The Creative Classroom with John Spencer
Jul 7, 2026 · 0 min · 7 segments
We want students to be makers and designers. But there’s a surprising source of inspiration for design: the natural world. As we think about moving toward a low-tech approach, we need something better…
John SpencerHost
We live in an increasingly virtual world with a barrage of text and moving images and noise at the click of a button.
And right now, I'm telling you, I have been listening tod-today, uh, to the Brat album by Charli XCX.
We inhabit these virtual spaces, the abstract third space between two locations, without giving it much thought.
Instinctively, when I'm bored, I hop onto Instagram and I cruise the different reels.
If I'm a passenger in a car, I nearly always pull my phone out and check to see if there's any Pokemon hanging out nearby.
After a while, it can feel as if the whole world has been condensed into the palm of our hands.
Case in point, over two years ago, I think it was just about two years ago, I watched this cringe-worthy Apple commercial, and like many viewers, I had a visceral reaction to the message because it had created this false dichotomy between the digital and the physical, the technological and the human, the compressed and the expansive.
Basically, they were showing how you could condense a grand piano and an art studio and a record player and all of this, and it was just being smashed and smashed and smashed and compressed into an iPad.
I immediately sat down and sketched out a video, and then I used my trusty MacBook to turn it into a video.
[lip smack] Again, if you're not familiar, there's this house of colorful, vibrant, idiosyncratic objects that are crushed by a giant industrial machine.
Drop it down a set of stairs, you're gonna get a spiderweb screen, but no, no, no, that's not the point of the commercial.
Why bother with the clunky, the human, the messy, the colorful, the vibrant? Just opt for an iPad.
Why strum your fingers on an acoustic guitar learning the chord progression to "Stairway to Heaven" like your father did, and maybe your grandpa, when there's GarageBand? Why spend hours playing Space Invaders with your friends at the arcade if you have an App Store, and you can get it cheaper and faster? Why embrace the memory of emptying your spit valve in the marching band as you look up embarrassed at your crush staring back at you, if you could just stare at the likes of your latest social media update? It's so inefficient to hold onto the tangible in an age of automation, and I get it.
We live in an increasingly virtual world with a barrage of text and moving images and noise at the click of a button.
And right now, I'm telling you, I have been listening tod-today, uh, to the Brat album by Charli XCX.
We inhabit these virtual spaces, the abstract third space between two locations, without giving it much thought.
Instinctively, when I'm bored, I hop onto Instagram and I cruise the different reels.
If I'm a passenger in a car, I nearly always pull my phone out and check to see if there's any Pokemon hanging out nearby.
After a while, it can feel as if the whole world has been condensed into the palm of our hands.
Case in point, over two years ago, I think it was just about two years ago, I watched this cringe-worthy Apple commercial, and like many viewers, I had a visceral reaction to the message because it had created this false dichotomy between the digital and the physical, the technological and the human, the compressed and the expansive.
Basically, they were showing how you could condense a grand piano and an art studio and a record player and all of this, and it was just being smashed and smashed and smashed and compressed into an iPad.
I immediately sat down and sketched out a video, and then I used my trusty MacBook to turn it into a video.
[lip smack] Again, if you're not familiar, there's this house of colorful, vibrant, idiosyncratic objects that are crushed by a giant industrial machine.
Drop it down a set of stairs, you're gonna get a spiderweb screen, but no, no, no, that's not the point of the commercial.
Why bother with the clunky, the human, the messy, the colorful, the vibrant? Just opt for an iPad.
Why strum your fingers on an acoustic guitar learning the chord progression to "Stairway to Heaven" like your father did, and maybe your grandpa, when there's GarageBand? Why spend hours playing Space Invaders with your friends at the arcade if you have an App Store, and you can get it cheaper and faster? Why embrace the memory of emptying your spit valve in the marching band as you look up embarrassed at your crush staring back at you, if you could just stare at the likes of your latest social media update? It's so inefficient to hold onto the tangible in an age of automation, and I get it.
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