When is enough really enough?

It's not just me

Is it just me? Is it my age? (53) I have been using technology to produce graphic design for 30 years. (I actually began my career working by hand at a drafting table and eventually sat in front of a Mac and never loved back.) For those who remember the early days of digital publishing, I started working with Photoshop 2. I just missed version 1 by a little bit. But I have basically seen Adobe’s flagship application go from your best friend as far as image manipulation was concerned to a behemoth that is, in my opinion, bloated and far too complicated and interconnected with things like the cloud and now “generative AI”. Due to illness, I have been away from all my tools, like Photoshop, Freehand (for those who remember it), Illustrator, Quark, and InDesign, for about six years. I’ve been unemployed for several years, and as a result, I have fallen behind with the evolution of these applications. I realize that six years is a long time in terms of technology, but one would think that with the foundation and years of experience I had, I could more or less pick up where I left off. Think again. I’m a dinosaur. Of all the applications I named above, Photoshop is the only one I continue to use almost every day. I’m using Photoshop 2023 (I think, who knows anymore), and I pay a monthly subscription fee, which irks me quite a bit. I much preferred buying the software outright and owning it. But, such are the times.

I’m struggling with technology overall. I just can’t keep up with the pace anymore. The millennials seem to thrive in this brave new world, but I wonder how this great social experiment will turn out for them in ten or twenty years. There is a massive misplaced sense of entitlement among these young folks. Who’s to blame for this? The milieu in which they were raised, where every action gets rewarded whether it deserves it or not really has not helped. I think we the parents have to share part of the responsibility. We let this happen and played a part in it.

Stolen iPhone

Yesterday, I lost my iPhone, only to have it stolen before I could go back to where I knew it had fallen out of my pocket. I had a 1-hour appointment, and when I came back and saw that my phone was not in my car, my mind went into rewind and replay mode, and that is when I realized how I had lost the phone—I had sat down at a picnic table to get a pebble out of my shoe, and it fell out of my pocket and onto the grass, which is why I never heard it fall. This is my first time losing an iPhone. My life was basically hijacked because we have all become so dependent on these gadgets. I drove home and opened up the “Find My” app to see if I could locate it. Boom. There it was, moving around near the intersection of Queen Mary and Décarie. I watched, helpless, as the person who stole it went about his or her business from shop to shop and eventually ended up at their residence, the 3rd building on the west side of Victoria Ave. I tried having people I know call my phone, hoping that someone would answer, but obviously, it was stolen, so no one was going to answer the phone. My wife suggested I call 911 and/or the police. I did so. 911 explained that the “Find My” app, although accurate, cannot be used as evidence by a police officer to go and knock on the door of the building that the app says your iPhone is in. It makes you wonder what use the app has. It can only help you find your iPhone if it has remained “lost” and is just waiting for you to come back and pick it up. But if someone walks away with it, even though you know exactly where they are, you can’t get it. Needless to say, I had no choice but to go to Videotron and purchase a new phone, and then restore all the data from the cloud. That is one thing the cloud is fantastic for. At least my data was not lost. That would have been a catastrophe. Although I’m about to tear into technology in the following paragraphs, it still has its moments.

Mastering the Art of Conversation

Things have just gone too far, in my opinion. I chose to read an article titled “Mastering the Art of Conversation – How Copywriters Can Stand Out in an AI-Driven World.” The article is very well written and goes into great detail about how one can use the available technologies to help improve one’s writing. As I read the post, I noticed how many apps she had named I had never heard of. But more importantly, the number of apps she recommended blew my mind. I decided I would share them all with you here. Where you see a list of 2 or more, the author suggests we should use one or the other of these recommendations. So, copywriters whose livelihood has been jeopardized by AI are supposed to lean on all these tools to ensure the content is relevant and appeals to the intended audience. So here they are:

• ChatGPT
  
• TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads
  
• Grammarly
  
• HubSpot’s Make My Persona or Xtensio
  
• SEMrush, Ahrefs, and BuzzSumo
  
• Audiense, Affinio, or IBM Watson Analytics
  
• Nielsen or YouGov 
  
• Google Optimise and Optimizely
  
• IBM Watson Tone Analyzer or Linguix
  
• Miro or Trello 
  
• Case Study Buddy, Xtensio, or Casely
  
• Hemingway Editor, Readable, or Yoast SEO

Is she serious? Who has time for all of this? Of this entire list, I use ONE app—Grammarly. It’s all I need. I can’t imagine having to deploy all (or even just a few) of these apps to ensure that the content is on point and targets the audience. The author also uses lots of filler trendy keywords throughout the article, like:

• conversational copywriting
  
• conversational marketing
  
• conversational tone 
  
• conversational copy
  
• conversational chatbots
  
• conversational assistance
  
• relatable content
  
• resonates
  
• influencers
  
• meaningful engagement
  
• building rapport
  
• forge
  
• memorable and persuasive
  
• encourages their audience to engage in conversation

Really? There are 6 facets to being “conversational”? If content is now so infinitely tailored, it all sounds so manipulative to me. As consumers, it seems we are now expected to engage and converse with the companies vying for our dollars. The marketing is now two-way. The consumer is almost as much a part of the marketing as those who have crafted it. Where is this leading us? We are like sheep.

