Creativity

I Will Not Give Up My Mistakes For Robots

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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 often discuss the impact of AI on creativity with Serdar. We’re both authors and in technical areas, so it’s something both personal and intimate for us. You can probably guess neither of us is happy about it – and being authors we like to discuss that often at length.

Serdar recently did a blog post on LLMs and intelligence, and it is quite worth reading like all of his work. But one thing he discusses in the post, and in our own discussions, is how LLMs use treats writing as a product. That fascinates me, because there are people who want to do creative work but don’t want to be creative – they want to push a button and get a product.

I could go on about the psychology of this – and indeed I probably will in time – but these are people who want results without making mistakes of their own. You can’t decouple creativity from mistakes, false starts, false ends, and sometimes just producing utter crap. Those aren’t problems, that’s part of creativity.

Creativity is not a linear, mechanical process, as much as we sometimes want it to be. Creativity snags on edges, creativity takes strange detours that somehow get you to the destination more effectively. I’m sure you’ve seen human made creative works that were created just a bit too mechanically, and there’s something wrong when you partake of them, a kind of metallic mental taste in your mind.

Part of this creative work is screwing up sometimes in epic ways. Actually, I’m sure if you’re any kind of creative, you’ve made some awful stuff, and trust me so have I.

Anyone who writes, draws, cosplays, and acts has a mental list of things they regret. They went out there, did the thing, published the book, went to the audition and completely and utterly whiffed it. Creativity in its unpredictable glory gives us infinite things to make and infinite ways to humiliate ourselves.

Creativity requires mistakes, and sometimes you don’t know if you’re making one until you’re done with a work. To complete a work even if it turns out to be lousy is to fully explore your ideas. So often we have to get something out if only, upon completion, to finally understand why it was a stupid idea. That’s fine, that’s what creativity is all about.

Even the journey is necessary. To wrestle with a concept. To implement it. To get it out. Every terrible novel or lousy cosplay or mediocre piece of art is a testimony that someone could get it done and learned on the way. They might not be thrilled with the result of the journey, but at least they made it.

I think this is why some trashy works and B or Z grade films fascinate me. The flawed nature reveals the author’s dreams, ambitions, and efforts. Bad as they are, there’s also a drive there you feel and relate to.

The creativity-as-product takes away all these passionate, painful, wonderful mistakes. It takes away the informative disasters and the joy of hardheaded persistence against your own good senses. It is just pushing a button and at best you become a better button-pusher, but you don’t become more creative.

To make creative work, even if you make something awful, you need to create. You need to be that author or artist. You need to grow from the experience, even if it’s painful. It is to be, i na way, a better person for what you did – even if the better person might be the one who admits “my writing is crap” and move on to something else.

Just pushing a button and pummeling the resulting writing product into a marketing-shaped form isn’t creative. No matter how well the work sells, you run the terrible chance you won’t screw up as much as you need to.

Steven Savage

Only Dreams Of Wealth Are Permitted

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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 saw this reddit post making the round, and I felt it. Kindly allow me less of a rant about leadership and projects and creativity to some feelings. Ok there WILL be some Project Management.

There are many things wrong in the world, and I pretty much rant on a lot of them (then usually mention Project Management). But I FELT this post hard. There’s lots of grifts and scams in America today, but there’s not nearly enough effort into fixing things.

I grew up in a place that still had depression era public works. I currently work in medical technology which is about solving problems as otherwise people die. It’s hard to imagine not solving problems, but then again that’s kind of the problem.

I think a lot of people just can’t imagine a better world and the way to get there.

In Project Management terms, we don’t have a charter to deliver or a plan to get there because we can’t dream it up. We are surrounded by wonders of technology and architecture, of history and providence, but we are impoverished in imagination. We can’t see a way forward and maybe not even a place to go.

Sure our media sells us “good” futures in the form of endless Star Trek series and assorted other stories – but these are also marketed to us, to appeal. The media will also sell us bad futures about dystopias and apocalypses, but those are also marketed. What’s not there is a road to the good future or a road out of or to avoid the bad future. We’re sold images without much solidity because it’s all about selling.

It’s all Product.

Our politics is the same way – and caught in the same loop. I dug up some satire from the early 80s and I’m seeing the same things being mocked four decades ago. We’re still doing the same bigotries and suicidal ideas and still satirizing them. It’s just like media, but let’s be honest, politics became theater decades ago as well, and everyone’s still repeating the bullshit. Real, big dreams seem to not be there, just the same nightmares and empty promises.

So what escape do you have? Well our media soaked culture will sell you grifts and personalities, so why not try to be like them? Invest in Crypto, become an influencer, whatever some rich figure currently bragging on your monitor is doing. We can’t imagine a better future, but folks can sell you the image of a richer you.

Being richer is the one thing you’re still able to imagine. Which is hilarious considering the small likelihood we will be rich.

I think we get caught in repetitive cultural cycles due to our media-political culture. T Here’s nothing to imagine, it’s all the same, and there’s just the promise of grift. It’s just we’ve gotten to the point where it’s hard to imagine hard-nosed, hands-on work to improve the world because it’s all images. It’s Society of the Spectacle, but the Spectacle includes people online screaming about mood-altering chemicals sprayed during wildfires that occurred due to global warming.

And of course me, the Project Manager, is constantly screaming inside just like all my fellows. What are the goals? The plan? Come on people!

Even though I can imagine a better future and a way to get there, it can be frustrating. So let me close by sharing a few things that helped me.

  • I’ve been just reading more. This leads to thinking. What I do watch more and more of modern nonfiction are specialists, experienced people, and indie creators and news.
  • I’ve been reading older texts on philosophy and history, seeing the world differently. It helps you imagine – and helps you see what’s been the same for centuries or aeons.
  • Getting hands-on locally with disaster prep. Just taking a CERT course was an incredible eye-opener to how the world works. Studying disaster prep made me appreciate work in California that goes back over a century in flood prevention.
  • Actual activism of any kind. Donate. Phone call. Do the disaster prep I mentioned. Get involved in anything that gets results. It’ll help you imagine what you want and how to get there.
  • Read up on other cultures and times. There’s a wealth of knowledge of how people have lived and imagined over the years. Even if some things seem out of date or antiquated, there’s plenty of insight. Seeing how people lived differently helps you imagine living differently.
  • Select your media. I’m not saying avoid trash – just know when you select your junk food. Trust me, I can’t judge, a friend has got me watching TWO Isekai deconstruction comedies.
  • Work with people. Talking to others can get you out of your imagination bubble.
  • WORK to imagine better. Write it down. Do a story. Let yourself practice dreaming.

No one is going to sell us a better future or a way forward. We have to make it together.

Steven Savage

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