Creativity as a commodity is the practice of paying people for their ideas. Where in the past one may have been able to make money from a creative product, now there is no possible way to have an idea or make something without it being in some way related to money. Even the act of placing something in the Information Society - Public Sphere is related to money, because without the current laws it need not be done.
The act of thinking of objects as a commodity has long since been a doctrine of capitalism, and the Information Society has incorporated this into its roots. Now anything can be a commodity, even things that do not belong to anyone, such as land, which is now seen as real estate; and people, which is now though of as labour (Boldt, 1999). The information society has taken this one step further and labelled thoughts and creativity as a commodity. The reasoning behind this revolves around money.
Intellectual Property was originally created to help get products into the public sphere. But since the aging of Mickey Mouse this has changed dramatically. Instead Intellectual Property has become something, which keeps products out of the public sphere. Thanks to Disney, copyright has now been extended to seventy years after the creator’s death, until the object in question will be in the public domain (Kapica, 2004).
The selling of ideas has produced an entirely new industry, the Creative Industries. This is a generalisation for any jobs that require the use of ideas or ‘creativity’ to create a product (DCMS, 2005). This results in the process of paying people for their ideas. The Creative Industries have come with the rise of ideas becoming more valuable than the physical product itself. Where in the past scholars and theorists were looked down upon and tradesmen were respected, things have now made a steady turn around.
According to Jeremy Cook (2004), in the commercial world, the creative process is divided into two parts: Creativity and Innovation. Only 10% of creativity is ever considered real innovation, and integrated into useful commodities. While just creativity is important to the creative person, and maybe to a few others, creativity is valueless in the commercial world unless it can be widely consumed in some way. This is one of the things that the Creative Industries hope to achieve, removing the elitism from art and applying it to the Information Society, so that a) the creative practitioner may enjoy an easier lifestyle and b) so that the average Joe or Jane has access creative products.
Daniel Cotter 15:48, 16 Oct 2005 (EST)
