We do, however, use the word ‘imp.’  I have always associated the idea of impishness–of being playfully mischievous–with improvisation and even sometimes refer to improvisers as ‘my fellow imps.’  While waiting on a Skype call this morning with Hildy Gottlieb of Creating the Future, I decided to look up the roots of the word ‘imp.’

Turns out that ‘imp’ comes from an entirely different strain of language than ‘improvise,’ which is derived the Latin root ‘improvisere,’ meaning ‘not foreseen.’  ‘Imp’ has Old English roots, a little Latin attribution.  Yet there’s a lot of overlap, like a family from Naples and one from Nottingham having a lot in common.

Here’s how the TheFreeDictionary.com, an aggregator of print dictionary listings, defines it:

imp (mp) n. 1. A mischievous child. 2. A small demon. 3. Obsolete A graft. tr.v. imped, imp·ing, imps 1. To graft (new feathers) onto the wing of a trained falcon or hawk to repair damage or increase flying capacity. 2. To furnish with wings. [Middle English impe, scion, sprig, offspring, from Old English impa, young shoot, from impian, to graft, ultimately from Medieval Latin impotus, graft, from Greek emphutos, grafted, from emphuein, to implant : en-, in; see en-2 + phuein, to make grow; see bheu- in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun	1.	imp – (folklore) fairies that are somewhat mischievous elf, gremlin, pixie, pixy, hob, brownie folklore – the unwritten lore (stories and proverbs and riddles and songs) of a culture faerie, faery, fairy, fay, sprite – a small being, human in form, playful and having magical powers leprechaun – a mischievous elf in Irish folklore sandman – an elf in fairy stories who sprinkles sand in children’s eyes to make them sleepy
	2.	imp – one who is playfully mischievous scamp, monkey, rapscallion, rascal, scalawag, scallywag child, kid, minor, nipper, tiddler, youngster, tike, shaver, small fry, nestling, fry, tyke – a young person of either sex; “she writes books for children”; “they’re just kids”; “`tiddler’ is a British term for youngster” brat, holy terror, little terror, terror – a very troublesome child

Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2008 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.

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imp

noun

1. demon, devil, sprite He sees the devil as a little imp with horns.

2. rascal, rogue, brat, urchin, minx, scamp, pickle (Brit. informal), gamin I didn’t say that, you little imp!

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

imp

adj impish

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GameChangers summary:  Both ‘imp’ and ‘improvisation’ express themes of playfulness, the getting of wings, a childlike view of the world, and a mischievous spirit that results in some kind of transformation.  Like improvisation, the imping that describes a plant graft builds on an existing reality.  Impishness isn’t a seed.  It is a branch grafted onto the existing reality of the tree.  It isn’t a new wing, it is adding feathers to a bird that already has wings.

Growth, flight, magic.   What fantastic themes these are.  Imp on!

One of these systems was called a Mix Mill.  It was a processing machine about the size of a small refrigerator that ground grains like corn and soybeans into livestock feed.  Using a series of black dials on the front of a cool-looking and very loud mint green machine connected to a set of augers, a farmer could dial in mixtures of grains and nutrients, and control the blend and texture of the feed.  This saved the farmer all the time and labor of loading grain into a truck, hauling it to a centralized grain mill, grinding and mixing the grain there in one big batch, then loading it  into 100 lb bags and hauling it back to the farm.

Another product, a Grain Bin, was a big silvery cylinder with drying fans installed around its perimeter that allowed the farmer to store and dry grain until the market presented the best selling opportunity.  No longer did a farmer necessarily have to sell his grain at harvest time, when the market was glutted.  The Grain Bin gave farmers more flexibility by giving them a much larger window through which to move their product.

After breakfast this morning with Scott Walker, the founder of BrainCandy LLC, whose Runes of Gallidon explores production using a networked  model, I can see more clearly than ever that we are in an analogous scenario today.  The ’small farmers’ of our time are Independent Media Producers (IMPs) such as app developers, gamers, bloggers, filmmakers and storytellers of all stripes.

The Mix Mills and Grain Bins of new media–some of them even sporting agri-names like FinalCut, Feedburner, FeedRoom, FeedCompany, Mailbeans and Sprouter–are abundant, and give an IMP almost unlimited ways to intersect with market vectors.  (In fact, anyone thinking of launching a media app would be well advised to take a look at this first.  All 67 pages of it.  It should be mandatory.)

Like Mix Mills and Grain Bins did for farmers, these apps  give the IMP much more say in the supply chain.  A say in when the feed gets ground.  How long it gets stored.  What goes into it.

The apps also hold down the IMP’s expenses.  Costs of fuel, labor and transportation are all lowered.  What was once produced at the centralized grain mill (e.g. a large post production facility with heavy-duty Avid machines and 24-track consoles) can now be produced using laptops in someone’s home studio.

With all these ‘Mix Mills and Grain Bins’ and the unlimited spectrum of mashups and market entry points they make possible, we IMPs– we tillers of the cybersoil, farmers of the fractal, growers of the game–are left with only two questions that have no off-the-shelf answer:  What are we planting? and Why?