Human Creativity in the Cybernetic Age: Are We Makers or Tools?
Eudora
3
10-1Mia: We often hear that putting more technology into classrooms is the key to unlocking the next generation's creativity. But what if the opposite is true? What if all these smart, easy-to-use tools are actually making us… less creative?
Mars: It’s a pretty provocative thought, isn't it? But it's exactly the point Martin Robinson makes in his piece, Technology and Creativity: Are You the Maker or the Tool?. He argues that this rush to embrace technology in education might be accidentally stamping out authentic, human creativity.
Mia: Right, because there's a fundamental difference between the tools of the past and the technology of today. An old typewriter or a camera were extensions of the artist, but modern tech can increasingly create things all on its own. It's really blurring the line.
Mars: That’s a crucial distinction. It’s like the difference between a baker making bread from scratch and someone working on a mass-production assembly line for sliced white bread. In one scenario, the human's craft, choice, and even their mistakes are central to the process. In the other, the human's role is just to fit into a predefined, machine-driven system. The creativity isn't in the person anymore; it's been designed into the machine.
Mia: That brings us to a more philosophical point the article raises about authenticity. The philosopher Heidegger, for instance, argued we should live as humanly as possible, making real choices for ourselves. But he warned that societal forces, which he just called 'they,' can push us into 'inauthenticity' where we're not really choosing.
Mars: And Robinson brilliantly connects that to modern tech. Today, 'they' has become 'what does Google say?' or 'what's trending on Twitter?' When we just passively accept what an algorithm feeds us, whether it’s news or search results, we’re not exercising our own volition. We’re handing over the reins of our decision-making to a machine.
Mia: So we’re outsourcing our thinking.
Mars: Exactly. And the really striking part here is how this affects learning. Giving a child a calculator before they understand how multiplication even works, or a fancy music app before they’ve ever learned a scale, doesn't empower them. It completely bypasses the fundamental learning process. They outsource the thinking. They get the right answer, sure, but they lose the ability to develop their own mental model, their own schema for how things work. It's a shortcut that ultimately robs them of the capacity for authentic creation.
Mia: I see. So it's not about the tools being bad, but about the sequence. It's about developing that foundational human skill and that sense of choice *before* you let technology take over the heavy lifting. But what happens when the machines get even smarter? When they're not just tools but thinking partners?
Mars: Well, that's where Robinson brings in the idea of 'cybernetic' machines. These are systems designed to think and make choices for us. He uses this concept of a 'total system' to explain how these technologies create a larger 'Mind' where our individual minds are just small parts, or subsystems.
Mia: You mean instead of us controlling the tools, the system starts to control us?
Mars: It's a profound shift, yes. We go from using a hammer, where the tool is purely an extension of our will, to interacting with systems that seem to have their own agenda. The article’s analogy is just perfect here: teaching a child to sit in a driverless car versus teaching them to walk or ride a bike. We would never say the driverless car is a substitute for learning to walk, yet we seem to be making that exact mistake with creative education.
Mia: Right, because one builds independence and skill, the other builds dependency on the system. So this isn't just about making things more convenient; it's a debate about the future of human agency and what it even means to create something. It seems the core message is that we have to build the human first.
Mars: Absolutely. So, if we boil it all down, the discussion really leaves us with a few critical takeaways. First, that our rush to adopt new technology, especially in creative fields, carries a real risk of diminishing authentic human creativity because it can reduce our own free will in the process.
Mia: And it leads to a kind of 'inauthentic' life, where we're outsourcing our thinking to algorithms on social media or search engines.
Mars: Precisely. And that gets even more serious with these 'cybernetic' or total systems, which are designed in a way that can reduce human control, basically turning us into cogs in a larger machine rather than active creators.
Mia: Which all points to the final, and maybe most important, takeaway for education.
Mars: Yes. That foundational skills and fostering a person's own volition—their ability to choose and have taste—must come before we hand them these powerful, choice-making technologies. That’s how we ensure we're creating makers, not just tools for the machine to use.