The App Generation (17 page)

As the Songwriter's Pad example illustrates, there's also less of yourself when you look to apps to supply the grist for your creative acts and encounters. Consider the way many of us
now use our search history as a memory prosthesis. Instead of recalling the insights gleaned from an earlier search, we remember only the search terms we used and rely on them to re-create our intellectual path for us.
¹⁵
Although this practice is certainly useful and may, at its best, lead us to new insights, it has none of
us
in it. There's no opportunity to take a bite of cake at teatime and, like the narrator in Marcel Proust's novel, launch a meandering journey through our own imagination.

We can see algorithmic lock-in at work in studies that investigate the effects of different media on children's ability to produce imaginative responses. In one study, children in grades one through four were separated randomly into two groups and presented with the same fictional story.
¹⁶
One group listened to the story via radio, while the other group watched the story on a television. Afterward, all of the children were asked what they thought would happen next in the story. The researchers rated children's imaginativeness by recording the novel elements (such as characters, setting, dialogue, and feelings) they used in their responses. The children who listened to the radio produced more imaginative responses, whereas the children who watched the television produced more words that repeated the original story. Media scholars have used this study to illustrate the “visualization hypothesis,” which posits that children's exposure to ready-made visual images restricts their ability to generate novel images of their own.
¹⁷

Let's revisit our research team's study of teen artwork and fiction in light of the visualization hypothesis. As our focus
group participants noted, ready-made visual images are never more than a mouse click or finger swipe away from today's youth. The Internet provides young people access to a greater quantity and wider range of art than in years past. By comparison, youth's access to the literary medium hasn't changed considerably over the years—in fact, the hegemony of the graphic medium may have displaced it. Indeed, linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath observes that owing to the increase in visual stimuli provided by television and the Internet, youth today are more likely to say “Did you see?” rather than “Did you hear?” or “Did you read?”
¹⁸
It is likely that today's young artists draw on this store of visual imagery when they create works of art. Seen in this light, the increased complexity and departure from convention that we detected in teens' art may be less about breaking new ground than about skillfully retreading old. With respect to our analysis of teen fiction, the increased conventionality and use of informal language we observed may reflect the pedestrian language of the tweets, texts, and instant messages that form a substantial portion of youth's daily reading. (We also wonder if these shifts have any relation to the fact that in 2013, after adding a supplemental four hundred word essay to its list of required application materials, Boston College saw a 26 percent decrease in applications. If there were only an app for why one should want to go to BC!)
¹⁹
Put succinctly, what seems creative on the surface may actually be re-creative.

In addition to constraining youth's creativity, digital media may also disrupt the mental processes conducive to creative
thought. Individuals generate new ideas by reflecting on the world that surrounds them. Reflection requires attention and time (counterintuitive as it may initially seem, boredom has long been a powerful stimulator of the imagination), two things that are hard to come by in today's media-saturated world.
²⁰
Consider the simple act of walking the dog. Before cell phones, it was just you and the dog. In its singular focus, this daily routine (for some, considered a chore) afforded plenty of room for the mind to wander and maybe even stumble on a creative thought. Now, it's just another opportunity to multitask.

In a briefing paper published by the Dana Foundation, cognitive neuroscientist Jordan Grafman expressed the following concerns about our constant state of divided attention: “I think that one of the big trade-offs between multitasking and ‘unitasking,' as I call it, is that in multitasking, the opportunity for deeper thinking, for deliberation, or for abstract thinking is much more limited. You have to rely more on surface-level information, and that is not a good recipe for creativity or invention.”
²¹
In support of this claim, there is evidence that individuals who engaged in multitasking displayed cognitive processing that was less flexible and more automatic than subjects who engaged in a single task.
²²

It bears mentioning that breaks in attention can sometimes be good for the creative process, particularly when the goal is to arrive at a sudden insight, or eureka moment. According to the incubation effect, time away from a task enables individuals to restore their cognitive resources, gain new perspective,
and avoid impasses.
²³
Still, research suggests that it's best when those breaks are chosen by the individual rather than imposed externally in the form of scheduled interruptions.
²⁴
To be sure, today's media landscape provides ample opportunities for self-selected breaks (provided we don't become so absorbed in reading Facebook updates or watching YouTube videos that we abandon our task completely). But this ubiquitous surround also brings frequent interruptions in the form of pinging emails and buzzing phones—or, should these interruptions fail to materialize, even anxiety.

It would be myopic to look at digital media's impact on young people's time and attention without also considering important changes to other aspects of their lives. Indeed, our focus group participants expressed regret that certain changes to the educational environment prevent youth from pursuing their creative interests. In school, arts programming has been sidelined or even eliminated as administrators place test preparation at the center of the curriculum and the heart of the day. One educator bemoaned, “Many of the vehicles that [students] used to be able to express themselves creatively are now gone—theater, arts . . . different electives.” This sidelining is most pronounced in struggling schools that typically serve underprivileged youth. At the time of our study, these schools faced the threat of closure if a sufficient percentage of
their students failed to meet mandated annual yearly progress goals.

