Ideas

There are a dozen different metaphors we use colloquially to describe good ideas: we call them sparks, flashes, lightbulb moments; we have brainstorms and breakthroughs, eureka moments and epiphanies. Something about the concept pushes our language into rhetorical overdrive, our verbiage straining to reproduce the innovation it describes.

And yet, florid as they are, none of these metaphors captures what an idea actually is, on the most elemental level.

A good idea is a network. A specific constellation of neurons–thousands of them–fire in sync with each other for the first time in your brain, and an idea pops into your consciousness. A new idea is a network of cells exploring the adjacent possible of connections that they can make in your mind. This is true whether the idea in question is a new way to solve a complex physics problem, or a closing line for a novel, or a feature for a software application. If we're going to try to explain the mystery of where ideas come from, we'll have to start by shaking ourselves free of this common misconception: an idea is not a single thing. It is more like a swarm.