So this is a paper I wrote a while back as sort of like a mini thesis in my media studies program. I’d say that the biggest thing I learned from it was that I need to read more books. Well, here it goes!

Thinking In and Out of the Technological Box: How Modern Technology & The Internet Affect Creative Thinking

Introduction:

Innovation and creativity are some of the strongest ways to help the world advance. The world, or at least North America, is at a shortage of people who can think outside of the box and problem-solve. With the overwhelming amount of technology in our lives today that is supposedly making our lives easier, it is a wonder that we can’t solve all the world’s problems. In fact, it may be that it’s creating more problems than it solves. Dr.Kyung Hee Kim suggests that creative thinking is on a decline partially because of the increasing amount of time we spend on electronic devices (“The Creativity Crisis” 293). But is that really the case? For the purposes of this paper I will be examining the affects of technologies like: television, cell phones, and computers (particularly their connection with the World Wide Web) on creative thinking. Creative thinking will not just be looked at in an artistic sense, but more so in general including aspects like critical thinking, problem solving, and idea generation. Finding out what creative thinking really means is the first step. Then, we will go on to explore what technology does to our brains, how we use it, and how we have become addicted to it. From there we will discuss the implications of the benefits and shortcomings of the web with a focus on knowledge as a double-edged sword. Lastly, I will get into some ways that we can use technology to help us think more creatively.

Literature Review:

There is not any one good and full definition for the term “Creative Thinking”. Because different scholars explain and use it in so many facets and contexts that in some cases are contradictory, it would be beneficial to have a literature review on the subject.

Defining Creative Thinking:

Tom Bruno-Magdich says that anyone can think creatively about everyday tasks. Creativity is not a “gift” reserved for naturally talented individuals. However, truly successful people with specific talents like Albert Einstern, Bruce Lee, or Bill Gates require a combination of creativity and intelligence. He then relates these two qualities back to a person’s ability to problem solve and think critically asking whether their solution is creative, intelligent, or both. From there he uses Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences to explain that rather than just having one IQ, we actually have multiple IQs in different categories including: Emotional Intelligence, Spiritual Intelligence, and Physical Intelligence (Bruno-Magdich).

To take Gardner’s theory one step further, Tom explores how Gardner’s multiple intelligences fit in and relate to the four dimensions of human expression and how they can be applied creatively. The first section including: Visual Spatial Intelligence, Kinesthetic Intelligence, and Musical Intelligence he categorizes under Gardner’s Physical Intelligence. The third section including: Logical Intelligence and Linguistic Intelligence he categorizes under the standard measure for intellect. The third section, which includes only Existential Intelligence, he categorizes under Gardner’s Physical Spiritual Intelligence. Lastly, the fourth section including: Interpersonal Intelligence and Intra-personal Intelligence, which he categorizes under Gardner’s Emotional Intelligence (Bruno-Magdich).

Kyung Hee Kim helps describe creative thinking in a more measurable way. In her paper “The Creativity Crisis: The Decrease in Creative Thinking Scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking” she describes the TTCT-Figural in detail (as opposed to the TTCT-Verbal) and provides the categories in which the test is measured (“The Creativity Crisis” 286). It is worth noting that the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking- Figural is one of the best tests that can be used to measure creative thinking because it is widely accessible and has been found to be fair in terms of gender, race, community status, language background, socioeconomic status, and culture (Cramond 229–254; Torrance 75-80; Torrance & Torrance 1-10).

The TTCT-Figural is thirty minutes long with thee ten minutes activities, so speed is important. The test does not require any artistic talent to score points. For the first activity the subject draws a picture using a pear or jelly bean shape that is provided on the page. The shape must be an integral part of the picture. The second activity requires the subject to use ten incomplete figures to make an object or picture. For the last activity, the subject is to complete pictures on three pages that only give them circles or lines to start (“Can we trust creativity tests?” 5; “The Creativity Crisis” 286).

