The Imagination Culture: A Refined Roadmap for Flourishing in the Age of AI
The Imagination Deficit: Building Infrastructure for Human Creativity in the Age of AI
Droughtless Well c. 1862 Emily Dickinson
I know where Wells grow — Droughtless Wells —
Deep dug — for Summer days —
Where Mosses go no more away —
And Pebble — safely plays —
It's made of Fathoms — and a Belt —
A Belt of jagged Stone —
Inlaid with Emerald —
half way down —
And Diamonds — jumbled on —
It has no Bucket — Were I rich
A Bucket I would buy —
I'm often thirsty — but my lips
Are so high up — You see —
I read in an Old fashioned Book
That People "thirst no more" —
The Wells have Buckets to them there —
It must mean that — I'm sure —
Shall We remember Parching — then?
Those Waters sound so grand —
I think a little Well —like Mine —
Dearer to understand —
Emily Dickinson wrote about wells of creativity that exist deep within us—sources of imagination that never run dry. But what happens when we can no longer reach them? When our "lips are so high up" that we cannot drink from our own creative depths? Dickinson kept her poetry private, refusing to let the market commodify her imaginative life. Today, we face a similar choice about our collective imagination: will we cultivate it as a precious human resource, or will we let artificial intelligence do our creative thinking for us?
The Problem: AI Threatens More Than Jobs
Artificial intelligence will transform human civilization more profoundly than any technology in history. We're told it will cure cancer, solve climate change, and eliminate poverty. These promises may even prove true. But there's a darker possibility we're ignoring: AI might make us intellectually lazy, creatively dependent, and empathetically numb.
This isn't about whether AI will take our jobs. It's about whether AI will take our capacity to imagine altogether. Consider what's already happened with social media. Marshall McLuhan predicted in 1964 that humans use media as extensions of themselves, and he foresaw today's addiction to digital identity. We mistake our screen reflections for authentic connection. We've outsourced our social lives to platforms that profit from our engagement, and in the process, many people have let these platforms dictate their very sense of self.
AI represents a far more intimate invasion. While social media mediates our relationships, AI will mediate our thoughts. It will write our emails, generate our ideas, create our art, and solve our problems. The convenience is intoxicating. Why struggle to write when AI can draft something adequate in seconds? Why brainstorm solutions when AI can generate a dozen options instantly? Why labor over creative work when AI can produce something "good enough"?
Each time we accept AI's output without engaging our own creative process, we atrophy a little. Like muscles that weaken from disuse, our imaginative capacities will diminish if we don't actively exercise them. We risk becoming a civilization of consumers rather than creators—people who can prompt AI but cannot originate ideas ourselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual creativity. Imagination is the foundation of empathy. When we imagine, we place ourselves in others' experiences, understand different perspectives, and generate compassion. A society with diminished imagination will be a society with diminished empathy—less capable of understanding across difference, less able to envision alternative futures, more vulnerable to authoritarianism and polarization.
We face three specific risks:
The erosion of original thought. AI operates on existing data and established patterns. It cannot truly create—it can only recombine what already exists. If we rely on AI-generated ideas, we'll get increasingly derivative solutions that stay within known boundaries. Breakthrough thinking requires the kind of wild, intuitive leaps that AI cannot make.
The decline of willpower. Why struggle with difficult problems when AI offers easy answers? This convenience could reduce our determination to engage in the effortful work of generating original ideas or independently tackling complex challenges. We become passive receivers rather than active thinkers.
The neglect of human-specific qualities. Empathy, intuition, subconscious processing, lived experience, the joy of creation itself—these uniquely human capacities fuel our best thinking. As AI penetrates deeper into our daily lives, these qualities risk being suppressed or forgotten. We might lose not just our ability to imagine, but our awareness that imagination matters.
Yet here's the paradox: we cannot simply reject AI. The technology is here, and it offers genuine benefits. We need a different approach—one that harnesses AI's power while deliberately protecting and enhancing our human imaginative capacities.
The Vision: imagineMines and the Imagination Economy
What if we invested in human imagination with the same intensity we invest in artificial intelligence? What if we built infrastructure specifically designed to cultivate, protect, and celebrate creative thinking?
