Creative-mindedness: when technology helps and when it hinders

Creative-mindedness is the broad disposition to come up with a good idea when you need one, and work it through. It relies on a number of factors: the absence of beliefs that might cause one to neglect or misrepresent useful aspects of one's own mind; the possession of a rich and partly unsystematic neural compost of experience, snippets and understanding; an intuitive grasp of when and how to think clearly and precisely, and when and how to think vaguely and dreamily; an awkward but irresistible sense of wonderment and scepticism; patience and persistence in the face of confusion and frustration; and the ability to amass and deploy material, spatial, technological and social resources in a way that is fluidly appropriate to the evolving nature of the creative project. This last factor is perhaps the most important of all: the presence of mind to orchestrate both one's own mental resources and habits, and the affordances of the outside world, in a way that optimises their ability to mesh with themselves and with each other. Creativity means being smart about yourself, smart about the world, and smart about how to fit the two together.