Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity

Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation, and Creativity

From the Preface:

Computer science has drawn from and contributed to many disciplines and practices since it emerged as a field in the middle of the 20th century. Those interactions, in turn, have contributed to the evolution of information technology: New forms of computing and communications, and new applications, continue to develop from the creative interaction of computer science and other fields. Focused initially on interactions between computer science and other forms of science and engineering, the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) began in the mid-1990s to examine opportunities at the intersection of computing and the humanities and the arts. In 1997, it organized a workshop that illuminated the potential, as well as the practical challenges, of mining those opportunities1 and that led, eventually, to the project described in this report. Ensuing discussions between CSTB staff and people interested in the intersection of computing and the humanities or the arts, notably Joan Shigekawa of the Rockefeller Foundation, a participant in the 1997 workshop, culminated in a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to study information technology and creativity (see Box P.1 for the statement of task).

This report should be read with two conditions in mind: First, it is, by design, a record of the project, filled with descriptions, observations, conclusions, and recommendations intended to motivate and sustain interest and activity in the rich intersection of information technology (IT) and the arts and design. Second, in this book form it cannot possibly convey the exciting possibilities at that intersection. Instead, it presents examples and pointers to sites on the World Wide Web and in the physical world where that intersection can be observed and experienced. We urge the reader to treat this report as a primer and guidebook and to seek out instances of IT and creative practices—ITCP—directly. [The Report]