The current version of the test is measured based on: Fluency, Originality, Elaboration, Abstractness of Titles, Resistance to Premature Closure, and 13 creative personality traits that comprise the Creative Strengths Subscale (“The Creativity Crisis” 286). The thirteen personality traits include: emotional expressiveness, storytelling articulateness, movement or action, expressiveness of titles, synthesis of incomplete figures, synthesis of lines or circles, unusual visualization, internal visualization, extending or breaking boundaries, humor, richness of imagery, coulorfulness of imagery, and fantasy (“Can we trust creativity tests?” 5).

Steven H. Kim defines creativity as “A problem or task, rather than a discipline, person, or process”(Kim 16). He argues that even though sometimes great ideas are thought of on a whim, most of the time it takes a lot of research and a collaboration of ideas applied to different problems to achieve greatness (Kim 8-16). Matthew Diffee, a cartoonist for the New Yorker one the other hand, argues the opposite saying, “Your greatest ideas are going to be accidents” in his TedX Talk on How to get a Great Idea (“How to get a great idea”). However, both come to similar conclusions about the amount of effort needed to produce great ideas. Kim argues that the amount of time and effort spent on an idea does not necessarily affect the quality of the idea (Kim 24). Similarly, Diffee makes the bold statement of going for quantity over quality since more of the ideas produced will have a better chance of being good (“How to get a great idea”).

Ray Moorcroft builds on Steven Kim’s theory even more in his article “Creative Minds Don’t Think Alike” by referring to Peter Ducker’s judge of creativity and innovation that, “The test of an innovation lies not in its novelty, its scientific content, or its cleverness. It lies in its success in the marketplace. (1954)” Moorcroft extends that idea by saying that creativity is as much about the application of a concept than the original concept itself (Moorcroft 4).

Lois Burton further explains in her article “Creativity and Innovation” that in order to develop and grow great ideas we need to be constantly working on our creative thinking abilities and using our imaginations. From there, she explains that there are two parts to our imagination: Synthetic imagination and Creative imagination. Synthetic imagination has to do with our previous experience and our ability to assemble existing pieces of knowledge and information into new forms. In contrast, creative imagination enables us to come up with completely new and different ideas and concepts to solve problems (Burton 25).

Thinking Outside the Box:

Jack Blendinger and Vincent McGrath define the phrase “Think outside the box” in an educational context as being: “A problem-solving power that everyone possesses when thinking differently from conventional thought”. They argue that in order to practice thinking outside the box, you are required to do three things: Ask the right questions, Test assumptions, and Make creative leaps. (Blendinger & McGrath 3).

Michael Bahr, Education Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival defines the “box” as being what you know about any particular subject. He stresses the importance of having a box, knowing your own box, and then breaking out of it. He says that it is impossible for us to think creatively without having restraints, which is why the box is so important. Furthermore, he goes on to explain that in order to continue to be successful, you must constantly build boxes and break out of them (‘Thinking outside the box requires a box’).

However, Charles E. Notar and Sharon Padgett on the other hand, suggest in their paper “Is Think Outside the Box 21st Century Code for Imagination, Innovation, Creativity, Critical Thinking, Intuition?” that there is in fact no box at all. That “We are the only ones who create the illusion of a “box” by our limitations of either knowledge or willingness to try something new” and that our “box” is only what we create it to be.” Therefore if we are open minded the need for a box becomes irrelevant. They define thinking outside the box as using imagination, innovation, creativity, critical thinking, and intuition. They fear that we are becoming trapped in the boxes that mainstream society makes for us (like the education system) and that in order to really fix it we need to become more comfortable with perceived failure (Notar & Padgett) which goes back to Diffee’s idea of quantity over quality.

Diffee refers to a study done at the University of Texas at the McCombs School of Business on how to incentivize creativity in the corporate world. In the study they took two groups of participants and had a standard way of measuring creativity. They told one group that they would pay them for every great idea they had, while the second group would get paid for any ideas they had good or bad. Not surprisingly, the second group came up with a lot more ideas. However what was surprising about their findings was that the second group also came up with more great ideas (or ideas that were found to be highly creative) than the first group (“How to get a great idea”).

