Now that I have had my Theater Ideas Substack restored to my possession (after I had stopped writing on it), I’ll probably end up on Substack a bit more (although I want to avoid getting sucked into that vortex). After having been an active member of the Theatre Blogging Wars of the Aughts, I’ve decided that I need to have some Personal Rules of Engagement as I ease back into the feed. Here they are:

Rules of Engagement

There are only 5 ways to respond:

1. Yes
2. Yes, and…
3. Yes, but…
4. Maybe
5. No

Responses #1 (Yes) and #5 (No) should be rare, because they add little to the conversation. The exception is if someone is a newby and could use the support of a “Yes” as encouragement. If the response is going to be “No,” just move along.

Response #4 (Maybe) should also be rare – if I am not certain, I should just bookmark the post or note and return once I have something worth adding. If that day never comes, oh well…

Response #3 (Yes, but…) should wait until there are a few positive responses from other people. “Yes, but…” tends to make it about me instead of the author of the post. Let the post be about the author at least for a while, then add my “but” in a way that doesn’t make the author look stupid.

Response #4 (Yes, and…) should be my most common response. I need to signal my “Yes” with enthusiasm, preferably with at least one reason, and then build on what has been written.

If I can follow these rules of engagement, maybe I’ll find the internet more interesting and enjoyable.

When I look back, there were two major occurrences that influenced my life with computers. First, in the mid-80s, I was hired to work at the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), where my boss was Don Rawitsch, the inventor of the popular educational program “Oregon Trail.” I was using an Apple 2e every day, and I was surrounded by programmers using computers in education. In 1992, I was hired as Asst to the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University. The Dean was Alvin Goldfarb, and he had hired an Associate Dean, Dave Williams, whose area was (you guessed it) using computers in the Fine Arts, and he had developed a cutting edge computers lab. Those two experiences not only gave me experience with computers, but also made me much more interested in using computers in education. Once I was hired at UNC Asheville, I became very much involved in the computer work in the Center for Teaching and Learning, and I did a lot of experimentation with computers in my classroom. It seemed natural and fun. Thank you Don, Alvin, and Dave!

“Art, in the only sense in which one can separate art from technics [technology], is primarily the domain of the person; and the purpose of art, apart from various incidental technical functions that may be associated with it, is to widen the province of personality, so that feelings, emotions, attitudes, and values, in the special individualized form in which they happen in one particular person, in one particular culture, can be transmitted with all their force and meaning to other persons or to other cultures. Sympathy and empathy are the characteristic way of art: a feeling with, a feeling into, the innermost experiences of other men. The work of art is the visible, potable spring from which men share the deep underground sources of their experience. Art arises out of man’s need to create for himself, beyond any requirement for mere animal survival, a meaningful and valuable world: his need to dwell on, to intensify, and to project in more permanent forms those precious parts of his experience that would otherwise slip too quickly out of his grasp, or sink too deeply into his unconscious to be retrieved.” – Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics (1952)

It seems to me that Mumford does two things in this paragraph: 1) he clearly defines a purpose for the arts, and 2) he provides a reason, almost 75 years ago, why AI is not a threat to the arts. The purpose is “to widen the province of personality, so that feelings, emotions, attitudes, and values, in the special individualized form in which they happen in one particular person, in one particular culture, can be transmitted with all their force and meaning to other persons or to other cultures.” AI does not have, nor ever will have, the personality – the feelings, emotions, attitudes, and values – of an individual person.

Put another way – and I am thinking specifically of the more corporatized arts of film and TV – if the work that you create can be successfully imitated by AI, you should understand that you are creating products, not works of art. You are not using a “special individualized form” of “one particular person,” but rather are using a well-worn formula to create content and not art. And if that is true, then you deserve to have your work supplanted by AI. You have become part of The Machine, and The Machine will eventually make you unnecessary.