hybrid consumption; generative media
Instead of deleting and/or apologizing for the short length and lack of editing and energy that went into my blog post last Sunday (2024 me would definitely have taken it down), I’m publicly reclaiming it as an example of my honest commitment to a Sunday learning and writing ritual and reflection practice.
I re-read Neel Nanda’s weekly review process and realized, tactically, I’ve spent about three hours each Sunday since I restarted this blog furiously collecting papers, news, and thoughts from that past week and throwing them all together into a hodgepodge post, usually racing against the clock before dinner plans. While time-effective and technically true to the Sunday ritual, this doesn’t exactly create the environment I need to produce work I can be proud of; thus my “right lesson to take from [last week’s blog post]” was to start drafting my blog posts earlier in the week (in smaller, more frequent chunks) so my Sundays are more relaxed and provide space for higher-quality writing. So I wrote the first part of this post on Saturday — progress, if I may say so myself ;)
In my last post I mentioned “heightened collective social desire and nostalgia for organic experiences and technologies in the way we were accustomed to before the current wave of online-first assistants, chatbots, large-scale automation” — there’s more to this I didn’t have the time to write out. Here it is!
hybrid consumption
Well-curated record shops and dive bars still exist as reliable methods to discover local bands and new music, but the next generation’s nostalgia will be for Spotify, YouTube, and (dare I say it) TikTok algorithmic discovery and online communities. This was happening long before COVID as the internet was one of the only ways for people to get and stay connected across the world. I’ve never been able (and don’t intend) to fully grasp how many realities are represented on the internet, and as a consumer take a hybrid approach myself to curating the online content I am served. I don’t use Instagram or TikTok; I do use Twitter, YouTube, and Substack. The users I engage with on Twitter are primarily people in tech in their 20s-40s in urban centers; I find my musical tastes underrepresented on my Twitter feed but shockingly well-understood by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. I keep thinking about this:
Lazyrecords is in alpha (adding friends should work though) and already offers a vinyl-themed discovery platform, social media feed, and playlist (self-curation) functionality. Technology is fundamentally cyclical; I’ve written about this before; I know “this time feels different” is such a cliché but something genuinely feels different about these niche-to-mainstream shifts in taste and content consumption. Doji and Obsidian are also products I’ve discovered through Twitter, both marketed at people that want to up-level and outsource their personal style and productivity to a machine, and both developing cult followings. Apple has managed to stay in style because it is the style (although the critical reception of Apple Intelligence, Genmoji & Events might signal the start of a perception shift that will take Apple in the direction of Microsoft — still functional but less “in with the trends”).
I find the global shift towards remote work fascinating because it correlates, at least anecdotally, with increased demand for self-reflection (e.g. productivity, tracking) and in-person community-building in the extra hours per day no longer spent on commutes or sitting in offices. For example, Toronto-based internetVin is building Futureland (“software to track progress on any aspect of your life”) and New Systems (“an experimental project aimed at improving Toronto’s systems related to creativity, innovation, and culture”) including New Stadium, a “new home for art, technology, startups, and urban innovation… in the West End of Toronto”. Within my demographic of “people in tech in their 20s-40s”, I see a lot of “lifestyle optimization”; go for a quick try-on and fitting at a Warby Parker physical store and then have prescription glasses shipped directly to your doorstep; place an UberEats order while you’re still in your Uber such that it arrives when you do; pay for meal prep services that decide what you’re eating so you don’t have to.
If we formulate this as an optimization problem with a few variables and constraints, lifestyle optimization is usually not as simple as “just save time”; there are axes for how effective in-person vs. online experiences are and unquantifiable effects like how they can make you feel (e.g. Trader Joe’s is becoming a stressful experience in over-crowded city centers, bodegas and delis are an accessible third place for many people, and every clothes & furniture retailer is releasing software to help you “virtually try-on / see” without going into a store).
I visualize the consumer landscape today as relatively niche circles of products and services initially catering to certain demographics that can expand by appealing to universal shared human needs such as community, nutrition, and productivity. Apple, Microsoft and Google are beginning to compete more seriously in the “one provider for all services” space, Meta falls behind in hardware but has an advantage in social, Amazon continues to provide grocery, pharmacy and fashion. A single megaconglomerate buying and beating out the competition feels a little too dystopian for me and global regulations will not make this an easy path, but stranger things have happened in the last few years. I continue to protest this by supporting small cafes, corner stores, and record shops, and friends keep telling me that megacorps and the consumer behavior popularized by Walmart and Costco are uniquely American and capitalistic, but [edit: it’s Sunday and I haven’t finished this thought — will have to circle back next week ;) ]
generative media
Gemini tells me what to write in my emails before I’ve even started typing, designers have Figma AI and Photoshop AI, programmers have a number of well-established coding assistants to choose from, chatbots / agents are being developed for literally every vertical possible. These are all becoming normalized and incorporated into standard workflows in these industries.
Music and art continue to be relative outliers in automation & assistance. Music is definitely being generated and pulling in profit but the music-making industry has always had a higher barrier to entry, and there are simply far fewer professional musicians than professional designers and programmers. Music creation tools like GarageBand do offer AIs for music generation and noise reduction and DeepMind quietly released a suite of generative AI tools for music creation last year.
Tero Parviainen has a good presentation covering the history of generative music, including Brian Eno’s “self-generating musical systems” in the 1990s that were programmed to change with each listen.
There is mainstream music and art and then there are basement DJs and local artists in every city; even though making music and art is on average not nearly as lucrative as programming and design, I think there’s enough of a collected “cottage industry” across musicians and artists (not to mention the globalized online influencer and localized education and hobby industry) to warrant greater investment in tools for these creators. The challenge will not be whether there will be enough demand to use and pay for these tools, but actually in educating potential users on how to use the tools and what they can gain from them.
In fact, the value of these tools may lie explicitly outside of the direct creative process for the media industry. I see a lot of value in improving agents for marketing (e.g. automated suggestions to help smaller artists boost their online presence), logistics of making good art (e.g. sourcing and purchasing equipment), and components that many artists may see as a hindrance to their creative process or otherwise need to outsource (e.g. music mastering). Players that emerge in this space will likely need to find a way to cater to both professionals and hobbyists in the same way Ableton and Native Instruments do to stay business-viable; to tie out this point with the previous section, it will involve collaboration with influencers and taste-makers that hold power to shift societal perception and adoption of this next generation of instruments.