Creativity and Connectivity

Over at Wired Workplace, Brittany, prompted by Harvard lecturer Robert Benh's commentary, raises a provocative question: does collaborative technology and teleworking help innovation or hinder it? I have to admit, I expected more from Benh's article, which is entirely anecdotal, and makes a couple of what seem to me to be weak arguments: first, that people need to be present in the same room to concentrate enough to innovate, and second that e-learning hasn't really taken off because instructors have a hard time teaching without students' visual cues to work against.

These seem like failure-to-adapt complaints to me, rather than legitimate indictments of using connective technology for innovative purposes. Sure, people sometimes mess around when they're on conference calls. But doesn't that indicate that the conference call is boring, or poorly structured, rather than that people inherently have no attention span? In addition, there are things you can do on a web chat, for example, that you can't do in an in-person meeting. You can share files, trade links, etc., all of which are extremely value both as reference points, and in a creative process. And you can still see each other if you're using something as simple as Gmail's video chat application, eliminating the missed-signals problem. As for e-learning, the argument that it hasn't caught on I think is both factually inaccurate and besides the point. Tons of people use e-learning for a variety of courses. If you can't teach without a live audience in front of you, that may be a constraint you suffer from, but it doesn't mean it's something that everyone can't do, or shouldn't do.

This argument seems to me to miss a point that I think is critical: you should use the technology and the setting that's best suited to your purpose. If you're working mostly with older people, relying solely on chat or videoconferencing doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're working with younger people, chat makes a lot of sense. If you're working on a multimedia project, meeting in a way that lets you access and share a lot of media quickly probably makes sense. If you're working with people who are far-flung, collaborative technology may be cost-effective. The point is not that collaborative technologies are the savior or the devil. They're just another tool in the arsenal. And until someone actually proves, rather than grumbles, that they're in some way distracting or unhelpful, they should be used when they're useful and appropriate.