Culture

Channeling Innovation

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I came across this fascinating paper that suggests innovation is the result of collective interaction (shared knowledge, exchange of ideas, etc.). Think of it this way – we’ve got all this stored knowledge, cultural interactions, kind of a shared brain, that leads to innovation. People may carry it out, but it doesn’t come from them – a bit like channeling or “being ridden” in spiritual terminology.

Having worked in everything from medical research to tech to writing, I find the paper compelling not just for its citations, but how it fits my own experiences. I’ve watched creatives – including myself – “come up” with ideas that are the results of inputs and experiences, evolving into something. I’ve seen tech changed over the years, watching interaction across time and space result in great – and stupid – things that can’t be really traced to a single “cause.” The ideas may appear in people, but it doesn’t arise from anyone, but the time itself.

I’ve often been skeptical of people who think they’re some kind of linchpin of history. I know what goes on in my own head when I get inspired, and so much “isn’t me.” I know many people get where they are due to wealth, luck, the time, and so on. I know where my own luck and privilege has benefited me.

We may be the carriers of innovation, or where it finally manifests, but we’re not its owners – nor its masters as many a person possessed by an idea knows.

With this idea in mind (ha!), I’d like to take a look at something I’ve oft complained about – the lack of innovation and anything interesting in the tech industry in, well, the last ten or fifteen years.

Consider what happens if we believe that some Great Innovators are the source or all good things. We will seek these Great Innovators, pay attention to them, and then rely on them even if they aren’t producing good ideas. Because we seek them, anyone who fits the idea in their head is someone we listen to and assume they know what they’re doing. This of course leaves room for plenty of liars and grifters – maybe most of them.

Do that long enough and you not only lack innovation, you have a kind of anti-innovation. People with fame and money are not innovating, but now have the fame, money, and regard to propagate non-innovative ideas. The non-innovators can buy technology and access and even crush places where innovation originates.

Meanwhile, we’re not working on a culture and a world that increases innovation. We’re too busy looking for the Big Heroic Idea Person as opposed to a society where innovation can be realized. Everything becomes about finding heroes – which don’t exist – and things get less innovative and interesting.

It seems awful familiar, doesn’t it?

Steven Savage

But What Does It Mean?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Recently a friend found an AI generated fake trailer for a kind of 1950s-1960’s live Sailor Moon. This, it turned out wasn’t the only fake-retro live Sailor Moon trailer generated by AI. Somehow I feel the infamous failed Saban Sailor Moon has driven people to imagine such things differently (forgetting the rather well done live Sailor Moon from Japan).

Now I find these things amusing, but there was a strange emptiness about them. What, I wondered, was the point? I can imagine these things in my own head, and in fact have – once in the form of a late night discussion of Lucille Ball playing Sailor Moon (I was assuredly sober). Do I need someone to use tetchy AI to illustrate something?

As I contemplated the weird meaninglessness of these things, a friend who’s a talented cosplayer note that there was no point to such creations. What would have been truly amazing would not have been someone tossing prompts to an electricity-devouring toy, but to have rallied cosplayers and shot it live. Suddenly I got why so much of this AI art feels meaningless.

Let us imagine that some cosplayers had gathered to create a Sailor Moon trailer true to the spirit of the 50’s or 60s. They would have done research and studied costume design. They would have sewn, crafted, created, re-created, and perfected their work. Those doing the filming would have figured the angles of the time and how to get the color just right. Voiceovers would have been chosen to fit the period, perhaps finding veteran actors or new talent.

The creation of a few minutes of trailer would have involved people making, learning, researching, bonding. They would have made friendships that lasted a lifetime, spoken at cons, and taken their skills elsewhere. Someone may have used such a creation as a senior thesis, others in a portfolio. One small bit of fun would have impacted many people, echoing through their lives.

