Did you even read my post Alex?

Spy Kids? Well well obviously his words really hurt your feelings.

I will assume that English is not your native language and that you did not notice my, perhaps a little too subtle, self-deprecation and irony that I put in a post clearly marked as a rant.

And no, HIS words did not hurt me. But the timing of their dissemination through the company did!
I was on a tech team during a crucial delivery, continually forced to ask the team to put in yet another late night, all because our work had been trivialised by mentalities such as your own, and not given the time needed for our work to be a success.
[Imagine giving a "creative" 2 hours to write a concerto. That is what we faced.]

This ridiculous belief that a Technologist can never be creative is a blatant lie.

The internet, Facebook, Microsoft, linux, twitter, photoshop, all video and audio codecs and software, Apple, mobile phones, search engines, the internal combustion engine, mp3 players, aeroplanes, dynamite… the list goes on, but ALL of it was conceived of and developed by Technical people. Not creatives.

A talented, creative musician can play music by ear, without even needing the notes, on the other hand the technical bookworm will not be able to do the same, he needs his step by step guide (even if it’s in his head).

Creative people welcome problems, because they can adapt to the unpredictable, whereas technical people, when faced with a problem which they have had no previous experience meeting, no knowledge, they wont be able to produce the solution from their brain.

While it may be true that it is hard, or next to impossible in most cases, to keep the entire API of an enterprise computing language in your head, or all of the allelel sequences in a gene, the ability to use such knowledge effectively is a very similar skill to the one that you are ascribing to creatives.

I have “winged it”, or “coded by ear”, on multiple occasions coming up with innovative solutions to problems that I have not encountered before.
In fact, in software development encountering unknown problems is commonplace.
It could be considered a universal constant in the field.
I became so renowned for this in my previous role, the one this post is about, that such inventive, immediate, creative solutions to particularly thorny problems became known as “Graney Hacks“.
I cannot imagine a technical life more boring and mundane than one in which such challenges do not actually exist.
I, and every other technical person, relishes rising to the challenge of unknown problems and overcoming them with our skills and abilities.
That is why we do it.

Your analogy is invalid anyway.
It could only work if a creative person could pick up and perfectly play an instrument that they have never seen or even heard before.
And that is ludicrous.

Technicals follow a system, which can be learned – you can be a specialist at what you do but you’ve learnt the process and you’re whoopin’, congrats.
Creativity IS something a person is born with, otherwise the world would just be a mess. I have nothing against suits, who else would fulfill the boring work =)

And music is not learnt? and what about painting? Writing?
Creatives come straight from the womb carrying a Stradavarius, paintbrush or a typewriter?
Could you not call a musician a “music specialist” or a painter an “art specialist” or an author a “writing specialist”?

As I point out. You are NOT born with the innate ability to play the piano.
You have to learn to play the piano.
I will be convinced of your ridiculous argument if you presented any evidence in support of it other than hyperbole and rhetoric. But you can’t.

And I feel sad that you are so blinded by hubris that you cannot see the beauty in technical innovation.

So many technicals out there, with their success formulas, and that’s okay, but they will not be remembered. The creative will stand out, and their uniqueness will shine. Keep your faith starving brethren, the suits shall never be happy at heart as we are!

um. Again with the suits?
I have been in software development in various business sectors for nearly 17 years and one of the most consistent constants is that Technologists hate suits.
Take a look at OSCON attendees for instance… how many suits?
Are you perhaps confusing us with accountants or lawyers?

And as for being forgotten relics of the futures past;
There are many technologists who will never be forgotten.

I thought it quite self evident from the body of the post that the email was a pro-forma email sent from a do-not-reply PR department email address to a MASS of people who had complained via their website… myself included.

The email address was special_message@mail.af-klm.com but this is just a PR email and I doubt you will have any luck with it.

I used the http://www.klm.com/travel/nl_en/customer_support/customer_support/contact/index.htm website to contact and complain.

A talented, creative musician can play music by ear, without even needing the notes, on the other hand the technical bookworm will not be able to do the same, he needs his step by step guide (even if it’s in his head).

Creative people welcome problems, because they can adapt to the unpredictable, whereas technical people, when faced with a problem which they have had no previous experience meeting, no knowledge, they wont be able to produce the solution from their brain.

Technicals follow a system, which can be learned – you can be a specialist at what you do but you’ve learnt the process and you’re whoopin’, congrats.

Creativity IS something a person is born with, otherwise the world would just be a mess. I have nothing against suits, who else would fulfill the boring work =)

So many technicals out there, with their success formulas, and that’s okay, but they will not be remembered. The creative will stand out, and their uniqueness will shine. Keep your faith starving brethren, the suits shall never be happy at heart as we are!

I actually did read the Wikipedia article on the cat flea, which I found very interesting. And I am curious. But my point is that I am a complete, gung-ho unprincipled hedonist. I go for what gives me a buzz and ignore whatever I find either depressing or boring. I choose to be a Christian because I enjoy it–that is, I enjoy my version, which doesn’t involve any moral commitments. If I were living in another culture I’d be a Hindu, Buddhist or whatever. So what?

It confirms my suspicion that ability is not innate but learned.

He shows repeatedly that it is a combination of opportunity and about 10,000 hours of effort that is the major differentiator of success and not something that we are born with.

People who are amazingly artistically creative are so because they have learned to be creative by putting in tremendous effort and likewise those who are amazingly technically creative are so because they have learned to be creative by putting in tremendous effort.

We all start out with essentially the same potential, but it is our desires that drive us towards a particular niche.