Challenges to Creativity in the age of Wikipedia
DHA 5399 – John Printy
The mental processes which we ascribe to creativity are in danger of changing our
present digital age. New emergent models for crafting content carry with them the
possibility of minimizing and in time eroding what our society considers creativity at a
time when it is most needed.
Although societies have long benefited from the work of its creative class, society has
had difficulty understanding the people and processes which generated those ideas and
artifacts. Divergent thinking - the process of pursuing many alternative ideas (Lubart,
2001 p 299) by its very definition is often at cross-purposes to the ideas of society.
Especially pertinent is the evidence that creative people display personality profile that
depart from those of the average person (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995) They are not as
swayed by the influences of the larger group. The practice of creative thought suffers
from some the very things that makes it so vital and make it difficult to assess and
quantify. Its components and processes are nonlinear in nature and cannot be easily
broken down into its component parts like commodities and paradigms. Now, with the
many guises of massively distributed collaborations in the form of wiki’s, group
authorship, collections of information, blogs, self published news and option pages,
society and industry have an engine which provides “creative-like” processes which are
“cheaper” than the processes followed by individuals and groups to create truly unique
artifacts. Widespread adoption of this model is gaining speed. At its core, crowd based
sourcing gravitates toward convergent thinking where as creative problem solving
generates alternative solutions that involve both divergent and convergent thought.
(Lubart, 2001 p 302)
Because of the complexity of the concepts, it would be wise to establish definitions.
Collective action is an overview Crowd Intelligence or Collective Intelligence is a
form of intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many
individuals. Swarm intelligence is artificial intelligence based on the collective behavior
of decentralized, self-organized systems such as cellular robotic systems. Collaborative
authorship is the act of co-creating and consulting within a group of people to
create a project, in which the author of the project is the group itself rather than a
single person. Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a task traditionally performed by
an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large
group of people, in the form of an open call. These groups of people may be asked
to gather or analyze data, develop software applications or solve problems. (Surowiecki,
2005)
Like the concept of “art”, there are several competing definitions to the idea of “creativity”.
Whether creativity is defined by “a journey into the unknown controlled by aesthetic
choice” (Maitland, 1976), “The ability to realize creative products” (Pfeiffer, 1979),
“minimally . . . the capacity for or state of, bringing something into being” (Rothenberg &
Hausmen, 1957), “The process of becoming sensitive to problems, deficiencies, gaps in
knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty;
searching for solutions, making guesses, or formulating hypothese and possibly
modifying and retesting them; and finally communicating the results”, (Torrance, 2005) or
“The process which produces a product which is novel and appropriate to the task
defined”, (Sternberg, 1995). Recently, creativity has been defined as “the ability to
produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful,
adaptive concerning task constraints)” (Lubart, 1994; Ochse, 1990; Sternberg, 1988a;
Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1995, 1996)(Sternberg, 1999). Most researchers follow the
path offered by Patricks and Torrance, that of preparation, incubation, insight
concretization, production, and evaluation. Or Torrance’s model for creative problem
solving: inception, testing, impasse, eureka, confirmation. Problems occur when we
attempt to capture the creative act. Since these processes do not follow a particular time
frame or order, and many of these steps occur internally within the brain of the individual,
It is difficult to study by the viewer/assessor. “How do they know ‘it’ actually happened let
alone study it?” This frustration has led to a narrow definition of creativity offered by Götz
seeking to distill the concept down to it’s core component, that of production. This strict,
reductional definition removes components such as incubation and insight which a
second party cannot necessarily quantify in order for studies of the concept to have
“academic weight”. (Götz, 1981) By following this limited definition crowdsourced works
would be considered “creative”. Crowd based models do indeed “assemble” products.
But this narrow definition is by no means generally accepted by researchers in the field.
This restrictive definition would be akin to saying: “the sport of soccer is the act of putting
the ball into the opponents net”. And our reasoning for why we would define the sport in
this way would be because we have a hard time measuring the other aspects of the
game. Aspects such as the multiple games within games as players jockey for position,
and probe their opposing teams defense and players defense for weaknesses to exploit
at the proper time. Yes, its true that scoring is the purpose of the spectrum of physical
effort team puts forth. But that single event does not encompass the sport. Just as the
physical act of producing something is not the sole component of creativity. The process
of moving the ball down the field around the defensive structures erected by the other
team and getting teammates in position for that attempt is what people who know the
game appreciate as well as the quality of the finishing shot. The game is much bigger
than any isolated event which happens in it, no matter how important that event is to the
outcome of the activity. If FIFA, the worldwide governing body of soccer decided to
change the rules so it became a series of set plays (i.e. penalty kicks), society would lose
out. Although undoubtedly unofficial soccer, “the beautiful game” would still exist
because players and fans would still find it compelling.