While affluent youth may benefit from greater opportunities for art while in school, participants noted that the regimented quality of their extracurricular activities leaves little room for them to exercise their imaginations outside school. There is little of the precious “time to waste” in youth that is nostalgically recalled by many highly creative artists and scientists.
²⁵
Extracurricular activities have become résumé-building opportunities; students try to distinguish themselves in increasingly impressive ways in the hope of gaining admission to a selective college and, thereafter, to a prestigious internship or job placement. Even the camp experience has been affected, as camp directors feel pressure from parents to provide a documented “value-added” summer experience for their children. As a result, camp has become increasingly structured, the activities more goal-directed. It's hard for imagination to take root, let alone sprout buds, in such arid soil. Indeed, scholars have found that participation in highly structured activities undermines problem finding and creativity.
²⁶

And what of the workplace? Companies like Google, Facebook, and IDEO claim to value, nurture, and reward creativity in their employees. They go out of their way to create an environment conducive to imaginative thought: innovative office layouts, flexible work schedules—Exhibit A: Google's famous fifth day to pursue a project of one's own design. Such practices would appear to stand in stark contrast to the educational experiences and risk-averse orientations of today's
young people. There are two reasons why it does not. Google, Facebook, and IDEO have quite distinct notions of what counts as a good or bad answer to their puzzles. More important, theirs is sanctioned risk-taking. Employees are told, “Here is a context in which you
should
take risks.” And, of course, then it is no longer a risk. That said, these programs and recruiter techniques do call for certain creative qualities of mind—ones now described in books that let you figure out whether you “are smart enough to work at Google.”
²⁷
They are biased against people who are not good at playing that kind of game—or employing that kind of “app.”

Although the arguments and evidence presented above concern us, our investigations also give us reason to be optimistic about the creative potentials of apps and other forms of digital media. At the beginning of this chapter, we shared examples of young people—including Molly—using digital media in imaginative ways. These examples illustrate aspects of new media technologies that impress our focus group participants: the lowered bar for entry into creative pursuits, the increased sophistication of what youth can create, and the wider variety of creative opportunities now open to young people. One educator working in a low-income neighborhood reflected: “I would say technology helps. . . . It allows a lot of teens to be creative who wouldn't otherwise: music, robotics, music production.”
In the words of Seymour Papert, founding member of the MIT Media Lab, and his colleague, Mitch Resnick, head of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab, new technologies
lower the floor, raise the ceiling,
and
widen the walls
for youth creators.
²⁸

Beyond expanding opportunities for creation, there's evidence that certain media activities can enhance individuals' creativity. In one study, researchers investigated the relationship between middle school students' scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking and four types of information technology: computer use, Internet use, video game playing, and cell phone use.
²⁹
The investigators found that all six types of video game playing (including action-adventure, racing/driving, and violent video games) were positively related to creativity. In other words, students who played more video games were more likely to score higher on the TTCT. The researchers found no relationship between students' creativity scores and the amount of time they spent using a computer, the Internet, or their cell phone.

Had the researchers looked at students' specific uses of these technologies, they might have found that certain activities do, in fact, support creativity. That's what researchers in Pamplona, Spain, discovered when they investigated two digital tools designed to stimulate university students' generation of ideas and originality.
³⁰
The first, called Wikideas, uses wiki technology to facilitate the brainstorming process, from generating new ideas to assessing their value. Creativity Connector, the second tool, is a social networking platform that works in conjunction
with Wikideas to connect participants and support their collaboration. Study participants were software engineering students enrolled in a project-based learning course. They were instructed to use Wikideas and Creativity Connector to complete a team-based software development project. The researchers found that the tools had a positive effect on the number and originality of students' ideas. The tools also promoted productive, successful collaborations among team members.

In this example, two features of the digital tools are worth noting:
support
and
collaboration
. One of the biggest challenges in the creative process is simply getting started. Wikideas helps students overcome this nontrivial challenge by giving them
support
in the idea-generation phase of creation. Wikideas doesn't come up with ideas for them, just nudges them in the right direction. In this way, it resembles Songwriter's Pad and other apps that attempt to make creating less overwhelming. As composer Igor Stravinsky famously said: “The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. . . . If everything is permissible to me, the best and the worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is inconceivable, and I cannot use anything as a basis, and consequently every undertaking becomes futile.”
³¹
And yet, the question remains: Where to draw the line between jump-starting inspiration and locking one in to prepackaged ideas?

As a social networking tool, Creativity Connector is distinguished by its ability to connect people virtually and support
their creative
collaboration
. We've already encountered other social networking platforms that perform a similar function, such as Figment, deviantART, and LiveJournal. In his book
Cognitive Surplus
, Clay Shirky celebrates digital media's ability to connect people easily, quickly, and cheaply.
³²
Drawing on examples like the Impressionist painters, who lived and worked together in southern France, Shirky argues that collaboration is a central component of creativity. Where collaboration is supported and encouraged—as it surely is online—creativity will thrive.

Just as apps provide new forms of self-exploration and new methods for connecting to other people, they also furnish new means for exercising the imagination. Photo apps allow users to manipulate images in various ways, such as altering color, perspective, and focus. Music apps turn smartphones and tablets into miniature recording studios, while painting apps transform them into easels. Barriers of time, money, and skill are low, expanding which persons can call themselves creators and what they may be able to create. As we've discussed in this chapter, however, the act of creation is circumscribed by the app's underlying code and the developer who wrote it; to paraphrase Lawrence Lessig, the code
determines
the creation.
³³
A specific hue of green may not be included in one's painting app; the piccolo might be missing from the music
app. Users have little choice but to work within these limitations. The avenues to artistic expression may be many in the app era, but they're often tightly bounded.