Thanks to Lowell Monke, I am getting rather critical about tools and technology supporting creativity. In many cases technology distracts our concentration, causes problems to our social network and interferes with our natural rhythm of life. Monke's "Breaking Down the Digital Walls" is an interesting book and I am looking forward to read the forthcoming book. In the meanwhile, please take a look at his thought-provoking article "The Human Touch" . Just to give you an example of Monke's thinking: "What 'Information Age' values tempt us to forget is that all of the information gushing through our electronic networks is abstract; that is, it is all representations, one or more symbolic steps removed from any concrete object or personal experience".
Another wake-up call came, when I read an interesting report from National Science Foundation (NSF) workshop about Creativity Support Tools. There were some guidelines for these Creativity Support Tools introduced . To me they are like from an HCI manual and similar to Shneiderman's "Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies" - you remember those 4-phases: Collect - Relate - Create - Donate.
What bothers me is the concept "Social Creativity" described the report. This concept and the related research is to me very inconsistent, it is mostly based on communities-of-practice research, not creativity research. I noticed it already when I participated a social creativity session in the HCI International (UAHCI) conference in Las Vegas.
What is missing from those guidelines? Maybe time management, off-line working and reflection support?! Guidelines could also emphasize when n-o-t to use electronic tools (:| Being social in the Internet is valuable, but what we need is perhaps time to think and have personal experiences, not artificial ;-)
Hey, I am still researching creativity support tools. No doubt about that :-)
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