How the Brain Works:

In order to understand how technology affects how we think, we must first have a basic understanding of how the brain works. Sigmund Freud, a neurophysiology researcher in Vienna, concluded that the brain, like the rest of the body, is made up of lots of individual cells (Carr 19-20). These cells, called neurons, have three main components: a central core called the soma, one axon, and several dendrites. Somas carry out many of the same functions as most other cells. Axons and dendrites on the other hand, which have several branches and synaptic terminals, are used to transmit electric pulses throughout the brain (Carr 19-20; Moorcroft 4).

Freud called the spaces between neurons “contact barriers”. Today, we call these spaces synapses that play an important role in how our brain functions as well as shaping our memories and thoughts. Nicolas Carr explains in his book The Shallows that “When a neuron is active, a pulse flows from the soma to the tip of the axon, where it triggers the release of chemicals called neurotransmitters.” Neurotransmitters flow across the synapse and attach themselves to the dendrite of a nearby cell, which triggers or suppresses a new electric pulse in that cell (Carr 19-20).

Our brain is made up of about 100 billion neurons of many shapes and sizes. Each neuron can make anywhere between 1,000 and 100,000 synaptic connections. Carr further explains that the “thousands of billions of synapses inside our skulls tie our neurons together into a dense mesh of circuits that, in ways are still far from understood, give rise to what we think, how we feel and who we are”(20).

How We Learn:

Shifts and the rewiring of the brain are constantly happening in response to our behavior and experiences. It’s how we learn and adapt. From an evolutionary standpoint, neuroplasticity has allowed us to adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences. Hebb’s rule is a saying scientists use today to sum up neuroplasticity, “Cells that fire together wire together.” Simply put, any time we perform a task, either physical or mental, a set of neurons in our brains is activated and connected. The more times we repeat an action, the stronger the connections between cells become. This is essentially the notion of practice (Carr 30-31).

Gary Small’s Experiment:

A great example of this is an experiment done by Garry Small who, along with two of his colleagues, conducted the first experiment to actually show people’s brains changing in response to Internet use. In 2008, Small, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Memory and Aging Center at UCLA started his experiment with 24 volunteers. Half of the volunteers were tech savvy, and the other half were not. During the experiment, he scanned their brains while they preformed searches on Google. Since they could not fit a computer into a magnetic resonance imager, the subjects were given goggles that onto which the image of the webpage was projected as well as a small touchpad to navigate the pages. As a control, they had the same volunteers do the same test but with them reading straight text as if they were reading a book through the goggles.

The results of this test showed that while the two groups had fairly similar results on the book test, the tech savvy group had juristically different results form the non-tech savvy group in the Google test. In the Google test, the tech savvy users had a lot of activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex whereas the non-savvy users showed very little.

They then had the non-tech savvy group surf the web at home one hour a day for five days. On the sixth day they repeated the test to find that there was already much more activity in the prefrontal cortex than there was previously. In just five hours, they had rewired their brains (Small 116-126; Small & Vorgan 47-54; Carr 120-121).

Pascual-Leone’s Experiment:

Pascual’s experiment illustrates how the brain can learn by performing a task purely mentally. Pascual, a professor at the National Institutes of Health started with a group of participants who had no experience playing piano. He then taught them all how to play a simple tune and then split them into two groups. The first group he had practice the tune for two hours every day for five days. The second group however, was only allowed to sit in front of the keyboard and imagine playing the tune; all the while never touching any keys, for the same amount of time (Carr 33).

Pascual used a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation or TMS to map the participants brain activity before, during, and after the test. He found that the same neurological sensors were being fired in the brain for the participants who practiced mentally as those who were physically able to play the tune (Carr 33).

