Computer Science Degree and Creativity
by admin on 03/02/12 at 3:19 am
Understand creativity and better appreciate Computer Science degree as an agent towards creativity.
To the average American, a Computer Science degree is highly technical and scientific. However, people who are already in the IT industry know that the degree also trains students in the arts and creativity. Computer science majors and computer programmers are some of the most creative people in the world.
Creativity is the ability to produce something from nothing. It is the talent to come up with something beautiful from something dull and commonplace. This is what programmers do – create entire cultures of technology from pieces and scraps of inanimate metal.
The world mourned when it lost the genius of Steve Jobs. Everybody remembers him for his many contributions and inventions in technology and modern communication. What many failed to recognize, however, was that Mr. Jobs’ inventions were also pieces of art that made our world much more colorful, interesting and beautiful.
The Apple founder painted a beautiful picture of the world with highly useful, relevant and user-friendly gadgets.
He turned the unexciting activity of writing on a piece of paper into magically pointing a finger on a screen to create and move around computer-synthesized images.
That is science and art in action.
Creativity and art are inseparable. Art is defined as the process of creating or arranging items, materials or symbols in such a way to influence or create some kind of effect on the viewer. The most common pieces of art are in the forms of painting, sculpture, music, photography, film, or literature.
Today, the arts and how people approach it have changed significantly, thanks to computer technology. Paintings are done using virtual color palettes from computer software and then printed on a piece of paper. Music also now makes use of computer programs in composing, arranging and harmonizing tunes.
Each expression of the arts has been enhanced by computer especially film. These days, the use of CG effects is so common that viewers can’t distinguish them from the real objects. Monsters, dinosaurs and alien beings come to life in the big screen and not in crude, plastic costumes that movie extras used to wear before computer graphic artists had their way.
Computers did not only enhance the arts, but also invented a new genre completely – computer graphics. Pieces of art exist in cyberspace and are manifested in the real world. The Internet is a vast and colorful canvass of images that cut across cultures and political boundaries.
Computer graphics take up a significant part in Computer Science education. Students are taught how to create beautiful 3D and 2D images using the appropriate software.The really good students, however, create software programs that create graphic images.
A Computer-based type of creativity will not go away soon. It is here to stay and create more compelling pieces of art and technology. A Computer Science degree, as well as a Masters in Computer Science, does not only educate and train students in technical, geeky computer programming languages but also opens them up to a new world that is truly creative and beautiful.
