8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Tag: algorithms

Chapter List

  • Poets Processing

    Daily writing has a way of losing focus. I dive down metaphorical rabbit holes all the time, and yet I’d be the first to tell you that such things are not just okay, but a kind of magical side effect of creativity. A perk.

    As I collect topics and ideas to fill these pages I have gone down one particular hole multiple times and at times have risked turning this blog into something else entirely.

    The bad part of that is losing focus on something I care about—creative pursuits—and is not (strategically speaking) the direction in which I want to take this project.

    The good part of that diversion is I that I do in fact have the time, resources and inclination to pursue those topics in another place.

    All this is to say that as of this month I’m going to be (trying to)maintain two daily blogs—yikes!—and write on two different topics.

    Here, on “Eight Clicks from Nowhere” I will keep on track with my ramblings related to creative motivation, insights into building skills and habits to make stuff, and write about the interesting (at least to me) hobbies that clutter my life.

    Over on “on poets & processors” I am building a new site around the topic of the dehumanization of art and creativity by algorithmic competition: how AI is invading the creative spaces and simultaneously stealing work while probably, maybe, sort of creating interesting new opportunities… and what’s the deal?

    Advance warning: there may be some cross posting, but as they veer off down different paths I suspect it may turn into more of a cross-blog conversation.  Or, whatever: what do I know, I’m not a machine here.

    Check it out.

  • Fail Bots

    The algorithm does not care if you succeed and in fact may want you to fail.

    Have you heard of the algorithm? We toss that term around like it has a deep history and long roots into our culture, and in some ways it might, but the algorithm itself is our newest creative barrier and one designed for the very purpose of siphoning the worth from everything you make.

    In their unchecked wisdom, the architects of our modern global communications platforms realized two things. First, they understood that the firehose of random creativity that emerged from millions of people posting to the internet was more enchanting when churned into curated maelstrom. Second, they learned there was money to be made from turning the creative efforts of those millions into a commodity labeled with the soulless term “content.” To engineer this transformation of art into corporate value they birthed complex mechanizations to sort and shuffle, scrape, churn, prune, and cultivate, all if it extracting the worth of human creativity into a storm of placid, flaccid… ugh… content.

    If you participate, that is if you make “content” then you will feed the algorithm and for a while you will feel as if you have achieved success. But rather than nurture the soul as art and creativity is meant to do, you will only enslave yourself to that mechanism.

    On the other hand, if you make things that do not fit neatly into the digital slots and grooves of the algorithm, that system will almost certainly work against you. It wants you to fail because you give it no literal value.

    But know this: you give the rest of us that value instead.

    The algorithm wants you to fail, so prove it wrong.