Friends for The Fountainhead

For the past couple of days, I've been talking about what I've been up to in terms of social discovery. For me, social discovery has been an interesting journey. I've been up to 3 in the morning most nights this week, reading articles and blog posts and dissertations and writing hopeful messages to strangers, hoping that they'll take interest in my work. There were definitely some frustrated moments, especially by Wednesday night, when I had received word from only one of the many scholars that I had attempted to contact. But things are looking better now, and I am realizing more and more what kinds of things I need to do to get people involved in my work.


The scholars that responded to my emails were the ones whose research I had shared on my blog, and I wrote a personalized letter to each of them asking them to comment on my work. It was neat to hear back from them so soon after emailing them (one responded the next day, and the other the day after that). I was worried that because classes are out for the summer, professors would be away from their work or vacationing or otherwise indisposed, but things are turning out just fine.

For the next couple weeks, I'll be following up with some of the contacts that I've made and will be trying to distill my ideas into a more powerful and clear message that I can share as I seek more opinions on creativity in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. I hope to be able to branch out more into the realms of creativity and digital media in a general sense and hopefully get some experts and enthusiasts talking about The Fountainhead as a creative epic.

 Anyone, on to my list of potential interested parties, collaborators, and contacts:



- Robert Powell - I met Bob accidentally on Facebook while trying to contact a Dr. Powell who had written one of the articles that I had been studying. Bob and I got talking, and he turned out to be a bit of a Rand enthusiast. I asked if he would be interested in posting a guest blog, and I got a response back today in the affirmative, so he'll be showing up here in the next little while. I'm really excited about this!
- Shoshana Milgram Knapp - Dr. Milgram is a leading Randian scholar who presented a lecture series at the Smithsonian Institute on Ayn Rand in 2010 and who teaches The Fountainhead and others of Rand's writings as key works in her courses at Virginia Tech. I found Dr. Milgram Knapp through an Ayn Rand writing competition, and one of her lectures was posted online. I really enjoyed it, so I sent her an email and got back a response just this morning. She replied with a number of questions for me to look into and provided an interesting perspective on media and creativity.
- Adam Helland - Adam is a BYU student, and I set up an interview with him through Google+. He has read The Fountainhead three times and considers it one of his top 5's. I met up with him yesterday evening, and we chatted about his ideas on Rand's works and creativity.
- Joseph - I found one of Joseph's songs posted on an Objectivist dating service's feed, and I messaged him through Youtube. I heard back from him a couple days later, he seems to have really been influenced by Rand's works. He wrote his song based on some of the thoughts and feelings that he was having while reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time.
- Maria Solomou and Kylie Peppler - I've been looking into Quest Atlantis, an online social learning environment based around the ideas of Peter Keating and Howard Roark, two of The Fountainhead's characters. Dr. Solomou and Dr. Peppler were involved in getting QA up and running, and they published a really interesting article about the impact of social media on creativity. I wrote to both of them and got responses back from both as well! I was really excited about this. Also, just yesterday, I got an approval email for a guess pass to QA, which is kind of cool, as younger students (like ages 9-16) are typically the only ones allowed on the site for safety purposes. I sent an application stating my research interest, though, and I now have access, so I'll be exploring that later today hopefully.
- Alexander - About a week ago, I posted a shout-out to Objectivists, and I wasn't sure if I would really get anything, but I woke up one morning to find a message from Alexander saying that he had found my blog while searching for info on Ayn Rand. We shared some thoughts, and he had a lot to say on America and the direction that it's heading. He seems to be really passionate about Objectivism and has some really sound ideas as to the Internet and creativity.
 - James Montmarquet - I came across Dr. Montmarquet's article, "Prometheus: Ayn Rand's Ethic of Creation," and it really sparked my interest. I wrote him asking him to comment on how the internet has changed the creative process, and this morning I received a really interesting response comparing the Grecian ethic of creation with modern creativity and Rand's ideal of innovation.



I've had kind of a hard time trying to really decide what I want to talk about in my research, but the different viewpoints of enthusiasts and scholars is really helping me to see both sides of my arguments. I think when all's said and done, I'll end up focusing on the idea of creative individualism as augmented by digital media, using the The Fountainhead as a vehicle to advocate both personal innovation and digital collaboration. I may touch on Atlas Shrugged in this, as its conclusion has a lot of ideas that fit into the general scheme of my research. For now, though, things are moving forward, and I really am excited about social discovery. Who woulda thunkit?  :)