“Creativity” seems to be the buzzword of the year. The call for creativity--the act of coming up with something new, unique, different, or innovative--has permeated the digital world. This edited book takes a look at the fundamentals of digital creativity, the expressive process that goes along with it, the collaboration and co-creation that it entails, and the makers and players involved.

It is quite interesting to note that throughout the book there are reminiscences of former students, colleagues, and material used in my political science classroom. One can begin with the philosophical problems posed by the issues involving digital humanities--the relationship of man to machine and whether such constitutes a necessary evil. A colleague engages in the creating of digital narratives that link the past that was lived to the present that is known to the timelessness of the future. And when a dilemma regarding the Facebook presence of someone who has died comes into the picture, we delve into that same timelessness that allows Natalie Cole to go “in concert” with her late father Nat King Cole.

It is heartwarming to note that a former student is now studying creative writing at the Auckland University of Technology. And belief in teaching a common core of knowledge is reinforced: Brazilian creativity in the digital field takes lessons from Paolo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where education is seen as a set of exchanges without confrontation and students assume a role in that education process.

Drawing from the LEGO experience of learning from customers and the current trend of crowdfunding, which is a collective effort to contribute to a worthwhile project, one can see that the collective, cooperative, collaborative model of working together has seen success for many different ventures through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and so on.

Quite interestingly enough, the last section of the book focuses on “Makers and Players” and includes children’s creativity in the mix as well as the latest trends in 3D printing technology, which opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

The text is entertaining and educational with the use of tables, graphs, cartoons, screen shots, and so on. But it is not free from errors, both typographical and grammatical. While sometimes it is the fault of the individual authors, at times it is the responsibility of the editors to come up with a closer to error-free product. Despite that, it is a book that students and workers in many different disciplines, including computer science, design, communications, engineering, arts, philosophy, psychology, and many more, can benefit from.