On the impact of ICT over the creative process in humans

In this paper we dwell upon the effect that Information Society at large, and the use of ICT technologies in particular, have on the ability of humans in generating new ideas through a creative thinking process. In order to ground our discussion onto scientific terms, we first describe a general model of the creative thinking process, the DIMAI model, which identifies the main mental states occurring in the mind of the creative thinker: drive and focus definition, information gathering, movement from idea to idea, assessment, and implementation. We then move on to discuss the facilitators and inhibitors introduced by ICT technologies onto these five mental states, as well as on the overall process, and we show that there are numerous nuances and specificities on both sides, such as the impact of virtual worlds, self-authoring tools, hyper-connectivity, reduction of attention span, protection of intellectual property. Therefore, the conclusion is that there are many positive as well as negative implications, but without any doubt we can state that the impact of ICT on humans creativity is very significant. The future evolutions of technology are certain to bring even further implications, including the birth of the creative process for a global distributed brain.