people are not machines
I was stressing, the other day, about the overwhelming sense of confusion that befuddles me when I begin to try to get to grips with the social media platforms. I was feeling stupid and inadequate, again, when it dawned on me that what paralyses me is the volume of material that rushes at me through the internet. I can keep up with it for just so long, until a sense of both pointlessness and powerlessness take hold. Spend too long reading about other people’s experiences and thoughts, and I end up with too little time or energy for my own creativity.
If I do actually get own to my own work, I often find that my mind has become a blank, my capacity to think about my own work having been drowned out by everything that I have seen and read and am trying to process; or else other people’s thoughts and ideas crowd my thinking to the point of confusion.
But let me start at the beginning.
Now that my book has been officially launched into the world, I find myself faced with the task of making people aware of it. So, I thought I’d work through Substack as that seems to be the writer’s forum and launchpad. But, my goodness, this is something else, with its system of layer upon layer upon layer. So, I found a Youtube tutorial. It was excellent and very thorough but it left me feeling even more confused and inadequate. Then it came to me: working with computers, the internet and artificial intelligence is forcing me into a straightjacket that has been set by technology, expecting me to think like a machine and work at a rate that is not human.
It’s hard for someone living in the 21st century with a smartphone, 5G and fibre optic connectivity to imagine how a person could survive without all this instant, 24-hour-a-day access to the whole world and everything that goes on all around the globe. But we did and, somehow, the days seemed richer and fuller even though the pace was slower.
I yearn for the days when I had no internet, nor even a mobile phone as was the case during the eight months of my Postgraduate Diploma at the Cyprus College of Art in Lemba, and later, when I lived in the small mountain village of Kallepia, behind Paphos on that beautiful island.
Those were my most creatively productive years. They were the years - not so very long ago, in the early 2000’s - when I had to make a real effort to connect with the wider world; when it was a twenty minute walk to the bus stop before the twenty minute bus ride to the internet cafe; or when I had to drive for twenty minutes down into town to find an internet connection.
I feel privileged to have lived most of my life in an analogue era. It has given me the advantage of being in a position to compare life as it was then with life as it is now in this digital age. Back then, the way we shared things happened on a human scale at a human pace that allowed time for information to settle into our thoughts and become imaginatively integrated.
Now, with all the technology, we seem to expect ourselves to function at a rate and intensity that has been set by machines.. There’s barely enough time to breathe between the posts or emails or What’s App messages that are all clamouring for your attention.
The thing is, I don’t have a mind that functions like a machine, processing and connecting trillions of bytes of data in a nanosecond in a mechanical fashion. It’s true that my brain does process massive volumes of information surprisingly fast, but it is information that makes sense to a sensory being: the quality of the light, the feel of the air on my skin, the effect of the temperature on my temperament, the way a person is listening to me with folded arms or looking at me with an open expression. And my mind draws parallels between present and past experiences that allow me to make informed decisions. So, I know that a flame will be hot when I hold my finger in it or that, if I use a particular tone of voice, it is likely to elicit a negative or positive reaction in my listener. I can also think about the possible consequences of any particular course of action. If my country attacks another without provocation, there are likely to be horrible repercussions. At the same time, I can also consider all the nuances that might have led to that attack.
At the end of the day, what is going to resolve the problems posed by human foibles will not be a computer’s analysis nor the intervention of a flawed AI agent. The resolution to humanly created messes is always going to have to come from human beings, because only human beings actually have ALL the nuanced information needed to be able to truly negotiate through humanly created chaos.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the value of computers and the internet. I was probably one of the earliest to enjoy the benefits when I got a homeopathy software programme in around 1991. It helped me work out the best remedy for my patients and led me to some unexpected and useful solutions because it was able to process the input more efficiently than I could. But, at the end of the day, it was I who had to make the final decision based on all kinds of other information that no machine would ever pick up on: that might be a particular phrase that a patient used or something about the way they walked into the room. The computer was my instrument, not my master.
And that, I think is where I have a problem with the way things are going. The emphasis now is on speed and efficiency at all costs. And because the computer’s capacity to process information is so good, everything becomes more and more complicated and increasingly beyond human capacity. Small wonder that I am baffled when I try to understand how to make Substack work well for me - the idea may have been human, but its evolution has become mechanised to the point where there is actually too much information to deal with unless you make a study of it.
But that is not my passion. My passion lies in creating real things. Real paintings and real books. Objects that people can pick up and handle and feel, that they can smell and immerse themselves in in visual ways that gives them a real sense of the physical toil that went into the making of them.
The internet and computers are stealing my time. The implications for me are that I am beginning to feel as though the world is rushing on ahead without me. Well, that’s fine. I am, after all, at the latter end of my lifetime so it is less important for me, even though I would like to spread the word about my new book more widely.
But I do wonder about the implications for the younger generations coming up after me. There are so many things to consider. When machines can function at super-human intensity and pace, how can people pit themselves against them? I am old enough to be able to think this through and realise that it is not so much I who is the fool for being incapable of mastering the mechanics of a machine. The fault lies in the expectation that people should behave like machines. I am old enough and comfortable enough in my own skin to know my own limitations and to not have a nervous breakdown about the fact that I can’t keep up with machines. Besides, I know how life can be lived at a slower pace.
But younger people do not have anything to measure this fast-paced way of thinking against. What’s more, they are now comparing their own admirable human efforts, complete with flaws, against the ‘perfectionism’ of machine-made solutions. It is not humane for people to pit themselves against computer systems that generate interwoven layers of information in complicated formats that the human brain is not really capable of processing with the efficiency of a computer. It’s a life that demands too much of human beings and it is small wonder that young people are cracking under the strain.
There are other implications too. One of the most significant, in my mind, is the fact that a computerised world is very much a male-dominated world. Most of the men that I have known in my life like to find solutions and get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. They get impatient when I, as a woman, might deliberate and work in a more organic way. Even more worrying is the fact that there is ever more evidence of male-favouring gender bias everywhere in the digital realm. A recent study revealed that paid AI agents that were given female names were awarded 10% less than AI agents with male names doing exactly the same work. This is a real concern to me, when women are already struggling to retain any kind of parity. The more reliance we place on computerised systems, the greater this effect is going to become, unless something is done - and it needs to be done fast.
I am not clever enough nor influential enough to make much of a difference on the big stage. Perhaps, hopefully, by voicing my concerns, by reminding people that they are human, that machines should be their instruments and not their masters, I can encourage people to rely more on their own humanity, flaws and all, and trust themselves better.
Honouring your own creativity is one way to do that. This has always been a challenge that even actively creative people have to face up to, almost daily. In my book, The Creative Spiral, I guide people through their creative process, addressing the trials and tribulations of seeing a project through from start to finish, but using the wisdom of the Tarot as a guiding voice. The book is packed with inspiration and practical exercises to help creative people in any metier to work through obstacles and jump over their own shadow.
You can BUY NOW from these sites.
Alternatively, you can buy a signed copy directly from me here: marylynne.stadler@gmail.com
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