The creativity myth

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Q u e stio n s 15-27, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
LOCKED DOORS, OPEN ACCESS
The word, ‘security’, has both positive and negative connotations. Most of us would say 
that we crave security for all its positive virtues, both physical and psychological - its 
evocation of the safety of home, of undying love, or of freedom from need. More 
negatively, the word nowadays conjures up images of that huge industry which has 
developed to protect individuals and property from invasion by outsiders’, ostensibly 
malicious and intent on theft or wilful damage.
Increasingly, because they are situated in urban areas of escalating crime, those buildings 
which used to allow free access to employees and other users (buildings such as offices, 
schools, colleges or hospitals) now do not. Entry areas which in another age were called 
‘Reception’ are now manned by security staff. Receptionists, whose task it was to receive 
visitors and to make them welcome before passing them on to the person they had come 
to see, have been replaced by those whose task it is to bar entry to the unauthorized, the 
unwanted or the plain unappealing.
Inside, these buildings are divided into ‘secure zones’ which often have all the trappings of 
combination locks and burglar alarms. These devices bar entry to the uninitiated, hinder 
circulation, and create parameters of time and space for user access. Within the spaces 
created by these zones, individual rooms are themselves under lock and key, which is a 
particular problem when it means that working space becomes compartmentalized.
To combat the consequent difficulty of access to people at a physical level, we have now

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developed technological access. Computers sit on every desk and are linked to one 
another, and in many cases to an external universe of other computers, so that messages 
can be passed to and fro. Here too security plays a part, since we must not be allowed 
access to messages destined for others. And so the password was invented. Now 
correspondence between individuals goes from desk to desk and cannot be accessed by 
colleagues. Library catalogues can be searched from one’s desk. Papers can be delivered 
to, and received from, other people at the press of a button.
And yet it seems that, just as work is isolating individuals more and more, organizations 
are recognizing the advantages of team-work’; perhaps in order to encourage employees 
to talk to one another again. Yet, how can groups work in teams if the possibilities for 
communication are reduced? How can they work together if e-mail provides a convenient 
electronic shield behind which the blurring of public and private can be exploited by the 
less scrupulous? If voice-mail walls up messages behind a password? If I can’t leave a 
message on my colleague’s desk because his office is locked?
Team-work conceals the fact that another kind of security, ‘job security’, is almost always 
not on offer. Just as organizations now recognize three kinds of physical resources: those 
they buy, those they lease long-term and those they rent short-term - so it is with their 
human resources. Some employees have permanent contracts, some have short-term 
contracts, and some are regarded simply as casual labour.
Telecommunication systems offer us the direct line, which means that individuals can be 
contacted without the caller having to talk to anyone else. Voice-mail and the answer- 
phone mean that individuals can communicate without ever actually talking to one another. 
If we are unfortunate enough to contact organizations with sophisticated touch-tone 
systems, we can buy things and pay for them without ever speaking to a human being.
To combat this closing in on ourselves we have the Internet, which opens out 
communication channels more widely than anyone could possibly want or need. An 
individual’s electronic presence on the Internet is known as a Home Page’ - suggesting 
the safety and security of an electronic hearth. An elaborate system of 3-dimensional 
graphics distinguishes this very 2-dimensional medium of ‘web sites’. The nomenclature 
itself creates the illusion of a geographical entity, that the person sitting before the 
computer is travelling, when in fact the site’ is coming to him. ‘Addresses’ of one kind or 
another move to the individual, rather than the individual moving between them, now that 
location is no longer geographical.
An example of this is the mobile phone. I am now not available either at home or at work, 
but wherever I take my mobile phone. Yet, even now, we cannot escape the security of 
wanting to locate’ the person at the other end. It is no coincidence that almost everyone 
we see answering or initiating a mobile phone-call in public begins by saying where he or 
she is.

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