As the computer age matures, the business community, driven by advances in digital technology, stretches it’s limbs towards more and more facets of our society that have been traditionally taboo. In the past, the artist and businessman have always been at odds with one another. Certainly, businessmen throughout the ages have been known to exploit artists, in pursuit of the almighty dollar. The starving young artist cliché is universally recognized in every society on our planet as is the true artist’s disdain for the conventions of society manifested by the notably recurring angry young man persona among others; quirky genius, artistic loaner etc. Now, more than ever, machines are making serious strides towards leveling the playing field between the talented artist and the lay person who knows how to push the buttons on a computer key board.
Photography was digitally conquered first with camera phones bringing the art form to the masses. It no longer matters how good your original photos are, with the advancements in editing, the image can be cropped, enlarged, digitally enhanced and photo shopped until it looks as good as if an expert snapped the picture. “Well, at least there’s still hand painting, sketching and drawing.” You say. After all, a computer can’t paint the scene, at a country lake. Wrong! Computers are now able to crank out 1000’s of variations of lake scenes, including some in country folk style, all painted with real artist paints on canvas that is undetectable to the average eye. Some of the down home scenes would make Norman Rockwell blush. And, the public is buying them up.
For some, the question no longer seems to be whether the writing field will one day succumb to this same fate but rather how and when will human created text be made obsolete. The march towards Rome began with the text editors, spell checkers, dictionary and thesaurus software all designed to aid authors, poets and creative scribes with speeding up their craft and help with putting out better works of art. After a few years of globalization, the internet virtually made having a natural knack for researching, practically a mute-point. With a click of a curser, the word smith has at his disposal thousands of articles, blurbs and opinions about almost any subject.
Recent computer software advances allow the lay person to spin the words from other people’s articles and related facts on a topic, sort of like dropping the articles into a blender, blending them up then creating 100to 200 variations out of the few originals. At the time of this report these spun articles usually need some editing and a lot of grammar, punctuation, spelling and language corrections, before they’re ready to be published for the public to read. But, a huge amount of the writers work is done and generally a non-skilled writer versed in basic grammar can spruce the spun articles into an adequate enough of a finished product to publish without having to pay a more expensive accomplished writing pro.
Originally, the invention of the World Wide Web was expected to increase dramatically the demand for good authors, in order to satisfy the needs of an ever increasing number of websites. Due to the fact that the digital world’s very essence revolves around innovation and invention, the digital world community has developed a knack of becoming very self-reliant. Traditionally, when the internet needs something to make it run more efficiently, the internet community doesn’t wait for outsiders to present them with a solution. The internet community goes out and solves their problems. Google and other website directories play an important role in the success of any website or virtually all online endeavors. These directories have always, in the past, given text the most power and upmost role when it comes to deciding the factors of who ranks first in their directories. This status of importance assigned to text and the written word, would deceive one into presuming that the creative writer’s role in the evolution of the age of digital intelligence was assured. But, that was mainly because the directories, up to now, had no way to read and value the contributions graphics, photo images, sketches, audio and video feeds were lending to the equation. Now the technology has been developed allowing pictures, audio and images of all kinds to be evaluated when determining a website’s relevance and thus its rank.
The role of the pro-writer has been further threatened by all the advances being made in digitally automated text writing, which has truly eclipsed everyone’s earlier visions of editing, grammar, spelling correction, dictionary and thesaurus aid which had originally been designed to assist the writer. Now the age of invention is attempting what most of us, a few years ago, would have deemed impossible; taking over the creative writers’ jobs. Can computer software automate creative writing? Will writers, author’s and poets soon become obsolete? There is already mystery, romance and sci-fi plot manufacturing software that claims it can rival the great Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov and yes, even William Shakespeare. How close are we really to automating creative writing? How will this effect man’s interpretation of himself as a whole?
As always, blog us and let us know how you feel about this interesting turn of events? Or anything else that has to do with writing, art or photography.
Photography was digitally conquered first with camera phones bringing the art form to the masses. It no longer matters how good your original photos are, with the advancements in editing, the image can be cropped, enlarged, digitally enhanced and photo shopped until it looks as good as if an expert snapped the picture. “Well, at least there’s still hand painting, sketching and drawing.” You say. After all, a computer can’t paint the scene, at a country lake. Wrong! Computers are now able to crank out 1000’s of variations of lake scenes, including some in country folk style, all painted with real artist paints on canvas that is undetectable to the average eye. Some of the down home scenes would make Norman Rockwell blush. And, the public is buying them up.
For some, the question no longer seems to be whether the writing field will one day succumb to this same fate but rather how and when will human created text be made obsolete. The march towards Rome began with the text editors, spell checkers, dictionary and thesaurus software all designed to aid authors, poets and creative scribes with speeding up their craft and help with putting out better works of art. After a few years of globalization, the internet virtually made having a natural knack for researching, practically a mute-point. With a click of a curser, the word smith has at his disposal thousands of articles, blurbs and opinions about almost any subject.
Recent computer software advances allow the lay person to spin the words from other people’s articles and related facts on a topic, sort of like dropping the articles into a blender, blending them up then creating 100to 200 variations out of the few originals. At the time of this report these spun articles usually need some editing and a lot of grammar, punctuation, spelling and language corrections, before they’re ready to be published for the public to read. But, a huge amount of the writers work is done and generally a non-skilled writer versed in basic grammar can spruce the spun articles into an adequate enough of a finished product to publish without having to pay a more expensive accomplished writing pro.
Originally, the invention of the World Wide Web was expected to increase dramatically the demand for good authors, in order to satisfy the needs of an ever increasing number of websites. Due to the fact that the digital world’s very essence revolves around innovation and invention, the digital world community has developed a knack of becoming very self-reliant. Traditionally, when the internet needs something to make it run more efficiently, the internet community doesn’t wait for outsiders to present them with a solution. The internet community goes out and solves their problems. Google and other website directories play an important role in the success of any website or virtually all online endeavors. These directories have always, in the past, given text the most power and upmost role when it comes to deciding the factors of who ranks first in their directories. This status of importance assigned to text and the written word, would deceive one into presuming that the creative writer’s role in the evolution of the age of digital intelligence was assured. But, that was mainly because the directories, up to now, had no way to read and value the contributions graphics, photo images, sketches, audio and video feeds were lending to the equation. Now the technology has been developed allowing pictures, audio and images of all kinds to be evaluated when determining a website’s relevance and thus its rank.
The role of the pro-writer has been further threatened by all the advances being made in digitally automated text writing, which has truly eclipsed everyone’s earlier visions of editing, grammar, spelling correction, dictionary and thesaurus aid which had originally been designed to assist the writer. Now the age of invention is attempting what most of us, a few years ago, would have deemed impossible; taking over the creative writers’ jobs. Can computer software automate creative writing? Will writers, author’s and poets soon become obsolete? There is already mystery, romance and sci-fi plot manufacturing software that claims it can rival the great Agatha Christie, Isaac Asimov and yes, even William Shakespeare. How close are we really to automating creative writing? How will this effect man’s interpretation of himself as a whole?
As always, blog us and let us know how you feel about this interesting turn of events? Or anything else that has to do with writing, art or photography.
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