Does technology merely assist you in your creative work or does it provide the foundation?
Tamara: I’m a writer. Technically, pen and paper and even language itself are technologies, but let’s leave that for now. For brainstorming, I like pen and paper, but for writing-writing, I prefer a word processor. A word processor makes it easier to move everything around. For creating my stories, I don’t NEED the technology. I just like it better. However, when it comes to distribution, I need the Internet. If I couldn’t do distribution, there’d be no point in writing beyond my own amusement. For a hobby, the technology is auxiliary, but for a future career, it’s a necessity.
Serdar: There are some things I’ve done which were made possible through technology, in part because technology provided a medium for me to work in a way where my mistakes were not held against me. Graphics, for instance: I’ve done miserably with paper and pencil, but I do much better with a computer because I have the freedom to fail there with no untoward consequences.
I know organizing the work I do now would be a lot more difficult without a wiki. Maybe not impossible, but certainly nowhere nearly as self-organizing and self-optimizing.
I’m much happier if I have a word processor to write with, but I started with paper and pencil, and I can always fall back to that if everything else fails. I suspect that’s because I’ve been doing it the longest of all my creative endeavors, and I know I trust myself to use the most basic tools if that’s all I’ve got. All other things being equal, though, I’d rather have Word.
Lauren: By technology, we’re talking about the Internet, right? Because technically, pens and paper are technology.
I would definitely have chosen a different career if modern technology didn’t exist. For one thing, my job—reporting on online communities—would not exist! Not to mention that my position as an adjunct professor of Web skills would be defunct.
It’d be a lot harder to be a reporter. I’d have to go back to somewhere like the local paper I interned at in college and spend far more time on the phone (if the phone still exists) and pounding the pavement. I’d be so busy doing this that I’d have to decline to teach another semester at the university. Teaching, too, would take a LOT more time since I’d have to individually meet with students for office hours instead of Skyping them, and I’d spend a lot of time in the library planning lessons.
OK, life without technology sounds terrible. I’d probably marry for money, sequester myself in a private library, and become a poet.
Ewen: I’m very big on tabletop RPGs, and the hobby itself is decidedly low-tech. You get a rulebook, dice, paper, and pencils, and sit around talking and imagining, and that’s it. My involvement with it as a designer, translator, and publisher is pretty dependent on technology though. Especially with a shrinking market, being able to buy and sell games online makes the entire thing vastly more viable for everyone concerned. When we licensed and translated Maid RPG from a Japanese game publisher, being able to communicate by e-mail is what made the whole thing not take an eternity, and POD printing technology made it feasible to do small, manageable print runs instead of having to pull together the funds to print 1000+ books all at once. There was a time when to go into the RPG publishing business people would have to take out a second mortgage, and if it didn’t work out they’d have boxes and boxes of some forgotten relic of a game collecting dust, but now you can do a Kickstarter, print according to the demand, and sell both physical and electronic books online. In fact you can skip the printing part if it comes to it.
As a writer, technology just makes things substantially easier. I can’t even fathom what it was like to write everything by hand or on a typewriter through multiple drafts and using a mimeograph or carbon paper to make duplicates, but having a word processor isn’t an absolute requirement. In fact sometimes I feel the need to pull out a pen and paper to get my bearings on things. Whenever I finally get serious enough about writing to try to get stuff published, chances are a lot of the stuff that makes RPG publishing work will also fit into how I go about getting my pure prose out to people.
Scott: Technology, at least for the content creation, assists, making it easier to write. (Really. It hurts to use a pen due to a childhood injury.) However, technology makes getting the work out for people to read far easier. So, distribution has benefited from technology, even if creation just uses it as a tool.
Steve: Here’s the thing. EVERYTHING is technology – a computer, a brainstorming technique, etc. So it’s kind of hard to answer without assuming you mean most anything – which I am.
Technology can assist you depending what it is – I run http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ after all. It really depends on what you use, what you do, and what’s available.
That being said, smart people find technology that supports and enhances their creativity. It’s a big edge.
Bonnie: By technology, I’m assuming you mean the Internet and related things. It’s a very valuable tool to me, mainly for purposes of research. All it takes for a writer in need of info is a few quick keystrokes and entire mega libraries of info are available to you. (Not to mention the invaluable assistance of online dictionaries and thesaurai.)