Adam Torgerson
Assignment 17
Analysis

1. what did you find

1.1. interesting about the article?

Several people found the idea that creativity is multiplied, rather
than summed, when people work together interesting. Several people
also liked the fish scale analogy, describing how creativity can help
create a positive working environment.

1.2. not interesting about the article?

Interactive art was not very popular. Nathan also had made some
interesting points regarding the author's four essential pieces of
creativity, and how they were arbitrary and gave arguments for other
essential pieces he felt the author neglected to mention.

2. what do you consider the main message of the article?

Many people described the main point as illustrating the need for
combining individual and social creativity. Several people
specifically mentioned the idea that the renaissance man is dead.

3. pick ONE of the four systems described in the article (Envisionment
and Discovery Collaboratory, Caretta, Renga Creations, CodeBroker)
and discuss which aspects of individual and social creativity they
support!

• The EDC supports both individual and social creativity, with heavier emphasis on social creativity. The shared working space is the primary means of displaying social creativity.

• CodeBroker is a tool which analyzes syntax and semantic rules while a programmer is programming and makes suggestions about what the programmer is currently doing in the form of code snippets. The programmer and CodeBroker system together display social creativity.

• Caretta promotes social creativity by linking all participants to the main design space via a PDA.

• Renga Creations begin with the seed artist and strictly individual creativity. But as other people develop the art further, social creativity takes place.

4. have you encountered interesting “boundary objects?” which ones?
what features made them interesting?

Ryan had an interesting answer in which he said that he was a boundary
object himself for some forms of art such as music. He doesn't know
how to play guitar, but he knows which songs he likes and may be able
to illustrate why he likes them.

Phong described a white board as a boundary object, something that he
often uses as a tool for social creativity.

David brought up the interesting point of taking any social technology
as a boundary object. Language itself is a boundary object, as are
other social technologies such as videoconferencing, computers,
pagers, etc. All of these technologies allow groups to coordinate and
create.

The other answers described specific systems, such as the EDC, WebCT,
or projects within this course.

5. describe the most creative activity from your OWN life and analyze
the individual and social aspect of your creative act!

Nathan's description of using fake money in his class was very
interesting. He has students use this money to buy supplies such as
glue, cardboard and marbles. There is a complete economic system, with
loans available based on credit history (classroom behavior), social
capital in the form of wearing red or green cards, trading money for
consultancies, and I would imagine a way to earn money as well.

Some of the other descriptions were building a house for an elderly
woman, maintaining a social network of friends, playing soccer and
making music.

6. which computational systems do you know which support individual
and/or social creativity?

The Swiki and EDC were common answers. Photoshop and other commercial
software was mentioned.

Ryan has a fairly interesting answer about a testing tool called
StarTeam, which eliminated a middle man in his testing environment and
allowed developers to notify testers of fixes directly. I wonder how
this relates to bug tracking software as seen in various forms in the
Open Source community.

David mentioned several tools for making collaborative music which
sounded interesting, but I would like to hear more details.