Why we make things worse on purpose. Ode to imperfect tech

Introduction

When was the last time you wanted to actively make things worse than they naturally are?

Silly question. So, let me reframe this.

• When was the last time when your AI chatbot of your choice gave you an answer so ideal, so sleek, so generic that you wanted to dehance technology to make it worse?

• Today we'll talk about how people now are often more and more making things less and less ideal in our digital world. How people are making things worse and worse and worse.

• Why do we now spend more time making things worse than we than we are spending making them? Today we will talk about why today's people and people of the future will spend more time making things worse than actually making things.

• And I will explain why this is not an awful thing but something very bright, something very curious.

Why dehance technology is valid? Why analog tools are needed in a "digital world"? Learn about tech minimalism, digital wellness, and alternative approaches in this brief ssay.

Who I Am

My name is Antos Sivyh. I am a filmmaker, visual artist making art exhibitions, films. I'm showing it across different regions. I make art across various cities on streets. I raise a lot of discussion around it. And doing many things both in online and offline world.

So naturally I work a lot with artificial intelligence and both in my video projects, both in texts and in other forms and more and more when I communicate with people, I notice that people spend a lot more time making things not so ideal, making things more natural, making things not as generic, not as default as what usually AI gives them especially if they are not like prompt engineers of 100 level.

Not A Rant About AI

I will not now rant about how bad is AI. I recently made a video essay about what is relation of person of humans to machines and it's a very two-sided thing and I recommend you to watch it to get inspired and to get things moving for you. This is about how to use technology responsibly in our modern world.

Worse Means Better?

At the same time there is such a paradox that now worse means better. I will walk through a couple of media phenomenons that I know and that millions of people now know and they show clearly that now people don't want some ideal stuff. They want something that is more human, more personal, more lively, maybe even less practical than I thought. This is where digital wellness comes into play.

Writing With AI In Real Projects

I am doing various marketing things for a project that is heavily related with AI and for it I needed to make quite a lot of texts using AI and do it fast and at this time I understood that those texts that are full of those words like versatile like tailored to loan punctuation those ideal bullet points those emojis this and other stuff. Humans instantly understand that it is AI. If and if they instantly understand that it is AI, they think of it as much less valuable because they understand that oh okay I will just ask this thing to my child GPT and it will give me exactly this information or even better or adapted to my situation and it's partly true though partly not and what I see in people who deal with AI that they incorporate this un idealeness in their prompts.

Telling AI What Not To Do

So when you now work with AI, you you say that make heterogeneous paragraphs, keep style not ideal. Use those phrases and those idioms and overall use this structure and don't use all of that bullet points. Use this and not that. When you are writing with AI or making pictures or videos with AI, you are including something that is called often called negative prompt. It's something that you don't want. And there you can include all of these generic things that AI does by default but which is still done by it. This is part of tech minimalism approach.

How AI Images Give Themselves Away

When it comes to images, AI images and AI videos are often often have this very ideal lighting. They have it's not not very rough. They you can you can understand that it's AI image or AI video if you think about the logic of lighting. where the lighting is coming from, where it's going to things that AI does. It doesn't understand logic of things. It rewrites, it repaints, it regenerates what was already done. And it does it in in the most default, in the most idealistic way possible. If you think just a bit about logic of it, you will know whether it's AI or not. You will know.

Coming next - cameras, analog horror, and many more phenomenons.

Why Old Cameras And Analog Feel Fresh

I believe this is partly why analog photography is popular - we now have this resurgence of old style analog photography of dig cams of 2000s. This is why people are buying phones like iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS to have it as a camera. Of course, there is this nostalgia factor. Of course, people are doing it because of nostalgia as well. They they know that it was cool when they were young and they want to bring it back. Yes, there is such thing but what I will say is that these de hands will become more and more important. I am very bullish on the hands. So people will be making things actively worse even more. This is a perfect example of alternative technology approach.

My Approach To Gear

And do you know that well in an area where I'm coming from in in industries that I'm coming from in film making in making videos it's often needed to have gear to have amazing gear to have amazing cameras to have great software to have great lens and they should be sometimes even clinically good. I was always opposing that. I was always using those old manual lenses. I was always using systems that were not really conventional like Fujifilm. I was using a lot of old cameras and cameras on old phones and analog technologies. These analog tools became my technology alternative. And at the same time I understand that this till that moment does not fit to every branch.

