You could say that I am either prolific or incredibly verbose, depending on how you feel about my writing. Inevitably, nearly everything I wrote turns into a short novel (as evident by any of my blog posts). I was born that way. But it is increasingly important to possess the ability express knowledge in a simple, succinct, and effective manner. We have raised a generation of people who are perfectly comfortable with communicating information in 144 characters or less. And that includes even me.

I got my first cell phone a very long time ago (around 1995), yet I can still recall the first few times I sent a text message. I was a little miffed by the character restriction. I didn’t necessarily appreciate the (gasp!) idea of sacrificing eloquent sentences and proper grammar and spelling for the sake of saving space. I pride myself on having been able to adapt to and more importantly, appreciate, this particular breed of short form writing.

Why? Because as much as I believe and support the idea of “thinking out of the box,” I equally value and admire the ability to be create and innovate “within the box.” A long time ago, I read somewhere that the ultimate test of creativity was demonstrated within an environment of restrictions and boundaries. Sure, I appreciate freedom of ideas and expression and all of that jazz — but I believe you will witness creativity in its purest form when the sky isn’t the limit.

There is endless evidentiary support of this. Try writing a five-word acceptance speech for the Webby Awards. Or better yet, I challenge you to find an attractive, memorable, and most importantly AVAILBLE domain names for registration.

Back in Web 1.0, it was all about having the most dictionary-accurate domain name, like Garden.com, Amazon.com, or Cars.com. Along came domain squatters, and what do you get: an entirely new level of scarcity. If I recall correctly, all singular words that are currently in the dictionary have already been registered. Makes it quite hard for a new company to create and foster a digital identity.

Then along came Web 2.0, with a wave of fashionably misspelled words, like Flickr.com, Tumblr.com, ad naseum. I’m not knocking this practice at all; it’s practically required to get a decent domain name these days. (That, and I just registered a domain name along the same lines. ;)

But the concept of creativity “within the box” is by no means limited to the written word. A historical example would be capoeira, a form of Brazilian martial arts that was developed as a fighting technique for rebellion. They couldn’t outwardly demonstrate the fact they were getting ready to stage a coup, so they practiced under the guise of dancing.

Another great example is the art and science of programming. Programming languages are by definition compromised of rules and regulations, and creathing something worthwhile requires delving into that environment, embracing its limitations, and excelling within them. And it is in this sense, code can be just as beautiful and elegant as poetry.