Issue 42 Why I’m Optimistic
500 Words is a publication of FutureX.Studio.
The newsletter has turned into an essay this week. Let's get to it.
Anyone who creates public work today is in a race for human attention. You may not have asked to be in the race, or even know that you’re running in it; but you are. Technology has become the nervous system for everything. When you’re building attention for what you do, you have to use tech. Exceptions include setting up a lemonade stand on a street corner in a small town in Iowa or selling baked goods in your kid’s school parking lot. Aside from those use cases, you will somehow need to go online.
Right now, online = chaos. Platforms have become corroded, rotting like batteries left in an old toy. The investors who backed those platforms are desperate to monetize them, resulting in enshittification, a hollowing out and misdirection of their original purpose. [1] It’s easy to look at the online = chaos equation and let it take you to a dead end, but in chaos there is opportunity. [2]
When writing about online chaos, there are many depressing topics to choose from, but I’d like to stick to one depressing topic. Will artificial intelligence harm or help human creativity?