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Creative Computing

Adrian Miles and Jeremy Yuille have released "A Manifesto For Responsible Creative Computing v.0.3," and while I'm tempted to reproduce it in its entirety here, Adrian deserves the hits. Here's a smattering:

  • Creative computing is being creative with a computer/network, not being creative on a computer/network.
  • Network literacy is not the same as knowing how to Google.
  • This literacy is demonstrated in the responsible use of computers which understands that the network includes social, ideological, legal, political, ethical and ecological contexts.
  • Breaking, gleaning and assembling is a theory of praxis for these literacies.

There's more, so take a gander. If there's one thing that I would add, it's that there's an analogy to be drawn here between what the Manifesto describes as "creative computing" and the way that "creative writing" has been taken up in the academy here in the States. Creative writing is a misnomer, implying that "other kinds" of writing aren't creative on the one hand, and ghetto-izing many valuable lessons about language on the other.

Miles and Yuille contextualize their manifesto by explaining that "We teach students who work in the creative industries," but I'd like to hope (even as I'm mindful of the impracticality of this) that we don't take the word "creative" to mean something other than what we do here. Ours is a field that still maintains ties to a tradition that spoke of rhetoric as poesis and techne, that still has much to think about with respect to the production of discourse.

Let me put it this way. It feels naive to me to suggest that "all computing is creative," but I'm tempted to say this nevertheless. I think of a couple of conversations I had in San Antonio with David Blakesley--it's important to understand that he's focused on digital production in a way that will have profound implications for our discipline. In fact, I'm coming to believe that he may be one of our best examples of someone who is actively engaged in the production of the discipline. And I'm thinking of Jeff's recent post (and WPAJ article) on producing our own software and systems. And I'm even thinking of blogs in general, where a handful of us are producing language and selves on a daily basis.

The only sad is that manifestos like this are far more likely to come from outside our field than from inside it. In fact, if I'm feeling frisky tomorrow, perhaps I'll do a little close compare-contrast with the Manifesto and the recent CCCC Position Statement on Teaching, Learning, and Assessing Writing in Digital Environments (posted by Steve a while ago). Some of the differences, I'm sure, are generic--there's a difference between organizational policy statements and manifestos. Of course. But still.

Comments

actually, you can now comment directly on the manifesto at a blog we have set up