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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Programmer Humor
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I will be honest as a late GenX it's going to be interesting as my cohort retires because we were the last generation to remember before The Internet and grew up to understand the technology not just use it.
If you're my age or older please make sure you're teaching your young coworkers how to break things and put them back together without the aid of all the tools and resources they have at their fingertips now. Creativity thrives in adversity. Creativity is at risk when tools like ChatGPT are at their fingertips now.
/rant
Get off your high horse old man. Millennials were born into technology, molded by it. We live and breathe it, and also grew up in a world where things most definitely did not just work.
I think you significantly underestimate the ingenuity and problem solving abilities of the younger generations. My Gen Z coworkers are extremely smart and hard working and understand how things work just as well, if not better than older generations.
I said nothing about the ingenuity and problem solving. That's not the concern. I also didn't take any exception on work ethic or intelligence. You're putting words in my mouth.
I never said that you said those things. You said you were the last generation to understand technology and not just use it, which is quite frankly ridiculous and untrue - especially for anyone with work ethic and intelligence.
I think they mean that they were the last generation who was alive and learning about how things were built and innovated on, while newer generations won't have that benefit.
They will be exposed to high level tools instead that automate a lot of the work which will make things easier for them but reduce understanding.
Thus, the newer generations on average will need to purposefully dig back into the past to learn what the older generations learned by just being around while it was happening.
These are just general trends though, its not going to be very practical to try to apply it to any individuals, or the group of people you work with.
On the nose. Thank you for explaining it far more eloquently than I was able to.
Yeah, the tools are still there to figure out the low level shit, information on it has never been this easy to come by and bright people who are interested will still get there.
However growing up during a time you were forced to figure the low level details of tech out merely to get stuff to work, does mean that if you were into tech back then you definitely became bit of a hacker (in the traditional sense of the word) whilst often what people consider as being into tech now is mainly spending money on shinny toys were everything is already done for you.
Most people who consider themselves as being "into Tech" don't really understand it to significant depth because they never had to and only the few who actually do want to understand it at that level enough to invest time into learning it do.
I'm pretty sure the same effect happened in the early days vs later days of other tech, such as cars.
The comparison to cars is interesting, although cars maybe have peaked already and I doubt technology has.
I dont think proprietary information is helping much either. Makes young folk think they need to get a job at Google to work on something real and important.
edit: replied to wrong user
Counterpoint, image gen ai has afforded me far greater time and ability to access my creativity than I've ever had before it. Different people can be creative in different ways, and have different Muse's for their creativity
Counter counterpoint. Without the fundamentals you will struggle in understanding your capabilities.
You could be a virtuoso in playing the piano but without understanding how to read and write sheet music you will be hampering your ability to learn other instruments. Note I am not saying you can't. I'm saying it's harder.
Creativity isnt necessarily about skill level though, and while in the past you've NEEDED skill in order to fully access your creativity, as technology progresses that becomes less and less true. Different people get different things out of art and creativity, and for me, the final product is a huge part of the payoff for me, and before, for the type of art I like looking at, that would have required a multi year - lifetime investment in order to be able to achieve. Now, my skills in Photoshop alongside Stable Diffusion allow me to collage myself my costume designs in hours, which wasnt even possible for me to achieve previously. Similarly, this tech is likely to snag future people into an art path because they experience the joy of creativity enough that they then decide to learn the skills to bypass the limitations of Generative AI
There is of course a difference in that you're talking about artistic creativity whereas I'm talking about programming creativity.
Your example works great for artistic creativity. On my side, not so much. I am fearful of people coding in python who do not know what they're coding as an example.
Yeah thats fair, I guess my example isnt very comparable to what you're talking about
Maybe.
It could also cause immense frustration when people realize that all the time they spent creating AI art is essentially wasted when it comes to learning a new skill.
It could give people false expectations about the effort needed to make art. It could flood the internet with AI art to the point where it hides individual artists even more, driving down demand due to over supply.
Also, you dont need to create stunning works to motivate people to create more art, the problem is people not accepting the learning process which involves a hell of a lot of mediocrity and failure along the way. AI tools are not going to improve the average persons perspective, who likely thinks you need to be born with a gift to be an artist.
Once again, art means different things to different people. The process is important to some, but not to everyone. Being able to access creativity has never had fewer barriers to entry which means more people will find enjoyment in it instead of being put off by the previously inescapable barriers. Further, if your creating art for yourself, it shouldn't matter if the market gets flooded and visibility gets harder. Those things are only important if you are looking to sell, and, well, welcome to capitalism.
Creating art for yourself is a fiction. Doing nearly anything for yourself is a fiction. As much as some feel they prefer to be alone, noone lives in a bubble.
When you talk about barriers to entry for art, you really mean high quality art. Sure, perfectionists will be able to outdo their outsized expectations of themselves, briefly. The barriers to making art have been incredibly low for all of human history if you really are talking purely about the cost to begin making art. You and I can start cresting art with our hands right now. How much lower can the barriers be?
It seems to me you would find it easier to work on your perspective that prevents you from enduring the failure required to learn high quality art than to advise we steal all art globally and historically, combine it into a program using the energy of a large nation, and present it to you at your home over the internet.
But like you said, we all have our perspectives on what is important.
"Creating art for yourself is a fiction. Doing nearly anything for yourself is a fiction. As much as some feel they prefer to be alone, noone lives in a bubble."
Damn man, your life must suck if you do absolutely nothing for yourself, I dont really have anything else to respond to this with
"When you talk about barriers to entry for art, you really mean high quality art. "
I absolutely do not, most forms of art takes a shitload of hours invested to start producing anything that doesnt look like absolute garbage, the high quality stuff takes YEARS of investment yes, but even passable quality stuff takes a considerable time investment.
"The barriers to making art have been incredibly low for all of human history if you really are talking purely about the cost to begin making art."
Which costs are you talking about? Because as I just said, the time costs are huge
"It seems to me you would find it easier to work on your perspective that prevents you from enduring the failure required to learn high quality art than to advise we steal all art globally and historically, combine it into a program using the energy of a large nation, and present it to you at your home over the internet."
Ah there we go, twisting the wording to make the other side look bad morally. Nothing any of you have brought up I would classify as stealing. Thankfully, since I AM producing my art for myself, I could give a rats ass what people like you think since theres nothing you can do to stop me from making my art.
What you call manipulating words is just a different perspective, neither of us is breaking any laws, and this is absolutely about morals. Your perspective apparently is that none of thus warrants any moral consideration at all. I disagree.
Of course noones trying to stop you, we are talking about why you use something and I wont, thats it. If you only care about what benefits you personally, of course youll butt heads with people who choose to apply a different methodology for what is good or bad. What was your point in even commenting on here, just fear you'd lose your new tool?
Dude Socrates was convinced that reading and writing would ruin everyone's memory who grew up with it. Whining about somehow handicapping the next generation by making them "too dependent on technology" or whatever and couching it in reasonable-sounding terms is as old as language, and time always makes fools of those who indulge in that sort of masturbatory delusion. You're just jealous we had cooler toys, own it.