Tech-human-tech…..human?

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the backlash against the recent iPad Pro commercial from Apple, which is seen as a demonstration of the "capitalist realism" phenomenon described by Mark Fisher. The article explores how technology, particularly AI, is challenging human creativity and the need for art to go beyond the limitations imposed by capitalism.

🙋 Q&A

[01] The Backlash Against the iPad Pro Commercial

1. What is the main criticism of the iPad Pro commercial?

• The commercial is seen as a demonstration of the "trampling of human creativity and flourishing" by a company built on the principle of human creativity.
• The commercial takes the original idea of the computer liberating workers from an office monoculture and reverses it, instead showing a "seismic sameness" and "crushing replication" of creative endeavors.

2. How does the commercial relate to the concept of "capitalist realism"?

• The commercial reinforces how capitalist realism revolves around the idea of human overachievement, progress, and technological development as delineating an ever-repeating sameness because our values are only directed towards consumption and capital.
• The commercial shows how art essentially needs the capitalist structure, and anything that survives in the art world is postured by funds, beneficiaries, and opportunities that come in small, gilded cages, without necessarily challenging the material relationships we depend on in capitalism.

[02] The Opportunity Presented by AI

1. How does the article view the potential impact of AI on creativity?

• The article suggests that AI might present an opportunity to reclaim creativity and imagination, as AI can only reproduce the "cheap, trope-filled, repeated material" that people are tired of.
• The article argues that creating new, imagination-dependent art that goes beyond "capitalist realism" will be the true resistance against AI automation and implementation.

2. What does the article suggest as the way forward for art and creativity?

• The article calls for thinkers, intellectuals, artists, and "movers and shakers" to go "over and beyond the expectations we have of ourselves and of each other" and to think beyond the fixed notions of what art is and what it means to our lives.
• The article suggests that this challenging moment also presents an incredible opportunity to "flip what art has come to be" and to make "human flourishing as distinct and separate from the thin, flimsy, sameness that is reproduced over and over again."