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I don’t know I truly don’t. I don’t have any answers. Because you might be right. Especially for commercial art. Just the same as climate change, I don’t see an
by gwoolhurme 4y ago
I don’t know I truly don’t. I don’t have any answers. Because you might be right. Especially for commercial art. Just the same as climate change, I don’t see any solution. It all gets worse and worse for everyone involved, except a select few. The outcome I would assume, would be that the livelihoods of artists are protected, or at the minimum that if they do not want a program to mimic a clearly unique style, that it doesn’t. That might just be pie in the sky dreaming at this point though. All desk work is going to disappear, everyone will be displaced.
- Kalium 4y agoWhat is your goal here? What outcome do you want to achieve? It sounds like your primary goal is financial, with rights being a means to an end. Is that accurate?
- gwoolhurme 4y agoThat might be accurate, however it is not just financial right? I would say that is the bulk of it though. To the self-worth side of it, someone posted below, but humans tie self worth to their profession as well right? That is probably something wrong with society as a whole but that is how people work as of this day. In the case of an artist (I am not an artist just to be clear), they've worked decades to hone this craft correct? To have it scraped and used to a level that only a machine can do. Something about that feels wrong? I get that is an emotional appeal. Which is probably why I will never write policy.
- Kalium 4y agoOnce upon a time, when thread and cloth was all made by hand, the equivalent of a t-shirt cost the equivalent of $5000 in labor alone. Today we consider that absurd. The spinners, fullers, and weavers of the time considered it their livelihoods, the way they fed their children, the way they achieved economic and social status, and thus just and right. Today we're far enough removed from those days to consider their perspective transparently self-serving for all that their distress must have been immensely real and sincere. We use mechanical looms now. We broadly agree that people have better things to do with their lives than spin rough thread, better ways to contribute to society. So I get why it feels wrong to many, but I also have no trouble placing it and those objections in a context of a recurring historical pattern.
- gwoolhurme 4y agoYou are ultimately right. Progress cannot be stopped, won't be stopped. My only wish is to help mitigate the pain. You brought up t-shirt manufacturing. That was true and while the luddites ultimately lost, I thought maybe a lesson society could have gained from that was some level of compassion to who it is happening to. Because it's not just artists this time, it's not just the factory, this time it is every profession that can be done at a computer. I am a programmer and I feel like I see the writing on the wall for us too. Soon we will be the Luddite who is scorned, but yes, society and economics don't owe me or any artist a damn thing. This is an emotional post, but reading these stories I feel like the only answer I have come up with is to just allow it to up-end all of our worth, security, and jobs. If you are a 50 year old corporate artist, hopefully something help you on your way to a new profession. It's the same way why I feel like society doesn't do nearly enough for coal miners either. Coal is a nasty product, yes, and a coal miner should clearly not "just learn to code". I don't know what should be done, but something of compassion clearly needed to have been done ethically.
- Kalium 4y agoWhy don't you say what you want? You don't want compassion. Compassion is an internal emotional experience. I am having compassion right now for the hypothetical hordes of unemployed former commercial artists as I consign them to history's scrapheap. Compassion is a story we tell to tug at the heartstrings of ourselves and others. Compassion is not a policy. Compassion is not a plan. Compassion isn't what coal miners or Luddites wanted. What they wanted was to freeze in amber a way of life that served them well and could be passed on. That's both a reasonable thing to want and a very unreasonable thing to expect. Or maybe you don't know what you want as an outcome. That's OK. It might be worth thinking about that. For my own part, I'm not too worried about programmers quite yet. After all, programming is the easy part. All you have to do is get the business to decide precisely what they want and communicate it clearly. For the future, well, adaptability and rapid learning have been the hallmarks of every good engineer I've ever worked with. We're a flexible lot.
- gwoolhurme 4y ago