Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
technological developments that brought to the very edge a new cultural movement.
We continue to refl ect on what makes a particular technology support this creative
revolution movement.
1.2
The Motivation
The creation process is enclosed within us, and because of that has always existed
since we exist. Boyd (
2009
) refers to the need, this urge to express through creation,
as “cognitive play” behaviour, a “set of activities designed to engage human atten-
tion through their appeal to our preference for inferentially rich and therefore pat-
terned information” (p. 86). The patterned information is key. Humans, among
higher primates, prefer regular, symmetrical, and/or rhythmic patterns (Gazzaniga
2008
:215). In space and time we sense beauty in “the rule of order over randomness,
of pattern over chaos” (Weiss
1955
:286). Edward Purcell (cited by Gould
1992
)
said we have “avidity for pattern” for information forming arrangements that can
stimulate in us deep and varied inferences. The functionality of this patterned world
and ideas serve to stimulate mind fl exibility and with that lead human activity “for
engendering creativity, for producing options not confi ned by the here and now or
the immediate and given” (Boyd
2009
:87).
Classical views of creativity from Sternberg to Csíkszentmihályi defi ne creativ-
ity as something extraordinary, diffi cult to achieve, and at reach for only a small
group of individuals. Csíkszentmihályi (
1997
:8) states that
creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that
contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a fi eld
of experts who recognise and validate the innovation.
The idea is then to produce something never seen before, something outstanding
from all previous manifestations. We're talking about symbolical works like the
ones created by Michelangelo and Caravaggio, Galileo and Copernic, Mozart and
Beethoven, Borges and Pessoa, or Méliès and Eisenstein. These are people who
have created a new, from grasp, who have opened up new ways to express, to think,
and to imagine the domain itself - works that have been admired, recognized, and
validated by peers as truly creative.
Albeit we accept these individuals can have attained levels of performance that
outpace the great majority of common individuals, we agree with Gauntlett (
2011
)
when he says that this is a very reductionist perspective of creativity as a human
activity. We believe that all humans are creative, and this is central to our quest in
this work.
Humans are strongly creative; the main problem most of us have is the lack of
opportunities to fi nd the right domain to express our inner ideas and exteriorize
them through creative productions. Robinson (
2010
) defi nes this fi nding for the
right domain as encountering “the element”, the activity in which we feel comfort-
able enough, in which our passion opens path to go beyond own limitations. Gardner