Technology as Tools:

Carr argues that there are four categories of technologies. The first category extends our physical strength, dexterity, or resilience. This includes things like plows, darning needles, and fighter jets. The second category extends the range of sensitivity of our senses like a microscope or an amplifier. The third allows us to reshape nature to better serve our needs or desires. This includes things like birth control or modified foods. Lastly, and most importantly, the fourth category. The fourth category extends or supports our mental powers. These technologies are otherwise known as “intellectual technologies”. Intellectual technologies include: computers or typewriters, books, newspapers, the Internet, clocks, and maps (Carr 44). Some of our devices today include all of the above. Car states that intellectual technologies are “our most intimate tools, the ones we use for self-expression, for shaping personal and public identity, and for cultivating relations with others” (45).

Scientists monitoring the brains of monkeys who have been trained to use tools like sticks and rakes, found that the tools were literally becoming incorporated into the brain maps of the monkeys’ hands. By the same logic, as we are using technology as a tool,             it is becoming an extension of us (32). If you think about it, they really are. So many people are becoming very attached to things like their phone.

Creating Habits:

Our brain is constantly changing and learning. Once you practice something enough, and the connections between neurons become denser, it eventually becomes habit. Our brain always wants to take the path of least resistance which would be the strongest connections between neurons. This is why once we form a habit; it is difficult to break it. The problem here is that as our brains form habits and get used to building on certain connections, we neglect to use others. If we don’t use certain connections they will wither away to make more space for other things to take over (Carr 35). Jeffrey Schwartz, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA’s medical school worries that the “mental skills we sacrifice may be as valuable, or even more valuable, than the ones we gain” (qut. in Carr 35).

Looking at our use of technology, it’s pretty safe to say that we have formed a habit.             “According to an extensive 2009 study conducted by Ball State University’s             Center for Media Design, most Americans, no matter what their age, spend at             least eight and a half hours a day looking at a television, a computer monitor,             or the screen of their mobile phone. Frequently, they use two or even all             three of the devices simultaneously.”

Since then, those numbers are expected to have increased while reading books is on a steady decline (Carr 87).

Implications:

The good thing is that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Going back to Small’s experiment, they found that the avid web users exhibited much more activity in the prefrontal regions associated with decision making and problem solving whereas the non avid users displayed very little activity in this area. Therefore, searching and browsing the web exercises the brain in the same way that doing crossword puzzles would (Carr 94-96). This is because we face so many distractions when surfing the web. For instance, hyperlinks, ads, and buttons are constantly fighting for our attention and our brain needs to decide quickly what is important and what it wants you to do. However, not all distractions are bad. If we focus on something to hard or too long we get stuck in a mental rut. Our thinking narrows and we struggle to come up with new ideas. But, if we let the topic sit (sleep on it) we often come back with a fresh perspective and a burst of creativity. Such breaks in our attention allow the brain to unconsciously grapple with the problem and thus can make better decisions when you return to it. Having said that, you have to have a clear outline of what the problem is for this to happen (Carr 119-122; “Creative thinking”). Because the Internet engages so many functions in the brain, web surfing may help keep older people’s minds sharp (Small & Vorgan 100; Carr 122). Carr is able to sum up why we love using the web so much:

“Interactivity, hyperlinking, searchability, multimedia—all these qualities of the Net bring attractive benefits. Along with the unprecedented volume of information available online, they’re the main reasons that most of us are drawn to using the Net so much. We like to be able to switch between reading and listening and watching without having to get up and turn on another appliance or dig through a pile of magazines or disks. We like to be able to find and be transported instantly to relevant data—without having to sort through lots of extraneous stuff. We like to be in touch with friends, family members, and colleagues. We like to feel connected—and we hate to feel disconnected. The Internet doesn’t change our intellectual habits against our will. But change them it does.” (91-92)

Small also suggest that our excessive use of technology may be the cause of rising IQ scores. He even goes as far as saying that all of the modifications technologies are making to our brains will alter the future generation’s understanding and definition of intelligence (Vorgan 63-64). This is probably due to the fact that information on just about anything is so accessible on the web and as we become better and better users of the web we become better at sifting through large amounts of information to find what is relevant (Small & Vorgan 63-64; Carr 119) “Because of the ubiquity of text on the Net and our phones, we’re almost certainly reading more words today than we did twenty years ago, but we’re devoting much less time to reading words printed on paper” (Carr 87).

