Technologies facilitating creativity

There is a small nerd or a techie living inside of everyone of us ;-) First I thought that using technology to enhance creativity is inhuman. Then I started to think about artistic expression, some technologies and their unique combinations enabling creativity. Two years ago I had a chance to try out immersive free-hand drawing in 3-D space in HUT VR Lab with the guidance of artist, researcher Wille Mäkelä. (See Wille's related ACM-article ) . This experience taught me that certain artefacts and products of creativity can only be created with the help of technology. Additionally, working in 3-D space was such an immersive experience that it changed my perception of drawing and painting. Since that, I have been interested how technology can enhance our creative ability and what role artificial intelligence (AI) could play. AI's promise is still to come, Lego-Logo and Seymour Papert's vision has not been fully realised ;-)

Roger Schank (1988) points out that creativity consists of two subprocesses:

1. Search process, looking among previously experienced explanation patterns.
2. Alteration process, modifying an explanation derived from one situation to be used in another.

If I look at the subprocess 1, Internet search engines and new personalised search agents (see SearchEngineWatch) look quite promising to me with simplified UIs (like Soople ). With these search tools it is quite easy to find out what is publicly known about the topic and whether my own approach is unique. Sometimes the ability to visualise things and see their connections is even more valuable. Therefore, I am currently excited about mindmap tools that could help me visualise large data masses like blogosphere (Mindmanager X5 and open source variants WikkaWiki  linked to FreeMind .

The subprocess 2 mentioned by Schank requires rules and explanation patterns utilisation in the AI solutions. In my mind, the individual and community can handle this alteration work better than computers. However, certain question sets and digital forms in mobile applications may help the user explain and structure the ideas from distant worlds to the the community. I am trying to build these question sets in my ongoing research work and simultaneously think what how brokering (like the Technology Brokering Model from Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton (1997)) could be better utilised in the creation of innovations.

More to come about brokering...

Comments

[Michael S. Scherotter]

What are some of the specific kinds of data that you want to visualize, and what are the logicial next steps that you want to take once you see the big picture?

[Mikko Ahonen]

I have been interested in visualising connections between different, specialised blogs. Additionally, the link between Blogs and Innovation is one thing that I have been searching for. Bill French has made an interesting finding: http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/49811?model=user/gtc/home-blog&style=user/gtc/gtc&scheme=corp.

Since you Michael have contacts to Mind Manager R&D, could you inform them to develop further this visual blog-analyser part in the MindManager product family? It would be great.

Happy to continue discussion

Mikko