This isn’t the end, this is the beginning

This week on the New Creative Era podcast, Josh Citarella and Yancey Strickler dive into seven lessons they know now but wish they knew then. Listen in on Apple, Spotify, or the web.

When it comes to human creativity, is this the end?

We see the canon, the hierarchies, the museums and wonder: where do we fit in?

Aren’t the museums and galleries already full and overflowing? Aren’t 75% of songs played on Spotify old and not new? Have we missed our chance?

We worry about AI. Being replaced even before our careers even begin. What am I supposed to do when a computer can make everything I make, faster and without effort?

We look at the existing social structure, where millions of followers congregate around the loudest voices. How can we not feel alienated by this model of success?

We share these feelings. There are days when they get the best of us. 

But the more we’ve thought about it — and the more we’ve learned — we’ve come to believe the opposite:

This isn’t the end. This is the beginning.

The canon of established knowledge remains, but it constantly grows and becomes rewritten. The order is far less set and more recent than it first appears.

A certain era — the pre-HD classical period — may be over, but instead we find ourselves in a new perpetual now. New voices and ideas flow into our collective memory, changing it as they arrive. Slang from a Twitch stream embeds itself into the vocabularies of children around the world.

We feel familiar things slip away and we feel fear.

Now we're apparently post-movie theaters. Post-broadcast TV. Post-physical media (but becoming less so). Post-reading. Post so many things we’ve lost count.

Are we pre-anything instead?

Yes.

We’re pre-creative wealth. Pre-creative power. Pre-creative internet. Pre-our fullest creative potential. Pre-[redacted].

The last century was defined by multinational corporations and nation states. 

This one will be defined by small groups of people creatively working together. Using new infrastructure and tools that make them stronger than ever.

This isn’t the end. This is the beginning.

It's almost time to BLOOM.

April 30.

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