With each new project I always end up looking around for a UML client that will allow me to creatively express classes and object during the design phase. Each time I get frustrated at the restrictions UML imposes such that it becomes impossible to have a free flowing construction of what I want to do and muck with to get a graphical visualisation of the design.
Each time I try numerous different applications, but to no avail, I end up doing it in a word processor where I have complete control, and easily editable access, to the methods, the names, and the relationships. (more)
Richard Florida writes that creativity, and hence innovation, flourishes best where there is sufficient stability to allow continuity of effort, along with political openness to allow creative subversive in all its forms. Modern democracies are geared toward economic innovation that has stemmed from British liberalism in the 18thC. Technological innovation is fragile and heavily dependent upon social and political order; Japan and China are good studies on how it can quickly be dampened and even squashed into stasis by restrictive political and social policies. (more)