Clinical Image Still Has Its Place

Many advertisements many art pro many commercial projects really require this clinical image. But here's the thing that today what we see today from ads what we see today from how brands position themselves it will come more and more to this lively side it will come more and more to this more organic and natural way. I'm not saying that of course today it's all coming through this organic UGC content of people actually talking and making things about products but I'm talking not only about that I'm talking about how companies creative directors how decision makers how screenwriters how cinematographers will actively make choices that dehands what they are doing and Um I think that in 2010s we saw a spike in enhancement enhancement of image quality of this 4K 8K etc.

Balancing Out The Enhancement Era

I think now we will see balancing out of it and we will see slow dehance. When I'm talking about balancing it out, I'm also talking about balance between digital technology and all other kinds of technology because now we think of technology is mostly digital of course but technology is so much more. Technology is not only this digital machinery. It's not only what we think of today as technology.

I think Neil Postman has also summed this up in "Amuzing Ourselves to Death" text.

A Paper System For Doing Things

I am doing a system that is based completely on paper. It helps me do stuff. It's not it's not only my notebook, my note taking system. I don't think of it as note-taking system. I think of it as a system for doing things. I often make decisions with it. I often make creative projects through it. And I make artist project through it as well. This system includes what I call outforms and versingforms art project - creative methods that already work as analog tools for thinking and planning.

Two Minds: Human And Machine

So you see this moral that is behind me. There are two minds. One human mind and then machine mind. You see this moral behind. You see this moral behind me. There is human mind and there is machine mind. And what I believe will will be is that on inside there will be more and more of machine on outside there will be more and more of human. So even when machine for example generates a response people already go and change it a bit for it not to be as clinical for it not to be as ideal.

This Shift Will Be Everywhere

And this is what we will see more and more not just in social media, not just in articles, not just in Tik Tok, not not just in text or video or image, but everywhere again in marketing strategies, in politics, in overall culture, in society as a whole. I think that 2020s, 2030s will be a period where technologies will be balancing out between each other. And this idea of dehands will become more and more important with time. This connects to concepts explored in gutenberg elegies book about how we relate to different forms of media.

Analog Horror As A Sign

Another example that I want to mention here is analog horror. Analog horror is a genre that is based not only on nostalgia but also on how people don't want this ideal Hollywood style horror with this a lot of screamers conventions etc. millions of people like to go beyond those conventions, like to break them, both creators and viewers. And I'm not a huge fan of horror myself, but when it comes to those non-conventional genres, those experimental genres that are getting more and more attention here online in the last five or three years, I am also very bullish on them as I am bullish on almost any project that does this dehands.

Not Degrowth

Well, what I don't believe in, I don't believe in degrowth. I don't believe that our economy should shrink. I think it should balance itself. I think it should it should be balanced actively not with hand of state, a huge protective state, not with hand of only huge multi-million corporations, but with a lot of actors involved, with a lot of stakeholders involved. This is what I believe in and I think that this will be happening in culture in business in all of branches in all of industries.

Alternative Tech is not Primitive Tech

Don't call me a neoluddite. Don't think of it as just making things in a primitive level making things as caveman men did. Of course not. It will be it will be in a way where AI this strange weird machine with a lot of disadvantages and a lot of advantages really makes a lot of stuff indeed but humans are actively making it worse and humans are making their personal stuff that they are making in a much less ideal way that they are making in much more personal way and this this will rule the world I think. For those wondering how to replace a phone or how to decentralized my phone, this approach offers real alternatives.

A Demo Of The Physical OS

When it comes to this physical operating system that I made, I now made a demo that shows how it works, how it works with my daily tasks and I recommend you to go to a link that is in description or in pinned comment and there you may see what is it and how it works and how to apply it to your workflows, to your tasks, to your everyday life in the best way possible. This system represents my approach to digital wellness and tech minimalism.

Outforms is an analog note-taking method for better thinking and problem-solving. It uses simple shapes (circles, squares, arrows) to help organize thoughts & generate ideas

No digital devices. System is ideal for those who prefer pen&paper for brainstorming or planning

sivyh.com/outforms

Thank you for being here and let's develop, let's rethink, let's reexplore things. See you in the next articles!

Antos