Massively distributed collaboration is the process by which groups of interested
individuals come together to fabricate/construct content. Although the idea has been
around for centuries it has only truly come into its own with the rise of the internet. The
web’s utopian promise of nearly free, world-wide, immediate communication has allowed
the scale of participants on projects to reach impressive scales. Yet it is the strength of
that very interaction between the members of the group which can work against
innovation, since these groups serve to gather and solidify existing knowledge rather than
create new, unique processes and products. Authorship is also difficult to address. More
importantly ownership of the content is determined by the process and what the group
decides is valuable. The outsider option is overwhelmed by the voice of the crowd.
Simonton has suggested that the most creative individuals historically have been those
who are moderately educated in the disciplines - those with neither the most nor the least
bound by knowledge. In the same vein, our view is that large amounts of knowledge can
lead to entrenched thinking and the inability to go beyond the established bounds of a
file. In effect one becomes the slave rather than the master of one’ knowledge or point of
view. (Simonton, 1984 pg 6)
The wisdom of crowds, swarm intelligence and their related fields, which use large sets of
individuals are most often contrasted with the work of other types of communities and
individuals. Supporters of crowdbased models rise issues surrounding which arise from
peer review, editorial control, committees and societal norms to tout the strength of
crowdsourced works. Pointing out the issues of ego that hamper the traditional model of
one way communication from expert to audience. This although this approach activates
the receiver and has proven to be an effective way of solving a certain a set of problems.
Tapping into the collective experiences and knowledge base of a larger population
maximizes the number of points of view which are employed toward a particular fact or
opinion. But this is a limited definition of intelligence. And there is a great deal of scholarly
work focused on expanding the definition of intelligence past the traditional recollection of
facts. Other new intelligences are being identified. Other suggestions include: spirituality,
humor, culinary ability, to synthesize other intelligences, moral sensibility, intuition,
olfactory perception, sexuality, creativity, naturalistic. Not merely talent, skill or aptitude
(Maki, 1996 p14)
The idea of crowd intelligence could be compared to the game “Family Feud” where
contestants attempt to name the top answers to questions asked to a large survey
sample. The “right” answer is the one that is given by the most people. Most of the time,
the crowd’s response makes sense. But its not perfect. It may be helpful to note the
differences between the questions posed in “Feud” with “Jeopardy” a game based on
contestants ability to recall facts. There is a recently developed game show brings the
two mechanics of crowd-polled questions with hard-data answers together. “One versus
One-hundred” is a game where a player must answer trivia questions correctly while
eliminating members of a “mob” in order to increase his or her winnings. But being able to
recall facts is just one slice of what we are beginning to understand as intelligence, and
you’d be hard pressed to find someone to agree that either the player or the mob was
being ”creative” or “innovative”.
The triarchic theory of intelligence which Sternberg puts forth (Sternberg, 1984, 1985,
1988) the analytical, creative, and practical abilities work in harmony to capture some of
the richness of an individual. The ability to recall facts or reach a consensus is only a very
small part of what is needed for individual success.
But business and industry is quickly moving to mine the potential of crowd sourced
content collection. Stock photography companies which severely cut into the assignment
work of photographers in the late eighties and early nineties are now being overwhelmed
by the number of on-line royalty free sites such as istockphoto.com, bigstockphoto.com,
and stockexpert.com selling the work of semi-professional photographer for as little as
$1-$3 per image.
Books titled “Crowd Sourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of
business” and “We are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your
Business” a crowdsourced book about, well, crowdsourcing. Businessweek magazine
listed massive collaborations in a recent article titled “Six Best Web-Smart Practices”.
Companies like Boeing, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble are augmenting their research
and development arms by working with InnoCentive a company organized to connect
research problems with brainpower from outside their company. “Everyone I talk to is
facing a similar issue in regards to R&D,” says Larry Huston, Procter & Gamble’s vice
president of innovation and knowledge. “Every year research budgets increase at a faster
rate than sales. The current R&D model is broken.” But after just six years working with
InnoCentive, critical components of more than 35 percent of the company’s initiatives
were generated outside P&G. “As a result R&D productivity is up 60 percent.” (Wired,
2006) What long-term impact this move will have on the funding of their internal R&D has
yet to be determined.
Semi-involved participants with varied motivations are being asked to generate content
without substantial compensation and by extension, value of the work they’ve completed.
The equality of all the voices and the lack of a clear author does not give a great deal of
incentive to those who could in fact give the most guidance to a project. Yes, creativity is
about finding new ways of solving and goals, crowd sourcing can be a component in the
process such as collecting raw data. But should not be confused nor be set up as an
alternative try to supplant it.
Again, the speed and connections of offered by recent of computer hardware allows
contemporary researchers the ability to poll data points with greater speed and depth
than in the past. The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as
shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0
technologies to achieve business goals. Although more and more projects are being
completed using this model, its core problems remain. Open access collaborative
authoring projects are open to hijacking by people and groups with other agenda’s.
