User:Roos Peltenburg/Chapter 1 Introduction

The power of making, and connecting through creating, extends well beyond the online world to all kinds of activities in everyday life.

• Making is connecting because you have to connect things together (materials, ideas, or both) to make something new;

• Making is connecting because acts of creativity usually involve, at some point, a social dimension and connect us with other people;

• And making is connecting because through making things and sharing them in the world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical environments.

Opened up a world of diversity and imagination where the content itself is created by everyday users.

The idea is that going through the thought- ful, physical process of making something – such as a video, a drawing, a decorated box, or a Lego model – an individual is given the opportunity to reflect, and to make their thoughts, feelings or experiences manifest and tangible.

Thinking and making are aspects of the same process.

Web 2.0 describes a particular kind of ethos and approach. Web 2.0 is like a collective allotment. Instead of individuals tending their own gardens, they come together to work collaboratively in a shared space. Online service become more powerful the more that they embrace thins network of potential collaborators.

Theodor Adorno- Max Horkheimer: modern capital- ism succeeds not by menacing us, or dramatically crushing our will on the industrial wheel, but by encouraging us to enjoy a flow of convenient, cheerful stuff, purchased from shops, which gives us a feeling of satisfaction, if not happi- ness.

Creativity results from the interac- tion of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and validate the innovation.

We do typically think of creativity as something which can happen quite routinely, whenever any of us does something in an unexpected but striking and inventive way.

This book is a discussion about the value of everyday creativity, taking in handmade physical objects and real- life experiences as well as the recent explosion of online creativity..