[recursinging]

Aside from the old-man-in-a-wooden-rocking-chair-on-a-porch tone, it seems to me that the author's beef is mainly about back-patting, and how the "Whatever" machines are flooding the pat-me-on-the-back platforms with "Content" that makes their own stick out less, resulting in fewer back-pats.

The last line of the article summarizes it perfectly.:

> Do things. Make things. And then put them on your website so I can see them.

I subscribe fully to the first two sentences, but the last one is bullshit. The gloom in the article is born from the authors attaching the value of "making things" to the recognition received for the effort. Put your stuff out there if you think it is of value to someone else. If it is, cool, and if it's not, well, who cares.

> I can’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something like: “I created a whole album, complete with album art, in 3.5 hours. Why wouldn’t I use the make it easier machine?” This is kind of darkly fascinating to me, because it gives rise to such an obvious question: if anyone can do that, then why listen to your music? It takes a significant chunk of 3.5 hours just to listen to an album, so how much manual work was even done here? Apparently I can just go generate an endless stream of stuff of the same quality! Why would I want your particular brand of Whatever?

This gem implies that the value of the music (or art in general) is partially or even wholly dependent on whether or not someone else thinks it's good. I can't even...

If you eliminate the back-patting requirements, and the stuff we make is genuine, then it's value is intrinsic. The "Whatever" machines are just tools, like the rest of the tools we use, to make things. So, just make your things and get on with it.

[probably_wrong]

I think there are more generous interpretations than "the value of art is dependent on whether someone else thinks it's good".

I had an interesting discussion with a piano teacher once. Some of his students, he told me, would play for themselves but never for any kind of audience. As the saying goes: if a musician plays a piano in a closed room with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

Obviously there's nothing wrong with extremely personal art that never gets released to the wider public - not every personal diary should be a blog. But there's also the question of what happens to art when none of it gets shared around, and vibrant art communities are, in my opinion (and I think also the author's), something to encourage.

[recursinging]

> if a musician plays a piano in a closed room with no one to hear it, does it make a sound?

I get what you're after, but that's not a very good example. If a musician is playing an instrument, then of course the musician hears it.

Now, imagine instead that it's a player piano, and the lone "musician" is not actually playing anything at all, but hears the sound of the tones he/she had randomly generated by a "Whatever" machine, resonating through the actual struck strings, and resonant body of a piano, and the hair on the back of their neck stands on end. Then the music ends, the vibrations stop, and all that is left of the moment is whatever memory the "musician" retains.

Was that music while being heard by the "musician"? Is it music when it's just an melody in the "musician's" head? What if it's wasn't a piano at all, but just birds singing? Is it still music? If it is, is it "good" music?

Yes, the world is changing fast, and no, we humans don't seem to handle it well. I agree with the article in that sense. But I see no use in categorizing technology as dystopian, just because it's been misused. You don't have to misuse it yourself, or even use it at all if you don't want to. Complaining about it though... we humans are great at that.

[pebble]

> and the stuff we make is genuine

hmmm