Tech overload

I don’t watch TikTok, and I don’t watch influencers. But from what I’ve seen, it just seems all so concocted to me. We have become tethered to our phones, constantly having our attention drawn elsewhere than the present moment. I painfully watched the sales clerk at Videotron struggle as he navigated his operating system to get me set up with a new phone and a new contract. I must have been there for 2 hours when all was said and done. And by the time we were done, the young man was fried. He even brought it up, saying that he could not manage his time how he would like. Of course, he can’t! There is far too much for the human brain to assimilate and actively respond to on an almost constant basis in today’s world. He made a gesture with his hands by his head as if to mimic his head exploding. This is not normal. We were never meant to be mentally so distracted and preoccupied. I watched another young man at the Apple store zip around his iPad screen at a pace I could not keep up with. He was navigating it faster than it could keep up with him! I was there for 5 minutes tops, and my head was spinning; this poor kid has to be inputting data into his iPad all day long to schedule appointments with the Genius bar. I watched as he whizzed around my new iPhone (which, by the way, no longer has a fingerprint button; it uses face recognition technology to unlock it), and I could not keep up. He was anticipating the next screen and the next and the next and the next and never pressed the wrong button. He got my Apple ID working in a matter of a few seconds. Again, this kind of mental workout is not normal. We are fundamentally, hunter-gatherers. I realize that we are capable of much more than just those two tasks, but we certainly are not supposed to be living virtually day in and day out and be constantly “engaged” as we do now. We are also not supposed to sit all day long and stare at a big rectangular bright light—our screens. 

Artificial Intelligence, a disaster

I see AI completely replacing the graphic designer and photographer tasks in ways that are impossible to comprehend. How can an algorithm produce a completely photo-realistic photo in a matter of 15 to 30 seconds just by entering a phrase like “iguana in the desert” or “mountainscape with a river flowing through” and produce the results you see below? These images were produced in seconds, for free, and are free from copyright. ChatGPT can also produce complete plotlines, book outlines, entire books, blog posts, recipes, emails to your boss or colleague, meeting notes on any subject, etc. in a matter of a few seconds. As most of us have heard, AI is also cornering the music market. AI can clone an artist's voice virtually perfectly. I recently heard that Spotify is using AI to produce entire songs so they can keep the royalties for themselves. (For more on music and AI, check out this great interview with Rick Beato on YouTube, or read this article that references the "Elvis Act".) How can we make sense of this? How do we ethically integrate this into our lives? What does this mean for artists, photographers and musicians? In my opinion, we are headed down a very dangerous path, one that you can’t turn back on. We’ve opened Pandora’s box. The author of the blog post I referred to earlier is “pitching” the idea that we need to embrace all these new technologies and ways of interacting with consumers rather than resist them. I don’t know what my audience thinks, but I know that I’m surrendering. I hope I have not come across as a curmudgeon! I’m just too old, too tired, and fundamentally not interested in trying to adapt to this new way of life. Let me know what you think. I’d really like to hear from you.

Streaming services—there are too many

I’m not finished! What about all these new streaming services for watching shows? What is going on? Remember when it was just TV? There used to be 3 major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, that basically broadcast all the TV shows available. There were smaller ones of course, like PBS, CTV, and CBC here in Canada. And with that, we had all the content we needed. Sure, you could add HBO back in the day, but that was pretty much it. We didn’t have Netflix, Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, Prime Video, Disney, Apple TV, Sling TV, Fubo, Tubi, YouTube TV, Philo, Pluto TV, Roku channel, Amazon Freevee, Crackle, DirecTV Stream, HBO Max, Xumo, CuriosityStream, Redbox, Disney Plus, Max, Sling Freestream, Show less, MGM+, and CBC Gem! We also had far fewer cases of ADHD and Anxiety disorders among young kids.

Depending on the show you want to watch, you may be forced to subscribe to several of these services, ranging anywhere from $9.99/m to $15/m approximately. Some bundled Apple services cost $20/m. And this, of course, is on top of regular television services, like Helix or Bell Fibe here in Québec, which costs you roughly $100/m. You can easily be looking at spending upwards of $200/m if you have favourite shows strewn across several platforms. This is insane. And it’s confusing too. I just don’t know how we are all supposed to adhere to this new content-viewing universe. I’ll repeat my opening statement—is it just me? Is it my age? I don’t think it’s just me, but I think my age does play into it considerably. 

Right or Wrong?

I think it’s wrong for people in certain fields, like graphic design, to be forced to keep learning more or less their entire career while there are trades that teach you everything you need to know, like plumbing, and have had little to no changes for decades. Over the past 30 years, not much has changed for plumbers or electricians, but everything has changed for designers. I guess it’s just a reality that I have to accept. I don’t want to come across as a disgruntled designer, but I do think that society as a whole is really struggling with all of these advancements. 

I remember when YouTube was first launched. I went to the site to check it out and was appalled at some comments people had left. I spoke to my buddies in my band and basically said that I had no interest in watching videos if people were going to be so rude and crass. I still don’t watch much on YouTube except for tutorials.

I think my rant is over! Hopefully, my opinion on all these matters will be well received. Thanks for reading and commenting. I look forward to hearing from you. I'll leave you with "Video Killed The Radio Star" seeing as it draws a parallel with how technology is evolving today and leaving something behind, us humans.