Recently the very founder of wikipedia was found to be massaging, or in wikipedia jargon,
“airbrushing”, both his biography and the information portal’s history perhaps motivated
by his wish not to share founding status with a former associate of the site.
A creative person is one who has the foresight determination and, sometimes, the
necessary luck, to “buy low and sell high” that is, to consistently develop ideas that may
be unfashionable or misunderstood at first but gain currency over time as the public
catches on to the significance of the idea. Creativity is effective because it is pitted
against the “crowd”. And the process as well as the artifact can be difficult for others to
accept. What is new is also strange, and what is strange can be scary, even
threatening— which is why “they” don’t want to hear it. (Sternberg, 1995 pg 2)
Perhaps it says something about some of the concerns surrounding crowd theory that at
the time of this writing, wikipedia’s description of “massively distributed collaboration”
does not hold up to the site’s own guidelines for inclusion. The main contemporary
example of massively distributed collaboration current poster child for minimum levels of
objectivity or reviewed sources.
In the larger context, crowd intelligence tends to blur the definitions of “wisdom”,
“intelligence” and “knowledge” together. There is a big difference between wisdom and
knowledge. Knowledge is the ability to recall data, wisdom is knowing how to apply it.
Simonton has suggested that the most creative individuals historically have been those
who are moderately educated in the disciplines - those with neither the most nor the least
abound. (Simonson, 1984) In the same vein, our view is that large amounts of
knowledge can lead to entrenched thinking and the inability to go beyond the established
bounds of a file. In effect one becomes the slave rather than the master of one’s
knowledge or point of view. Is this why crowds seem to be better problem solvers than
“experts”. Essential attributes of highly creative people, such as nonconformity,
unorthodox, questioning of social norms, truisms and assumptions. (Sternberg, 2005)
These attributes put these both in direct opposition to the opinions of the crowd, but also
the expert which has been anointed by the group.
Intelligence is a much larger concept than crowd theory models suggest. It serves three
key roles in creativity: synthetic (making or coming up with new ideas), analytic (being
able to judge the good from the bad) and practice (present to audience) (Sternberg 2005
p89)
Presently, academics at Tufts and Yale are developing ways of assessing creativity.
Teaching students to make decisions which include: redefining problems rather than
accepting them as presented, willing to take intellectual risks, surmounting criticism,
presentation and persuasion, and believing in their creative ability (Sternberg, 2003 p 80)
Sapp proposed that between incubation and at he the moment of illumination there may
often be a “point of creative frustration” (Sapp, 1992 p24). A person may become blocked
or fail to find creative ideas during incubation. At this point of frustration one can either
start over and fall into the same traps, accept a less-than-optimal solution (perhaps)
rationalizing that it is creative, or push ahead, exploring further alternatives or moving in a
new direction, perhaps reconcetualizing the problem. Thus, the point of creative
frustration involves making a decision on how to deal with difficulties encountered during
problem solving.” (Lubart, 2001 p 298) Massively distributed collaboration suffers from
these roadblocks even when the problem has been clearly defined. (Johnson, 1997)
Models using employing emergent principles find moderately workable solutions a
problem after several thousands of generations, but get stuck. They have great difficulty
finding another route to solving the problem. They have a strong tendency to craft a
solution that is “pretty good” but not great. A substantial distance from true creativity
which in many cases defines both the problem and its innovative solution.
When asked if crowd intelligence could be applied to artistic or creative endeavors he
replied that he didn’t have a good answer for the question because of the following
reasons. First, he said, “there is no ‘right answer’ when it comes to creative works”. The
richness of the solution set cannot be easily quantified. Secondly, crowd theory depends
on all the participants agreeing on the problem they are trying to solve. The power of the
creative process stems from its ability to both pose and answer questions rather than
processing issues put before it. Surowiecki then offered ”…that artists have realized
tremendous benefits from collaboration with other artists.” But this loose association
could hardly be defined as crowd intelligence or massively distributed collaboration.
Artists tend to interact and learn from each other so they can build on key ideas in radical
ways. Rather than working toward one goal, they use secured knowledge to pose and
solve different questions. He goes on to volunteer ”…groups (crowd intelligence models)
can sort out potential innovations, but they can’t create them. An individual product is one
from a individual.” (Suroweicki, 2005)
Unfortunately, this has not stopped business from traveling down the road to outsourcing
creativity. A trend which could lead to siphoning hard-won resources away from truly rich
creative processes. Although some crowd-based processes can be very effective in the
realm of polling, testing and finding statistically significant answers to clearly defined
questions, these models do not push organizations toward the most profitable forms of
creativity. True innovation demands creativity in its full flower, not merely the trappings of
collective intelligence. Real creativity will not disappear from lack of funds, but without
broader support from society, the innovations which fuel growth will occur at a reduced
rate. The future will be crafted by those societies which are best able to tap the creative
resources of their citizens.
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