Or you can throw things into an AI. Sure there’s some talent in tweaking the prompts, calling the best shots, and so on. The editing of such things definitely requires skill. But so much of it is disconnected or not as connected as it should be. I won’t deny that a person with AI uses talent and inspiration to create a larger creation, but it lacks that big, meaningful picture of an effort without AI.

An artistic creation is a lot more than the time you watch it on screen.

What AI turns out is results with little human connection, history, inspiration, or meaning. It makes “product” in the most empty use of the term – something designed to appeal to someone’s interests, something to sell, a result not a thing with history and meaning. We’ve taken an interesting tool and now people pitch it as a substitute for being human.

This is another reason I’m skeptical on AI creations beyond some more personal and specific uses. Where’s the human connection? The team that learned from making a show? The author you love and get angry at in equal measure? The voice actors to fan over? The choices only a person could make – even if they’re the bad choices of an actual human? Where’s what comes next, with lessons learned and ideas built on?

It’s not there. Just a machine turning out stuff in the rough shape of what we asked. It doesn’t mean anything.

Steven Savage

Nothing Means Anything Anymore

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

There’s a peculiar dissatisfaction in First World modern life. A racing, seeking need is prowling around, so many of us are trying to get something. Whatever we churn out in technologies and media doesn’t quite seem to be enough. Whatever new social media or communities or movies that pop up, people still seem disconnected.

I get that strange, unsettled, need – and that feeling things just “aren’t like they should be.” Even when you remove toxic nostalgia and the human condition, something seems wrong. Lately, contemplating everything from music to politics, a phrase bubbled up in my mind – “Nothing Means Anything Anymore.”

So much doesn’t seem to exist for itself or because it’s just good as it is or even it’s cool or fun. I think that’s part of the dissatisfaction.

The latest new social media product is just a mixture of contrarianism, MLM, and fad so someone makes money. The latest big media sensation is part of a series being milked for money and flattened to the most marketable format. Every book cover looks alike and sells the same stories that went before it – even for indie authors.

How much of our culture is just marketing anymore? Nothing exists for itself, everything is how to get more money into a bank account, so much is “number go up.” How many times have you reviewed a film or a book for friends and caught yourself sounding like a professional reviewer or marketer? We’re so used to nothing being what it its, but being some kind of product rollout or initiative or whatever we start to sound like that.

Or maybe there’s the meaninglessness in politics and the seeking of political power. Carefully-tested bullshit is spewed making claims everyone knows are lies, but people don’t want to admit it so their side “wins.” Pundits spit out catchphrases and newspaper people are just asking questions since they don’t want to do real work. Even the conspiracy theories are recycled and the conspiracy theorists seem to be trying not to meet each other’s gaze as they know they’re full of crap.

Such multi-level meaninglessness even infects supposedly sane politics. Political discussions among friends and enemies sound like any argument held by pundits as we’re all trying to be pundits instead of themselves. Local politics can be amplified by some online influence-seeker who posts about your local town and next thing you know your city council is getting screamed at by people in other states or even countries. Number goes up, votes go up, clicks goes up, but it’s all worse somehow.

We’ve somehow managed to build a complex, high-tech First World where we know a lot of it is bullshit.

Yet when I do things like read punk mags (hey, I’m not as dull as I seem) or go to local zine fests I see meaning. There’s some meaning in these handcrafted, not-market-tested, weird, personal things. There’s satisfaction to be had out there, from weird streaming services to someone’s photocopied jokes on cactuses (really, I have it). Meaning is there to have.

I’m not proposing a solution or a diagnosis of cause right now. I’m just recognizing this right now. I do suspect some of it is that we’ve built very complex, profit-driven societies and created a lot of technologies and media we’re promoting that we may not need or want. At some point everything became so abstract nothing means anything.

But now I can ask myself what does it mean when I look at a book, a movie, etc. I can ask why I do something and what really matters to me. I can also act less like a marketer . . . at least when I’m not marketing.

Steven Savage