Reworking Creativity

I've had a really fun time getting to hear different people's takes on creativity as I've been researching for my digital literacy class. As I've received feedback from other people, I've been able to rework my ideas and my emphases little by little, and it's been neat to see the evolution of the topic. It will, perhaps, come as no surprise that I am yet again shifting my focus in a slightly different direction, but I think that this time will likely be the last (or at least I hope so, based on the impending due-date of Monday the 4th!).

I began investigating how digital media influences creativity, and that was really interesting, but in the end, I found myself asking, "So what?" about everything that I was writing. I felt like it was all a statement of fact, something that anyone with two eyes and a brain could have figured out. I then shifted my emphasis to how digital media is changing the standards of creativity, and that, too, was short-lived. At the beginning of this week, I decided to tackle the individualist creative ideal of my primary-text author, Ayn Rand, a move that, I think, worried my professor a little bit. I originally changed because I felt like it would be a much more provocative topic, and that certainly proved to be true. I've had a tough time trying to figure out exactly what to write about, though, because on one hand, we're learning about digital media and collaborative creation and all sorts of stuff like that, but on the other hand, The Fountainhead champions an individual creative ideal and de-emphasizes (and even bashes) input from others in realizing our creative works. I have realized over the past month or so, though, that really, the conflict that I see between these two ideals is the conflict that exists within me. I've been trying to get my feet wet in digital media, but it's been a foreign experience for me, in a lot of regards. The transition, though, I think, is not one unique to my experience, and I feel like a lot of people could really benefit by using modern digital media. That's why I wanted to shift the focus of my paper.

In researching and writing my paper, I still want to talk about creativity on an individual level, and I still really want to touch on ideas of self-actualization and finding one's creative identity, but for a lot of people, a big part of that process of self-conceptualization is taking place or will take place in the realm of modern digital media. So, I want to focus more on how digital media can aid us in realizing our individual creative ideals, and I want to show that the Internet is not oppositional to creativity but that it is a medium, like stone or paint, that can be used to bring life to an idea or an emotion. It is in light of creation that we truly begin to see ourselves and realize our potential.