discoveries are built on a series of early discoveries. Edison's wax cylinder phonograph leads to magnetic wire recordings that becomes the 78 record, which in turn produces magnetic tape and than into digital recordings. But there had to be an Edison to get the ball rolling.

I hope that somewhere out there is the next Shakespeare or Einstein. The next creative spark that will revolutionize the 21st Century the way that Newton, Mozart and Michelangelo revolutionized theirs.

Nuff'' Said