Unfortunately some of these benefits are double-edged swords. Because of the massive amounts of things that are on the web, and the large amounts of time we spend using it, our brains are getting overworked. Short from getting serious about limiting our usage, and focusing on the quality of the content we are consuming, the only way to limit these effects are to use the web more so we are better at it. This would mean building on habits and thus feeding our technological addiction (Small & Vorgan 63-64; Carr 119). It’s a vicious cycle. Carr says the Net’s constant distractions “short circuit our conscious and unconscious thought, preventing our minds from thinking either deeply or creatively” (119).

Knowledge:

            The reason I have been focusing so much on the Internet is because it is taking over all of our devices, and then some, in larger ways than you might think. The most obvious way being that more and more of our devices are now connected to the internet. In addition to the traditional computer, we are now surfing the web on our phones, TVs, tablets, toys, and even our fridges! What you might not have noticed is that everything is starting to be formatted to look like the web you see on your computer screen; it’s fragmented (Carr 94-96). Scrolling through a web page is different visual and tactile experience than reading a book. Our visual and tactile experience influences the degree of attention we devote to reading and the depth of our immersion in the text. Hyperlinks are a distraction in our reading that encourages us to dive in and out of the text, which fragments the flow of information. However, much of the information itself gets fragmented on the web. When you use search engines like Google to find information you are limited to only what you searched. In addition, you often only look at the one part that matches what you searched, missing the big picture and the all-important context. Adding multimedia on a page only creates further distractions and further fragments the information (Carr 91).

Other media are becoming fragmented because they are being reformatted for the web. These are things like: snippets of TV shows on Youtube and Hulu, excerpts from radio programs on podcasts or streams, pages of books on Google Books or Amezon, Music albums split apart on iTunes, Songs split apart and made into ringtones and the list goes on. Traditional media are being formatted and styled to look like the Internet as well (Carr 94-96). For example, magazines like theRolling Stone used to publish long seven thousand word stories whereas now most popular magazines are “filled with color, oversized headlines, graphics, photos, and pull quotes,” writes Michael Scherer in the Columbia Journalism Review (qut. in Carr 95). Late Night With Jimmy Fallon caters its content to Net viewers with its short segments. Also, cable and satellite providers give their viewers the options to watch several programs simultaneously. Lastly, newly released movies are encouraging viewers to connect and comment on films while watching (Carr 96).

So why does all of this matter? Because compared to sitting down and reading a book we are not retaining most of the things we read. Because everything is so short, quick, and fragmented we do not spend enough time looking at it to fully understand and store the information we are reading (Carr 63, 91-96). “As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative “ (Carr 75).

In terms of creativity, knowledge can be a great asset. Michael Bahr states that we must know our craft before we are truly able to break free from it and create something knew. In other words, we must know all the rules in order to break them (“Thinking outside the box requires a box”). Cynthia Barton Rabe agrees with Bahr arguing that being fixed in a way of thinking and doing things can hinder creative thinking. She says that, “knowledge is good, except when it trumps real innovation (n. pag.).” In this context she is referring to knowledge as the rules and procedures that organizations have in place (Rabe 23). Timothy Bengstson however, both agrees and disagrees with this concept. He believes that although knowledge is curtail to creativity, many artists (of all trades and crafts) spend so much time researching and learning that they never come up with anything new. He says, “The pursuit becomes hazardous when knowledge is treated as an end in itself instead of as the means to solving problems” (Bengston 5). Bengstson stresses that knowledge itself is not enough to solve problems. One must use knowledge in combination with creativity in order to do so (Bengston 5; Bruno-Magdich). Lastly, he argues that once you have learned something about subject, it forever changes the way you think about it. This is to say that knowledge narrows our thought (Bengston 5).

