IS TECHNOLOGY LIMITING CREATIVITY?
In the 21st century effects of technology have spread very rapidly affecting different parts of people’s lives in the World. Because of its tools, technology has lots of strong effects on people’s lives, thinking styles, communication ways, point of views and way of doing tasks. One of the most crucial effects of technology is that it makes our creativity better or worse. Technology limits creativity and does not limit creativity with different points at the same time and people should know these points to stay creative or become more creative. These points are easy access to information, communication and limit of technology.
Firstly, one of the point which limits people’s creativity is easy access to information which is provided by one of the tools of technology, the Internet. Internet contains endless information which can be right or wrong about almost every topic in the World. For instance, there are online forums, social media sites and any kind of websites which contains information, comments and ideas about anything. When people search the internet, they are able to find academic essays, researches and sometimes simple ideas, comments which belong to a random person from anywhere around the World. Therefore they have easy access to information. Easy acces to information does limit creativity because people search the internet whenever they have a question on their mind, or when they are looking for an answer. Searching online about an idea or a question instead of working on that idea is the key reason of that limitation. According to neurologic study(2017) which has been carried out by Yuan Chang Leong, Angela Radulescu, Reka Daniel and Vivian from Princeton University our brain is likely to focus on what it has just learned, seen or noticed. With that fact we can obtain that when people do not think about an idea or a question and instead search it online, their mind will focus on the ideas and answers which are found online. Since these ideas and answers are new to their brains, the new aim of their brains is to focus on these ideas and information. Therefore they will not be able to come up with ideas and solutions which are created by them.
Secondly, communication which is one of the most essential point for creativity has been affected by technology awfully. Lack of communication prohibits gaining new point of views, different approaching ways to ideas and problems. When people have a conversation, they see and learn their mindsets, thinking styles and feelings. This situation gives them a chance to achieve their minds as a new source which can help them to look everything with different glasses. At the end of the day, the limits of their thinking area will be wider. Unfortunately, since the domination of technology of the world, people started to prefer spending most of their time with using technological devices and products. For instance, some people have addiction to video games, some of them think that social media is their home and some of them spend their whole day in front of TV .This issues harm communication and decrease the amount of time that people spend on social activities and communication despite the applications which can give people chance to contact and chat anyone at anytime. Two academicians from Stanford Institute Nie and Erbing(2002) claimed that “the more time people spend using the Internet, the more they lose contact with their social environment”. Therefore, technology restricts creativity indirectly with being vigorously harmful for communication.
On the other hand, technology improves our creativity with being limitless. Since it is impossible to see summit of it, technology removes verges of our minds too. As it is boundless, there is no boundary for its tools and products. While people are working on a solution or thinking about an idea, they can count on technological tools for being a part of their solution or their idea. This makes people get rid of some of the limits of their creativity. To explain, while people creating ideas, solutions and products, they have more options and more ways to find a solution. For example, in the past it was hard to deliver the goods to the people who lives in tall buildings. If technology did not exist, there would not be any solution for that. Thanks to technology and its tools we came up with ideas and invented drones and lift. Therefore today we can deliver the goods to the tall buildings with the help of drones or taking the lift. There is another opportunity which technology provides us with the idea wheter technology can go forward and provides us more tools and devices. This opportunity expands people’s creativity. To clarify, when people cannot come up with an idea or solution, since they know technology has no end they can look for a possibility to have a technological device or tool which can fix the problem. To sum up, having endless technological tools to find a solution or to come up with an idea lets people produce more creative ideas. Because it is limitless, technology allows people to create new ideas to improve technology.
In conclusion, technology has benefits and drawbacks on creativity. Depending on its usage technology may stop creativity or sharpen it. People need to be aware of limits of technology and effects of it on accessing to information and communication which indirectly alter their creativity. They should know the best way of using technology and its tools to boost their creativity. Also they should know the parts of technology which are detrimental for their creativity to keep it unlimited with approaching these points carefully.
