I’ve long been thankful for the time in history in which I’ve grown up. We got an early computer when I was young (a Commodore 64), then I got to grow up through an amazing generation of video game systems, and now we have stunningly powerful machines, AI, and so much great stuff.
While I’m sad that I won’t be around to see what things are like hundreds of years from now, being around for these pivotal moments has been amazing.
Growing up, I thought about this a lot in regards to my grandfather Vic (who I shared a bit about here). Given how he worked and thought, I really think he would have loved computing but he was simply too early in history to catch much of it. That said, he was able to take his skills and use them with technology of his time (woodworking and gadgets and such) with great success.
We’re the same way; we’re born with our desires, and then we manifest them through the technology that our place in history allows. From Seth Godin’s book “Linchpin“, he shares the same idea. First, he talks about “art” being potentially many different things. In my case, my “art” is this blog (and not design-related), and I’m pleased with that. From his book:
“You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.”
He also digs into the “time in history” part of this discussion, saying:
“I don’t believe that you are born to do a certain kind of art, mainly because your genes have no idea what technology is going to be available to you. Cave painters, stone carvers, playwrights, chemists, quantum-mechanic mechanics—people do their art where they find it, not the other way around.”
You may love the power you get with a tool like Photoshop, but you also likely would have loved painting by hand a century ago, or would love the crazy new AI/AR/VR/Whatever tools that will come along decades from now.
As Seth said, art can be about many different things, but it’s really about intent and not substances. Use what you have the best you can, because we’re all lucky to be around at this moment in time.
