That focus on building better and better tools has continued without any realization of the value of craftsmanship. As a consumer, it is easy to appreciate the quality of doing it right, but it is often hard to justify the higher cost.

It seems what is changing is that individual specialization is becoming more important again. Consumers want exactly certain things and technology is evolving enough to make it highly flexible based on tastes. In other words, high quantity production of the same things is going to change into high volumes of different unique items.

The only way this could really happen is when customized craftsmanship becomes much closer in price to commodity items.

I have a theory that music is going this way. Instead of millions of the same copy of songs, it will instead become in the control of the user to select being able to customize how the music sounds. This is still a ways off, but the main idea is that each customers taste is fairly unique and instead of having exactly the same thing as everyone else, the listener will instead make certain tweaks and choices that will make it more like they want.

Perhaps it is a false dream. Part of music is about sharing a common language of culture. However, it does seem that individual tastes are going to take control and that the first sellers to realize this are going to do very well.

I like how you expressed how the tools change but the artist/creator is still in control.

Thanks,
Jeff

Imagine you are driving a car, going downhill fast and the brakes failed… what would you do? Obviously you won’t be in as much control as you’d like. You had your faith on the technology, and it makes getting from A to B easier, at a price.

If you look at the modern day digital photography, every pixel is made up of sequences of 1s and 0s, from when you captured the image to when you stored it. There is this process of converting analogue signal (light) to digital, but the process of determining what to capture is entirely yours, the artistic impression that no computer would be able to replace – at least not yet, if ever. Then you’d use your image editing software in your digital darkroom to post process the image. This is where you’d take control of the destiny, to make the image fly and pop out of the computer screen. Sure, the image editing software may fail, the video driver may BSOD, etc. In the end, these are just tools to make it easier for you to achieve what you want – as a being with senses and intelligence. Methods change over time as the tools evolve, we had films and chemicals, now we have CCD and software, but the path of light remains the same.

If you are a good craftsman, you are at one with your tools, and you are in control, much like the pilot – the hero from a classic movie, seemingly invincible. Even if the plane had crashed, the hero would have escaped courtesy of a parachute, unless a bitter rival had sabotaged the parachute… now we are heading off in a tangent, fast…

The big challenge as you are suggesting is for us to come up with tools that are simply to operate, and maybe with some level of intelligence.

Will there be a day when the tools take over the world, and life? Possibly, if we let them, hopefully we are too smart for that…

Regards,
Jonathan