I propose we create imagineMines—physical and institutional centers dedicated to researching, developing, and amplifying human imagination in the age of AI.
What is an imagineMine?
An imagineMine is a hybrid institution combining a research university, innovation lab, arts center, and public forum. Think of it as a cross between MIT's Media Lab, Pixar's creative campus, and a town square designed for democratic participation. But unlike existing innovation centers focused on technological development, imagineMines would focus on developing people—specifically, their capacity to think creatively, empathetically, and originally.
A typical imagineMine would include:
Research labs where neuroscientists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists study how imagination works and how to enhance it
Collaboration spaces where artists, philosophers, scientists, engineers, and community members work together on complex problems
Public programs offering workshops, performances, exhibitions, and discussions are open to everyone, regardless of background or income
Educational initiatives are developing curriculum and teaching methods that prioritize imaginative development from early childhood through adulthood
Democratic innovation forums where citizens experiment with new forms of civic engagement, participatory governance, and collective decision-making
Incubator programs supporting "Imagineers"—entrepreneurs whose businesses are built on creative innovation rather than technological optimization
The physical spaces would be designed using biophilic principles—natural light, green spaces, varied textures, and soundscapes—because the environment shapes cognition. They would be located in diverse communities, not just elite university towns, ensuring access across economic and social boundaries.
How would imagineMines actually work?
Imagine a retired teacher and a teenage coder collaborating with a marine biologist and a jazz musician to reimagine ocean conservation. The marine biologist provides scientific knowledge about ecosystem collapse. The musician contributes understanding of pattern, rhythm, and improvisation. The coder builds simulation tools. The teacher thinks about how to communicate complex ideas accessibly. Together, they might generate approaches that none could have conceived alone.
Or consider a program where participants spend mornings in nature observation, afternoons in philosophical discussion about perception and consciousness, and evenings creating art inspired by their experiences. This isn't frivolous—it's training in the kind of multi-modal thinking that produces breakthrough insights.
ImagineMines would also develop "imagination specialists"—professionals trained to help others unlock creative capacity. These aren't therapists or teachers in the conventional sense, but guides who understand both the neuroscience of creativity and the practical techniques for cultivating it. They might work in schools, corporations, community centers, or even healthcare settings, wherever imaginative capacity needs strengthening.
The Economic Case: From Consumption to Creation
This vision isn't utopian fantasy—it's economic necessity. Our current economy is built primarily on consumption: producing more goods and services for people to buy. This model is both environmentally unsustainable and inadequate for human flourishing. We need an economy built on creation—one that values and rewards the generation of new ideas, solutions, and cultural expressions.
Daniel Susskind, a research professor at King's College London and Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI, argues that economic growth fundamentally comes from generating more ideas. He notes that the US could quadruple innovation if women, racial minorities, and children from low-income families invented at the same rate as affluent white men. "From an economic standpoint, [current inequality] represents extraordinary inefficiency: a world where certain individuals cannot discover and disseminate their ideas is impoverished economically and culturally."
The imagination economy would tap this vast underutilized potential. By building infrastructure that helps everyone develop their creative capacities regardless of background, we unlock ideas that remain trapped in people who've never been given the resources to develop them.
What might this economy look like in practice?
New professions in imagination development, empathy coaching, soundscape engineering, experiential design, democratic facilitation, ecosystem restoration planning, and cultural memory preservation
Expanded creative industries where more artists, writers, musicians, and performers can sustain themselves through their work because there's a broader cultural infrastructure supporting art appreciation
Innovation across existing sectors, as imaginative approaches transform healthcare (using VR and immersive technologies), education (prioritizing creativity and critical thinking over standardization), environmental protection (generating novel conservation solutions), and democratic governance (developing new forms of citizen participation)
Measurement beyond GDP, where economic indicators track idea generation, creative output, and innovation capacity rather than just consumption metrics
Consider the economic model: when the printing press emerged in 1450, it created an entirely new demographic—childhood. Before universal literacy, most young people worked adult jobs. The printing press made reading valuable, which created demand for education, which eventually led to childhood as a protected developmental stage. By 1890, only 7% of American teens attended high school. Today, childhood is fundamental to our society.
