Digital World

5 Creativity and digital innovation

David Gauntlett

 

Introduction

This chapter is about how the Internet can be an enabler and driver of people's creativity and innovation. Of course, people have been creative, and sought to do things in new ways, throughout history. The digital world does not cause more of that activity to happen, but it does enable people to make and – in particular – connect, in efficient and diverse ways which were not previously possible. Being able to be in contact with people from all around the world, who share your interests, and exchange creative material with them in order to inspire and generate new ideas, may have been sort-of possible before the late twentieth century, but the process was undeniably slow and difficult. ...