Sources

In preparation for my research paper, I have been looking for scholarly articles relating the rise of digital technologies to our perceptions of creativity and whether or not creativity has become diminished by the internet or if we simply see it as being lessened. During my search I stumbled upon the article “Creativity in Crisis?” by Lynn Helding from the Journal of Singing published May of 2011 which is a counterargument to the article “The Creativity Crisis” that appeared in Newsweek Magazine previously.

In the article, Helding distinguished between types of creativity and elaborates on the study of creativity and how it is not in crisis, but rather it is readjusting to the new technology that has come to populate the work. She hits all these points in the body of the article and successfully conveys the conclusion that if creativity is in flux, it is because of an absence of the creative mindset, not because of the internet.

Looking for this article provided an interesting challenge. Since I need to have scholarly support for my research paper, I began by looking through the ProQuest database searching specifically for scholarly articles about creativity and the internet. I had to redefine my search several times until I found this article. Before I read over it, I stopped to look up the journal and to clarify that it was in fact scholarly. The about page of the National Association of Teachers of Singing clarified that the journal is in face refereed so it qualifies as a scholarly source.

With Some Creativity, Farm Animals, and Wi-Fi

The Internet is amazing.

I’m not just saying that as a young person who gets her kicks watching funny youtube videos and reading fanfiction at three in the morning. The Internet makes a lot of worldwide communication possible and opens up doors you would never imagine.

Take my aunt for instance. She is a scrap-booker—a very talented and detail oriented scrap-booker—who happens to live on a farm in the middle of Texas with her husband and their infinitely growing family of dogs, donkeys and goats. I can’t say if scrap-booking has always been a hobby for her, but since they moved out to the farm about seven years ago, she’s been making amazing scarp-books and cards.

A few years ago, my aunt decided to start a blog, Stamps, Paper and Donkey Smiles, about her creations, taking pictures of them and describing the process to others. And it grew over the first year or so, picking up fellow crafters who wanted to see what she was creating. She started using these unique little European stamps and created some beautiful cards with them that all her followers raved about. It started out as just a hobby but not long after that, everything changed.

The maker of those stamps, a woman called Heidi, contacted her one day, and offered my aunt a job distributing those stamps to people all over the United States because she was so impressed by the care my aunt put into coloring and designing each of her cards.

I can’t help but be stunned by my aunt’s story. Her use of the internet turned her simple hobby into a job opportunity that allows her to continue doing what she loves from the comfort of her home. This is why the Internet is so intriguing. It has the power to connect people worlds apart and change individuals’ lives. Sure, most of the stories you hear are the horrors, the ones where internet addictions drag people into despair, but I think those are the exceptions. Maybe I’m just being an optimist, but I think in the right hands, the Internet can be the source of many huge, beneficial changes for society, be they in the realm of creativity, or not.