What Can You Do?

                        What can you do to be more creative? Gregory Ciotti’s essay How to Encourage Creative Thinking suggests different ways anyone can boost their creative thinking. Ciotti suggest that you make internal restrictions meaning restrictions that you place on yourself (Ciotti; “Thinking outside the box requires a box”). While internal restrictions boost creativity, eternal ones can hinder it (Ciotte; Rabe 23). Limiting your work in some way forces even he most creative person to think outside the box (Ciotti; “Thinking outside the box requires a box”). Sometimes this may mean limiting the amount of distractions and the amount of time we spend on our devices (Carr 91; Small & Vorgan 63-64). Taking a break and distancing yourself from a problem or task allows your brain to process information and think more deeply (Ciotti; Burton 25; Bengston 8). However, a study done by Chen-Bo Zhong, Ap Dijksterhuis andAdam D. Galinsky on our ability to discover creative solutions through unconscious thought, shows that the less you have worked on a problem, the less incubation will help (Dijksterhuis, Galinsky, and Zhong 916-17). Timothy Bengstson argues that rather than practicing incubation, that deadlines are important. Deadlines, because they force what can be an uncomfortable situation, quicken the flow of creative juices and secretion of adrenalin. They cause people to work harder and longer out of a need for necessity (Bengstson 8). This goes against Kim and Diffee’s theory that you can’t come up with great ideas by working harder (“How to get a great idea”; Kim 24). Our personal devices are constantly reminding us of time constraints. Constant access to a clock, calendar, stopwatch, and alarm clock are constant reminders of when things need to be done.

Another thing Ciotti suggests is to embrace the absurd. Coming up with absurd solutions for problems by doing things like exaggerating forces you to come up with something creative (Ciotti; “Creative Thinking”). Or, as Matthew Diffee would do with his comics: add, subtract, switch, invert, and mash-up (“How to get a great idea”). The web is full of information that we might not otherwise have access too. Some of the web’s content in itself is absurd. In addition, the fragmentation may make it easier to piece together something new.

Lastly, technology allows us to reach out. Although some scholars disagree that working in groups hinders creativity (Ciotti), others encourage it (Burton 25; Rabe 13-60). Social media, discussion forums, instant messaging, and email allow us to easily reach out to a large amount of people for feedback and ideas . It allows for us to brainstorm and easily introduce “zero-gravity thinkers”. Zero-Gravity thinkers are outsiders who posses: Psychological distance, Renaissance tendencies, and Related expertise. They are useful to add to a group or bounce ideas off of because they have a fresh perspective and are often able to get people out of a psychological “rut” (Rabe 59).

Conclusions

Everything is interconnected. Just as the invention of the clock changed our lives (Carr 41-44), modern technologies have done the same. Since almost all of our modern devices are connected to the Internet they affect how we think in a lot of the same ways (Carr 94-96).

In a world where knowledge is power we must be careful what we read and how we let it affect us. Knowledge is key to our survival and our ability to think creatively. Too much information however, may cloud our minds and keep us from being creative, innovative, and therefore effective at solving the worlds problems (Bengston 5; Carr 119; Small & Vorgan 63-64).

As it would seem we are, at least for now, stuck in a technological box (Carr 87). However, our brains are constantly changing and adapting to this new world we are in and in many ways we are improving (Carr 119-122; Small & Vorgan 63-64, 100). The key to surviving is to put limitations on our usage of our electronic devices so that we may find bigger and better ways to succeed (“Thinking outside the box requires a box”; Small & Vorgan 63-64). Michael Bahr would say now that we have become masters of our box, we must break out of it (“Thinking outside the box requires a box”).

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