A Rant Laced with Optimism

It's time for a rant, but a rant laced with optimism.

The more humanity has the knowledge, know-how, and technology to create something different (yet sublime) the more we get sameness everywhere we care to look.

Art

Cars, for example, just all look the same now.

Roll your eyes (and okay boomer), but "when I was young" there were passionate arguments about Ford vs. Chevy, Fiat vs. Mini, and many more.

The cars, then, simply all just looked different, felt different and performed differently. From a mile away, one could distinguish between a Valiant and a Vauxhall through more than one of of your senses.

Even non-petrol heads (such as moi) could be passionate about some of the options on offer.

Art has since yielded to manufacturing efficiency.

Serendipity

Shopping Centres all look the same now too. The same shops with the same merchandise are everywhere.

"When I was young" and still in school, I hopped on a bus (and then on a train) to the Cape Town city centre on many a Saturday morning.

This then was a wonderful journey of discovery in places such as record shops, book shops and toy shops. Lacking the funds, I had to save my smallish weekly allowance and thus rarely bought anything. Yet, the joy of discovery was enough. And whenever I finally saved enough, the best shop-keeper with the most desirable product was the recipient of the funds. These excursions fueled my interest in art, books and music and therefore resulted in life-long joy.

Serendipity has since yielded to algorithms.

Variety

During my weekend city excursions, I also encountered the following. Somewhere in the Cape Town city centre (and it is too long ago to remember where exactly that was) someone operated a 12-hour-a-day continuous-showing movie house in the basement of one of the tall buildings.

You could walk in and out as and when you wished (and the bathrooms were cleverly situated 'outside'), but you had to pay whenever you entered. One could easily, in one session, see Cowboy movies, Karate movies, Skop-skiet-en-donner movies, cult movies and even an A-grade movie every now and then.

And, just as interesting as the fare on offer was the crowd that hanged out there.

Variety has since yielded to data-analysed packaged entertainment.

But, we have all of this now?

One may argue that all of this exists now too; on Spotify, on YouTube, on Facebook, on Netflix and on Showmax. And you would be right. You could even argue that we may now be better off: the algorithm supercharges the serendipity, for example.

The problem with this view

There are at least two problems with such a view.

Firstly, the physical still exists.
Secondly, there's nothing much new (under the 2024 sun).

Let's get physical

Cars, shopping centres and (for now, at least) movie houses still exist. Clothing still exists.

But, there is very little art left in our physical spaces.

Furthermore, artists and word-smiths fear that their income will be removed by generative AI. One may argue that many people have, over the centuries, lost their incomes to 'progress'. But, there is a difference here (and this is a hill to die on): yes, art and 'thoughts' may come from AI, but great art and and great thoughts can only come from humans. Great art and great thought is not derivative. It would be a tragedy to lose the artists.

Nothing new

New music gets pumped out every day. Yet, the vast majority of new music is (a) auto-tuned Max Martin/melodic-math inspired sameness, (b) genre-derivative sameness or (c) experimental stuff that only the creator's mother may pretend to love.

We'll come back to this under the 'Finally' heading below.

Optimism?

So, where is the optimism in this rant? Well, there is a story of two shoe salesman that went into a rural area. When the first salesman returned he reported back that there are no opportunities there. "Nobody wears shoes". The second salesman reported that there are massive opportunities there. "Nobody wears shoes!"

These are the types of opportunities that we pointed out earlier this week and also many times here already.

The absence of something that should exist is always an opportunity.

Go sell 'shoes' where nobody has shoes and where nobody else sells 'shoes'.
Design 'shoes' that nobody else is designing.
Find those people that wanted 'shoes' but could not find any.

Finally

I was told by someone, a few weeks ago, that bands such as Pink Floyd are always put forward as why "music was better 'then'", so "give me another example".

The spur-of-the-moment example was English rock band Strawbs with their relatively unknown masterpiece "Autumn" from their 1973 album "Hero and Heroine" - an 8-odd-minute 'symphony' in three very different 'movements', but one perfect whole. The 'whole' depicts a transition from late summer into autumn and into an eventual winter. This is music that has ambition.

And, as an aside, this was one of the albums that I first 'discovered' during one of those record-shop excursions mentioned above.

Call me a philistine, but I prefer Strawbs' Autumn to Vivaldi's Autumn.

It would be great it someone could direct us to a 2020s "Autumn".
That would lift our level of optimism even higher.

(Ed - 'Here you go Marius....')