Keep Creativity and Imagination Alive

A few days ago I was scrolling through facebook when I saw a set of images that someone posted. I wish I saved the link, but basically it was a photoset of a bunch of toy dinosaurs being placed strategically as if they were "hanging out". The captions that went along with these photos explained that the parents did this for their children so that they could preserve mystery and wonder in a world where you can quickly just attain any answer from the internet. This partially touches up on the topic I plan to explore in my final paper (somewhat, though after writing this out that might not be the case), but in a world where you can easily search up anything, is imagination and wonder being killed?

My answer to that question is the standard CS answer of "it depends." On one hand, yes, we have the ability to search up every single little thing so that we know rather than leave it to imagination. I find myself always on these various wikis for different shows and movies because I enjoy reading up on the lore of things, even if I don't make the effort to play the video game out or watch the TV series in depth like a lot of my friends do. But see, that's the thing--though we have access to such information easily, it's another step for us to seek it out entirely. We have to want to seek out this info, and that is where I believe the difference lies.

Plus I do not believe it kills imagination all too much to have access to all this information. For me personally, it helps build up my imagination to the point where I have difficulties trying to write a story idea down because of all the things I want to include in it.

But then again, people operate in different ways, so I can understand where the parents of that photoset are coming from, especially for the newer generation. My generation is probably one of the last ones that can say, "Back when I was growing up, we didn't have all these fancy iPads or mobile phones or super computers." I grew up playing with legos, I ran around the school yard with my friends playing tag (or manhunt when we got older). I even "play-fighted" with my friends during recess, thinking up scenarios that we would role-play, like a bunch of heroes on a quest to take down the school yard bully.

Now? I see toddlers playing around with their parents' mobile phones. I see pre-schoolers using iPads and just sitting around in one spot. Sure, maybe mentally they might still be stimulated, but it's one thing to be just mentally stimulated and it's another thing to move around while still keeping the mind active. What a great feeling it is to move as your imagination does, rather than keeping it all in your head.

One of my biggest fears has always been what will happen when all this technology doesn't work. Would people be able to revert back to the old days of having fun without relying on a computer or electronic device? Or would we wallow in fetal positions and just wait until the technology comes back to us?