We're proposing something similar: creating cultural and economic infrastructure that makes imagination development a priority, which will generate new industries, professions, and societal structures we can barely envision today.
The Path Forward: Funding, Policy, and Cultural Change
Making it Real: How imagineMines Would Be Funded
This vision requires substantial investment, comparable to what we spend on cybersecurity or military defense. I propose a three-part funding model:
1. Tax revenue from AI corporations. Companies profiting from AI should contribute to developing the human capacities AI threatens to erode. This could include:
A small percentage tax on AI company revenues
Carbon taxes on the massive energy consumption AI requires (training large language models produces significant emissions)
Fees on AI systems deployed in sensitive areas like healthcare, education, and governance
2. Public research funding. Just as we fund the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, we should establish a National Institute for Imagination with similar resources. This would support research into creativity, fund university programs in imagination studies, and provide grants for imagineMine development.
3. Private investment and philanthropic support. ImagineMines could generate revenue through programs, consulting services, and licensing of research findings. Additionally, foundations concerned with education, arts, and democratic health could provide significant support.
The scale is ambitious but not unprecedented. Could we build an imagination economy that achieves even a fraction of that multiple? Disney's market capitalization exceeds $150 billion based largely on intellectual property and creative storytelling. An ecosystem of imagineMines and imagination-focused enterprises could certainly generate substantial economic value while serving the public good.
Policy Changes We Need
Legislation should prioritize imagination development through:
Educational reform that values creative thinking as much as standardized test scores, providing resources for arts education, experiential learning, and interdisciplinary exploration
AI regulation ensuring these technologies augment rather than replace human capabilities, with transparency requirements about how AI systems work and restrictions on AI use in contexts where human judgment and empathy are essential
Community investment providing funding for local imagineMines, arts programs, and democratic innovation initiatives, particularly in communities that have been economically or culturally marginalized
Labor protections for the emerging creative professions, ensuring that people working in imagination-focused careers can sustain themselves financially
Building a Culture of Imagination
Beyond funding and policy, we need cultural transformation. This means:
Resisting complacency. We must consciously resist over-reliance on AI, critically evaluating AI-generated content rather than accepting it uncritically, questioning assumptions, and seeking perspectives beyond what algorithms surface.
Prioritizing imagination development personally. Dedicating time to activities that stimulate creativity—engaging with art, exploring nature, having meandering conversations, playing without purpose, making things with our hands, and taking on challenges that don't have clear solutions.
Supporting arts and creative expression broadly. Attending performances, buying original art, reading literature, supporting creative people in your community, and advocating for arts funding at local and national levels.
Fostering empathy actively. Seeking out perspectives different from your own, engaging in deep listening, participating in cross-cultural exchange, and developing emotional intelligence through reflection and practice.
Demanding responsible AI development. Advocating for ethical AI development that prioritizes human flourishing, pushing for algorithmic transparency, and supporting regulations that prevent AI from being weaponized or used to manipulate.
The Human Edge: What AI Cannot Replicate
We have advantages AI cannot match. Our subconscious minds process information in ways we don't fully understand—making connections, generating insights, producing that feeling of intuition when something is right or wrong, despite not being able to articulate why. We experience déjà vu, synchronicity, moments of flow where creativity pours through us. We know the joy of creation itself—not just producing output, but the pleasure of the creative process.
We possess empathy—the ability to feel what others feel, to place ourselves imaginatively in their situations. This isn't just sentiment; it's a form of intelligence that guides our best decisions and our most meaningful relationships.
We have lived experience—the accumulation of sensory memories, emotional responses, physical sensations, relational dynamics that shape how we understand the world. No dataset, however vast, replicates the felt sense of being human.
We're capable of wild, spontaneous, undisciplined originality. We make mistakes that lead to breakthroughs. We combine ideas that seem unrelated and discover unexpected connections. We're driven by curiosity, wonder, playfulness, and sometimes beautiful naïveté.
