The explanation you might be studying this letter from me right this moment is that I used to be bored 30 years in the past.
I used to be bored and curious in regards to the world and so I wound up spending a whole lot of time within the college pc lab, screwing round on Usenet and the early World Vast Net, on the lookout for attention-grabbing issues to learn. Quickly sufficient I wasn’t content material to only learn stuff on the web—I wished to make it. So I discovered HTML and made a fundamental net web page, after which a greater net web page, after which an entire web site filled with net issues. After which I simply saved going from there. That amateurish assortment of net pages led to a journalism internship with the web arm of {a magazine} that paid little consideration to what we geeks have been doing on the internet. And that led to my first actual journalism job, after which one other, and, nicely, ultimately this journalism job.
However none of that will have been doable if I hadn’t been bored and curious. And extra to the purpose: interested by tech.
The college pc lab could seem at first like an unlikely middle for creativity. We have a tendency to consider creativity as occurring extra within the artist’s studio or writers’ workshop. However all through historical past, fairly often our best artistic leaps—and I might argue that the net and its descendants signify one such leap—have been because of advances in know-how.
There are the large simple examples, like images or the printing press, however it’s additionally true of all kinds of artistic innovations that we regularly take without any consideration. Oil paints. Theaters. Musical scores. Electrical synthesizers! Nearly wherever you look within the arts, maybe outdoors of pure vocalization, know-how has performed a task.
However the important thing to inventive achievement has by no means been the know-how itself. It has been the way in which artists have utilized it to precise our humanity. Consider the way in which we discuss in regards to the arts. We frequently praise it with phrases that discuss with our humanity, like soul, coronary heart, and life; we regularly criticize it with descriptors similar to sterile, scientific, or lifeless. (And positive, you may love a sterile piece of artwork, however sometimes that’s as a result of the artist has leaned into sterility to make a degree about humanity!)
All of which is to say I believe that AI will be, can be, and already is a device for artistic expression, however that true artwork will at all times be one thing steered by human creativity, not machines.
I might be incorrect. I hope not.
This problem, which was completely produced by human beings utilizing computer systems, explores creativity and the stress between the artist and know-how. You possibly can see it on our cowl illustrated by Tom Humberstone, and examine it in tales from James O’Donnell, Will Douglas Heaven, Rebecca Ackermann, Michelle Kim, Bryan Gardiner, and Allison Arieff.
But after all, creativity is about extra than simply the humanities. All of human development stems from creativity, as a result of creativity is how we resolve issues. So it was necessary to us to convey you accounts of that as nicely. You’ll discover these in tales from Carrie Klein, Carly Kay, Matthew Ponsford, and Robin George Andrews. (When you’ve ever wished to understand how we would nuke an asteroid, that is the difficulty for you!)
We’re additionally attempting to get somewhat extra artistic ourselves. Over the following few points, you’ll discover some adjustments coming to this journal with the addition of some new common gadgets (see Caiwei Chen’s “3 Things” for one such instance). Amongst these adjustments, we’re planning to solicit and publish extra common reader suggestions and reply questions you’ll have about know-how. We invite you to get artistic and e mail us: [email protected].
As at all times, thanks for studying.
