Creativity and the Digital Age

By definition, analog is continuous, but digital is broken up into teeny tiny pieces. Therefore, a digital file is made up of many tiny pieces to give the illusion of a single piece.

 This definition of "digital" reflects our world today, which is so influenced by so many sources and different things that it's impossible to see all the individual pieces, and you only see the big picture.

Sometimes we don't even realize all the little parts we use to put together "one single piece." Jonathan Lethem does a good job of explaining this in his article The Ecstasy of Influence for Harper's Magazine. He explains that even the great works of literature borrow heavily, even directly, from previous works of literature, often works that were by no means "great."

According to Lev Manovich, in What is New Media?, two things, computing and media technologies, have come together. And this convergence occurred as far back as the 1830s with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. 

Finally, to really exemplify this modern "digital" concept of bringing lots of little things together to make one, Greg Gillis' one-man-band Girl talk has released three albums consisting of bits and pieces of songs by other artists. He simply reconstructs them, fitting them anyway he wants into music.

Combining little things to create one thing, a collage if you will, has been around for ages. But the digital age, by definition, has completely changed how and why it is done.