A TOOLMAKER ASKS: IS TECHNOLOGY KILLING CREATIVITY?
Rudy Burger is a consultant and president of Savitar Inc. in San Francisco, makers of color imaging software.

Since the beginning of civilization, progress in every phase of society has been achieved through the division of labor. Specialization has allowed us to work on a task while taking advantage of a huge superstructure of previous creative output.

Painters need only to concern themselves with the application of paint onto canvas to create their desired effect — they don’t need to know how paint is made, or, indeed, to make their own paint. A mathematician working through an equation on a pad of paper is made more productive by being able to take advantage of the pencil-making skills of others. A photographer may choose to become an expert in Silver Halide chemistry, but will probably find that acquiring this expertise distracts him or her from the process of taking pictures thus reduces his photographic creativity and productivity, and so on… .

Focus on the essence. The creative process is best served if we are free to focus our energies on the essence of the problem without worrying about the tools of our trade.

Unfortunately, the ubiquitous desktop computer has recently been moving the process in the other direction. One of the earliest uses of desktop computers was as a sophisticated typewriter. The first word processing programs on the IBM PC were unbelievably crude by today’s standards. However, in their crudity lurked an advantage: making error correction easier, for example, provided genuine productivity gains over using the typewriter. By enabling the writer to worry less about making a mistake, he or she was free to focus more on creative content.

In contrast, today we have the perfectly typeset office memo. Is a write more creative when concerned about the kerning of a document?

The Japanese approach is illuminating: Although as a nation they are extremely style-conscious, Japanese spend almost no time at all making internal corporate documents look pretty. Content is emphasized over style, thus Japanese corporate presentations often use materials that look very crude in comparison to their slick U.S. counterparts.

MEDIUM MORE THAN MESSAGE

Unfortunately, this trend of emphasizing the medium more than the message is getting worse as the desktop “productivity” tools become more powerful. A presentation ten years ago might have involved a typed handout and possibly some overhead transparencies. If slides were needed they would be produced out of house.

The same executive is likely to be found today creating the presentation in MacroMind Director — a process that will take a week rather than the few hours that the preparation would have previously taken. Of course, the extra time is usually justified on the basis of the extra impact and communication power of the new medium. Whereas it unquestionably true that is a more powerful communication medium than type, I am increasingly beginning to question if the time taken with the tools (and therefore not the message) is worth it.

My main concern with “multimedia” is that many are being seduced into the medium but few are emerging as more creative and productive.

Unfortunately, the current trend seems to be for previously very creative individuals to become obsessed by the medium, by the tools. This results in artists seemingly more interested in which version of the Macintosh operating system they should be using rather than showing off their enhanced creative output.

Multimedia is a black hole for creative individuals. Because it is by definition a medium that requires the creator to be skillful in many disciplines, it reduces creative output to the lowest common denominator of creative talent.

Surely we cannot expect our artists of the future all to excel in video production, music composition, writing, graphic design, etc. And yet this is what is required by placing such tools on a “personal computer.”

Will creative individuals be able to enhance their creativity by focusing on the inevitable production issues inherent in multimedia creation? Will office workers have the discipline to use only the software tools they need to communicate their message most efficiently?

I believe the answer is no. Multimedia tools, like the desktop publishing tools before them, are best left in the production domain, thus enabling the “message initiators” to channel their creative energies where they belong — into creating, not producing or editing.

Rudy Burger