The explanation you’re 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 number of time within the college pc lab, screwing round on Usenet and the early World Extensive Net, in search of fascinating 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 primary net web page, after which a greater net web page, after which a complete 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 net arm of {a magazine} that paid little consideration to what we geeks had been doing on the internet. And that led to my first actual journalism job, after which one other, and, nicely, finally this journalism job.
However none of that may have been potential if I hadn’t been bored and curious. And extra to the purpose: interested in tech.
The college pc lab could appear at first like an unlikely heart for creativity. We have a tendency to think about creativity as taking place extra within the artist’s studio or writers’ workshop. However all through historical past, fairly often our biggest inventive leaps—and I might argue that the online and its descendants signify one such leap—have been because of advances in know-how.
There are the massive simple examples, like images or the printing press, nevertheless it’s additionally true of all types of inventive innovations that we frequently take with no consideration. Oil paints. Theaters. Musical scores. Electrical synthesizers! Nearly anyplace you look within the arts, maybe exterior 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 best way artists have utilized it to specific our humanity. Consider the best way we discuss in regards to the arts. We frequently praise it with phrases that check with our humanity, like soul, coronary heart, and life; we frequently criticize it with descriptors equivalent to sterile, medical, or lifeless. (And certain, you possibly can love a sterile piece of artwork, however usually that’s as a result of the artist has leaned into sterility to make some extent about humanity!)
All of which is to say I feel that AI might be, will likely be, and already is a software for inventive expression, however that true artwork will at all times be one thing steered by human creativity, not machines.
I might be fallacious. I hope not.
This problem, which was solely produced by human beings utilizing computer systems, explores creativity and the strain 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 remedy issues. So it was vital to us to deliver you accounts of that as nicely. You’ll discover these in tales from Carrie Klein, Carly Kay, Matthew Ponsford, and Robin George Andrews. (In case you’ve ever wished to understand how we would nuke an asteroid, that is the difficulty for you!)
We’re additionally making an attempt to get a little bit extra inventive ourselves. Over the following few points, you’ll discover some modifications coming to this journal with the addition of some new common objects (see Caiwei Chen’s “3 Things” for one such instance). Amongst these modifications, we’re planning to solicit and publish extra common reader suggestions and reply questions you will have about know-how. We invite you to get inventive and electronic mail us: newsroom@technologyreview.com.
As at all times, thanks for studying.
