It's Almost Always About "Fast"

Why make tea from hot water boiled and poured through high quality loose leaves steeping through a stainless steel strainer and only for three minutes when you can whip a bag on a string into a paper cup full of hot water through a window on the way to the office?

To capture those beautiful landscape photos that Ansel Adams used to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to make a national park took a burro hauling many packs of equipment up and down treacherous canyon trails, but you can grab the same image with your iPhone, even with cracked glass and your battery at 10%.

You Might Think I'm Arguing For Craft and for Slowing Down

I'm not. Andy Warhol felt that art should be fast produced, he called his place the Factory and sought a faster way to get it done. Ford turned the arduous and highly flawed method of making automobiles one by one and by hand into a work of art through his own factory setting. We idolize artistry and craft, but at every turn, we choose speed and convenience. (In most things: don't come to the comments for all the great times where we have to slow down).

On the Way to Speed Are Flaws and Mistakes

Watching people argue that AI tools aren't quite there yet is interesting to me. Nothing is quite there yet, until it is, and then it's really there. When I started blogging in 1998, it wasn't really something people could easily find or read. When I started podcasting in 2005, you pretty much needed an engineering degree to actually download and listen to a show. Being there early meant being there in the messy stages, and while it's cool to be an "OG," it wasn't exactly beneficial for me.

But what I do have that others might not from starting and immersing in such matters so quickly is that I understand the slow and broken ways we did things, and thus, I'm more ready to look for the benefits and values of where we can do it faster and better.

The first customer service chatbots were really limited. They were nothing more than a bunch of decision trees, like a spreadsheet with options. A very finite "choose your own adventure" book. Now, we can thread a really helpful AI front-face on an organization's website and reduce the slow clunky way customer service operates in lots of circumstances.

Slow is Smooth; Smooth is Fast

The US Navy SEALs are where I heard that expression the first time. As you practice, you improve, and as you build your ability to be smooth with your execution, you get faster in the process. It's a great way to look at all these changes happening now. Learn them slowly, but get smooth at them, and move forward until you are fast.

It's Not "Someone's" Job to Learn These Changes: It's Your Job

For years, my mom (pictured here) said to me that one reason she had trouble with interacting with people her age was that they didn't want to learn anything new. She was frustrated with their eagerness to hold onto what they'd learned ages ago, while my mom and dad were both very active on Twitter, listened to podcasts, made their own blog and video show, and stayed up on all the changes. My dad uses ChatGPT every day for one thing or another.

But not because their bleeding edge. It's because they want their tea fast (metaphorically).

You see where I'm going?

Art is meant to be slow. Creativity is meant to be slow (sometimes). We don't need robots to make our songs. But for the "stuff" of any given day? Fast (when effective) is the preference.

Chris...

(And don't even start with Ansel's photo being better than your iPhone. Duh.)