These qualities aren't quaint relics of pre-technological humanity. They're our competitive advantages—the capacities that will remain uniquely valuable even as AI becomes more sophisticated.
But these capacities atrophy without use. Just as we keep our bodies healthy through exercise, we must actively maintain our imaginative muscles through practice and cultural support.
Learning from Other Intelligences
We're not the only intelligence worth studying. Ecologist Suzanne Simard's research revealed that mycorrhizal fungi networks connect forest trees underground, functioning as a kind of collective superintelligence that guides ecosystem development and maintains balance. Trees share resources through these networks, warn each other of threats, and support young saplings—all coordinated through a distributed intelligence we're only beginning to understand.
This offers a model for human imagination: not individual genius, but collaborative creativity. Not hierarchical control, but networked emergence. The most powerful human thinking often comes from diverse perspectives connecting and building on each other—exactly what imagineMines would facilitate.
Addressing Skepticism
Won't imagineMines just become elite institutions? This risk is real, which is why equitable access must be foundational. ImagineMines should be located in diverse communities, offer free public programs, actively recruit participants from marginalized backgrounds, and compensate people for their creative labor rather than expecting volunteer participation that only the affluent can afford.
Can imagination really be taught systematically? Research suggests yes. Creativity involves learnable skills—divergent thinking, perspective-taking, comfort with ambiguity, and persistence through frustration. We can create environments that nurture these capacities. But "teaching" imagination isn't like teaching mathematics; it's more like coaching athletics—providing conditions, guidance, and practice opportunities that allow innate capacities to develop.
What if AI actually enhances imagination for most people? It might! AI tools could democratize access to creative expression, helping people realize visions they lack the technical skills to execute. But this requires intentionality. Without deliberate cultivation of human creative capacity, AI will likely reduce most people to consumers of AI-generated content rather than collaborators who use AI as one tool among many.
Isn't this just romantic resistance to inevitable technological progress?No. I'm not arguing against AI development. I'm arguing for parallel investment in human development so we can meet AI as creative partners rather than passive dependents. Technology isn't destiny—how we shape society around technology determines outcomes.
The Question Before Us
How many of us will question the status quo once AI pervades daily life? Will we notice when we've stopped thinking for ourselves? Will we recognize when our empathy has narrowed because we've let algorithms curate our perspectives?
We can choose differently. We can build cultural infrastructure that keeps our imaginations active, celebrates creative risk-taking, and values human insight alongside artificial intelligence. We can create an economy where generating ideas matters as much as consuming products. We can develop new forms of democratic participation that help us collectively navigate the extraordinary changes ahead.
This is the moment to invest in our capacity to imagine. Not because imagination is a luxury, but because it's essential infrastructure for human flourishing in the 21st century—as critical as cybersecurity, as fundamental as education, as necessary as any technology we'll develop.
Life moves from entropy toward self-organization, generating ever more complex patterns. But chaos disrupts the established order—unexpected love, subconscious insight, the kind of imaginative leaps that transcend what seemed possible. The chaos of human imagination can disrupt even the most sophisticated AI systems if we give it room to flourish.
Through imagination, I can feel the pain of others, recognize the necessity of protecting ecosystems for their intrinsic value, understand the anguish of war for all involved. Through imagination, I can envision futures that don't yet exist and work to bring them into being.
Emily Dickinson knew where the wells of creativity grow—"droughtless wells, deep dug." But she also knew that without buckets to draw the water up, we suffer thirst even with abundance beneath us.
ImagineMines are the buckets.
The wells of human imagination will never run dry. But we need infrastructure to help us drink from them, especially as AI offers us easier, shallower waters. The choice is ours: Will we cultivate our deepest creative capacities, or will we let convenience numb us to what makes us most fully human?
References
Daniel Susskind, "AI's Transformation of Labor," IMF Podcasts, November 30, 2023. https://www.imf.org/en/News/Podcasts/All-Podcasts/2023/11/30/daniel-susskind-on-ai-and-labor
"Democratizing AI Systems: Participatory AI," AI Models, https://aimodels.org/democratization-ai-systems/
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 65.
Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree (New York: Knopf, 2021).