The App Generation (16 page)

We found a similar, though slightly less pronounced, trend in our analysis of middle school fiction. Although we categorized the majority of the pieces in both sets as realism, about one third (32 percent) of the early pieces exhibit genre play whereas, in the later set, only one tenth (10 percent) of the pieces contain any elements of genres other than realism.

A more notable distinction emerged when we looked at the plot of each middle school story. For this analysis, we noted whether the plot was meandering or fast-paced; examined the central conflict of the story; and documented significant moments of rising action. From this analysis, we identified three dominant categories of plot:
every day, every day with a twist,
and
not every day
.
Every day
stories have fairly mundane plots; they tend to describe events at home and at school that could take place on any day, at any time of the year. We defined
every day with a twist
as a plot that is mostly familiar or mundane but that contains at least one moment of rising action that could not happen every day.
Not every day
plots contain significant fantastical elements and/or impossible occurrences. We found that the same number of stories in both early and later sets was classified as
every day with a twist
(27 percent in each set). However, there was a marked shift between early and later stories away from
not every day
stories toward
every day
stories. Nearly two-thirds of the early stories (64 percent) were classified as
not every day
, whereas only 14 percent of the later stories were so classified.

Similar patterns emerged when we examined other story elements like setting, time period, and narrative linearity. For instance, in the high school data set, the early stories are more likely to follow a nonlinear story arc; the later stories tend to unfold in a conventionally linear manner. Whereas only 40 percent of the early stories were classified as linear, fully 64 percent of the later stories were so categorized.

Among the middle school stories, we found that the early stories were more likely to be set in an unfamiliar (at least to a middle school student) location, such as a World War II battle. Whereas almost a third (32 percent) of the early stories took place in distant locales, only one of the later stories (5 percent) involved an unfamiliar setting. Paralleling this trend, we also found that the time period of the early stories was more likely than the later stories to be different from the time period in which the story was composed.

Considered together, these changes in genre, plot, story arc, setting, and time period suggest that, while teens' visual art has become less conventional over time, creative writing emanating from this age group has become more so.

One last noteworthy change that we identified in the high school stories concerns the formality of the language employed by authors. Compared to the early stories, the language in the later stories is considerably less formal. The contemporary authors are more likely than their counterparts from the early 1990s to incorporate expletives (“piss,” “shit”), slang (“awesomeness”), and made-up words (“glompy,” “smushed”) into their prose. The difference is dramatic. Only 24 percent
of the early stories include informal, pedestrian language, whereas fully 80 percent of the later stories do so. In short, the early stories may be more “out there” in terms of their incorporation of magical and absurdist themes, but the language they use to depict these fantasy worlds is somewhat less flavorful.

This high school story, from the early 1990s, includes fantasy elements, artful word choice, a range of references, and figures of speech.

Now I must see my psychiatrist, Dr. Sanborne. How I hate these weekly visits! The notion that anything is wrong with me is absurd, of course. These visits merely erode my checkbook.

As I step into his office, Sanborne scuttles sideways out from under his mahogany desk to greet me, as usual. His blue shell, encrusted with tiny jewels, sparkles, and his fragile feelers begin tracing an invisible diagnosis in the air.

“Good morning! How are you feeling? I think we are making great progress in our sessions. Please sit down,” he says, in a voice like sand being sifted.

“I am perfectly fine.” I lie down on the leather patients' couch reluctantly. From my vantage point I can see only his eyes, two hypnotist's orbs, waving on their stalks. I decide this is the last session I will attend. After a pause I blurt out, “Look, Doctor, this is useless. You
know my mind is as round and perfect as a seashell.” His pincers are clicking rapidly, like a machine analyzing my responses.

“You forget,” Sanborne replies, “that there is always an opening through which I can crawl into the hopeless spiral of your subconscious.” He climbs onto the couch. “Listen, do you not hear the rustling ocean of insanity, splashing on the walls of this very room?” He is very sly, but I will not let him trick me this time.

“Nonsense! You are the ridiculous one. You're not even a man, just a crafty old crab, greedily snatching my money and scurrying off to line your burrow with it,” I shout, pulling a pair of redhandled tongs from my coat pocket with an exaggerated flourish. “I've got you now, though.” I firmly grasp Sanborne by his middle, and avoiding his furious pincers, thrust him into my briefcase. “Tonight I dine on boiled crab!”

As I walk out, Sanborne shrieks out from the dark depths at my side: “Release me! You don't understand the torment of the psychiatrist's existence: like a doomed Proteus, I am helplessly transformed by every madman's delusion!”

Dolsy Smith

This high school story, from the late 2000s, features ordinary language, mundane subject matter, and an easily recognizable descriptive genre.

Age
Ryanne Autin

At home every day, it becomes difficult to not just lounge on the couch and smoke cigars while your wife is not home. It becomes difficult to not watch football game after football game and not change the same white shirt that hides your stomach which protrudes over a pair of pajama pants that you have owned for years. However, the-used-to-be loose elastic band now has tightened. You pull at it periodically to measure the amount of fat you could possibly gain before needing new pants. You are disappointed every time because it always ends up being less than an inch. Luckily, your wife has also left a post-it note on the bathroom mirror with the scribble, “Don't forget to walk the dog, do the dishes, and take the trash out. Making fish for dinner, smiley face, love you!” You are considered an old man now, dressed in a business suit each day, even though you are only going to the store, to the barber, to tend to matters regarding your dying mother. This is the first year of your adulthood that you have not spent working. Your wife wakes up next to you at six in the morning, seven days a week. Your daughter and son no longer call daily but rather, you receive a text message every other day on a phone with a touch screen that you're not sure how to end a call on. The messages relay pictures of the grandchildren in Ralph Lauren, Armani Baby, and Jotum. You
worked hard to raise the children well, they married wealthy companions that they may or may not love, and the grandchildren are spoiled, just not like the grilled cheese sandwich you found in the refrigerator last week. No longer within miles of you, your family has become extended, but you hold your hand to your heart before you go to bed every night and say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

