How do you value creativity
Do you value creativity?
What a silly question, of course you do. Creativity is the spice of life that through it all things are possible.
We are in the renaissance of content, our phones hold near infinite things presented to us as part of the content pipeline. Now with Generative LLM and AI we can have Skyrim with endless quests, your favourite actors never leaving your favourite shows, music collaborations with the most unlikely duos. It would seem like magic with how easy it is.
The greatest trick a magician can ever do is making your eyes focus on his left hand while he takes your wallet with his right.
We don’t call art, art anymore. We call it content. The creative arts is being relegated to the content creation. In 1996, the now disgraced Bill Gates, wrote the essay “Content is King”. In it he said:
When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.
So why aren’t developers and designers relegated to content creators? Why aren’t UX designers, who are in the business of influencing a user’s journey called influencers?
Why aren’t the people who input prompts into LLMs called content prompters?
Outside of the Chief Content Officer, it doesn’t seem like we value content. If Content is King, it is a Puppet Ruler.
You may value creativity but I fear many truly don’t. They don’t want you to follow creative pursuits, they want content pipelines. They don’t want you to consume art that changes you, they want you to be on your phone while they are playing in the background. Content is the false king but it has no Quality Queen.
As a small business owner I’m told to do content creation. To remain in the minds of others, to spend an afternoon to make 100 bits of content for the next 100 days. To throw coal into the engine as it winds down the track.
I struggle at producing content. A six word story doesn’t take 6 seconds to create, and shouldn’t take 6 seconds to consume.
I’ve given chatgpt a crack to help fix that deficiency. The dangers of AI strikes again and wasted my time. Truth be told, putting writing into the LLM to punch it up has put me back in the ring to punch up the punch up.
The devaluation of creativity is a war against time. People don’t want to put the time in to learn a craft. That is what Generative AI Art content prompters are really saying when they say artists are privileged. They are privileged with time that these prompters refuse to pay. They still want “Art” at any cost though no matter the quality.
Do you like white bread?
That’s what Content is. It is technically bread, you can eat it. But you can’t really enjoy it. You aren’t tearing off chunks of white sandwich bread to dip in oil.
Do you value bakers? Do you value the craft of baking bread?
Do you value the time necessary to make bread?
How much time do you spend on the things you value?
How much time do you spend with the people you value?