To complicate matters further, we also spoke with art teachers (visual art, music, and performing arts) who'd been teaching for at least twenty years and therefore could reflect on changes they've observed in students' imaginative processes over time. Though these teachers celebrated the broad range of creative opportunities now open to today's youth (which we discuss in greater detail below), several arts educators observed that today's students have more difficulty in coming up with their own ideas; they're far more comfortable engaging with existing ones. One participant reflected: “Some of the most artistically skilled kids cannot come up with an idea. They've got full scholarships to Mass Art [Massachusetts College of Art and Design] and they can't come up with an idea. . . . They go to their laptop first. . . . I find that I'm constantly shoulder to shoulder asking what do you see? What does it mean? . . . They're thinking too much or saying ‘I have
nothing.'” Moreover, when they do come up with their own ideas, they often have difficulty executing them, particularly in the absence of clear “executive assistants.” Said another participant, “Before, they used to jump in and see where the materials would take them, now they ask what to do.”

The camp directors made a similar point when they reflected on the changes they've seen in skit night, a camping tradition in which campers form groups and perform a short skit for the rest of the camp. Today's campers are more likely to re-create an episode from a favorite TV show than they are to invent their own story, as campers did in years past. The recreations may be more polished, but the invented stories were more interesting (and more promising) for being original. These observations from the art teachers and camp directors align with the overarching concern expressed by our many informants drawn from different sectors: youth of today display less willingness to take risks in their creative productions.

One of the theater directors told us that both students and student productions are more conservative today. Twenty-seven years ago, his students produced a “very edgy” version of
Alice in Wonderland
that featured a surrealistic set and unorthodox lighting. This year, his students produced the same show using the same script. The more recent version of the show was “cute and sweet,” the director lamented, and the students, while talented, did not discern the piece's more subtle political messaging. Today's students are also concerned about potentially “getting into trouble” for mounting productions
that might be construed as “provocative.” It was not clear with whom the students might “get into trouble”—parents, administrators, peers, or another group of concerned individuals. Lamented one participant, “[They're] rule followers to a fault.” These findings echo the search for “correct answers” and “documented procedures” and precise scoring rubrics that Howard has noted among his students in recent years.

Our participants pointed to the Internet's vast supply of packaged sources of inspiration to explain why today's young people have greater difficulty coming up with their own creative ideas and instead prefer to engage with existing ones. After all, it's easier to reach for Google instead of scouring one's imagination for a new idea. One participant reflected: “The classic example is ‘Go outside on a snow day.' How many kids are actually outside making a snowman or having a snowball fight? Not many. They're inside creating a snowman on the computer.” Still, one could argue that if the end result is judged to be a creative piece of work, who cares where the source of inspiration came from? Surely one can engage with existing ideas in a creative way.

The trouble is, there's considerable debate over the value of what youth create with these existing ideas. While many respected authorities celebrate remix culture, others are less sanguine.
¹³
In his book
You Are Not a Gadget,
computer scientist and cultural critic Jaron Lanier bemoans the effects of remix on individual creativity: “Pop culture has entered into a nostalgic malaise. Online culture is dominated by trivial mashups of the culture that existed before the onset of mashups, and by fandom responding to the dwindling outposts of centralized mass media. It is a culture of reaction without action.”
¹⁴

Even if a person made a concerted effort to act instead of react, to invent instead of remix, Lanier argues that digital media would still throw up obstacles to creativity. He uses the expression “lock-in” to describe the limited range of actions and experiences open to users when they interact with computer software. As a result of a programmer's (often arbitrary) design decisions, certain actions are possible—indeed, encouraged—while others don't even present themselves as options.

Lanier's primary example of lock-in involves MIDI, a music software program developed in the 1980s to allow musicians to represent musical notes digitally. Because its designer took the keyboard as his model, MIDI's representation of musical notes doesn't encompass the textures found in other instruments, such as the cello, flute, or human voice. Lanier argues that something important is lost when one makes explicit and finite an entity that is inherently unfathomable (or, to invoke another lexical contrast, when one seeks to render as
digital
what is properly seen as
analog
). Moreover, since MIDI was an early and popular entrant into the music software industry, subsequent software had to follow its representation of musical notes in order to be compatible with it. As a result,
the lock-in was reified. MIDI is a good example of how early design decisions can circumscribe subsequent creative acts.

Apps may represent the ultimate lock-in. Consider the Songwriter's Pad app, a tool for writing songs and poems on an iPad. This app is intended to make songwriting easier by breaking down the process into manageable sections and helping the songwriter to keep track of his or her ideas and progress. It's also supposed to inspire creativity by supplying built-in sources of inspiration such as a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. In addition, the app generates words or phrases based on specified moods like anger, desire, love, or hope. For instance, clicking the “anger” button calls up such phrases as “you ripped my heart out” and “stormed off fuming.” Songwriters add the phrases they like to a digital sticky note, then copy and paste a desired phrase directly into their song when they're ready to use it. Though these features may indeed help to free users from creative blocks, the song that's written risks resembling a paint-by-number picture. As with a paint-by-number picture, the songs created on Songwriter's Pad are circumscribed by the choices that the designers made when building the app. There may be more original and appropriate phrases that express anger than “you ripped my heart out” and “stormed off fuming,” but because they're not part of the app's database, they have less chance of being thought of and less chance of making it into a song composed on this app.