Category Archives: (Cyber)Culture

Language-Based AI: The Photoshop of Knowledge Work

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Adobe stock. Seemed only fair.

All analogies are flawed, but some are useful.

Language-based AI is like Photoshop for the rest of us. 🖥️💃⚡

Hear me out… (less than 2-minute read)

In the world of graphic design, there was a time when only the most skilled designers could create high-quality visuals. It required many years of training and was a time-consuming manual craft.

But then, a tool emerged that changed everything — Photoshop. Suddenly, everyone with a computer could create stunning graphics, and the speed of production increased exponentially. This tool democratised the craft of design, making it accessible to the masses.

Adobe’s Creative Cloud approached 30 million paid subscribers last December. 🤯

However, despite this democratisation, not all designers were suddenly equal, nor will they ever be. Just as it is with many types of skills and tools — equal access doesn’t guarantee equal performance, let alone greatness.

But wait, there’s more to this analogy. 🤓

Photoshop was more than just a tool for making graphics. It also enabled designers to experiment with new techniques (that in the wrong hands scream “photoshop”), create unique styles, and push the boundaries of what was possible in design. And they still use real-world materials and inspiration.

Do designers have to keep up with the evolution of Photoshop? Most of them do. Or you can find your comfort zone and stay there. But unless you’re amazing, it comes at a price. Or you can decide you’re a 100% old-school craft artisan or let someone else import your work into Photoshop. There are implications for that too.

The arrival of AI in knowledge work is like Photoshop for the rest of us. AI is transforming the way knowledge workers operate, automating tasks we didn’t think could be automated, speeding things up exponentially, and providing new possibilities previously impossible.

But like with Photoshop, AI still requires human expertise to use effectively.

You are the designer, not AI.

Education, talent, and hard work still count. Hard work beats talent sometimes, but only up to a degree.

The power of AI lies in the hands of those willing to keep learning and adapting to the technology. But just because you have access to AI tools doesn’t make you a master of your field.

And downloading a pirated copy of Photoshop doesn’t make your nephew a top-tier graphic designer.

But maybe he could help you with that lost dog ad or retouch your dating photos.

Speaking of which, have you tried using it for job applications? It’s a game-changer. 😅

Finally, word processors that can actually process words.

But that’s another analogy…

Beyond the Hype: A Friendly and Sceptic User’s Guide to ChatGPT

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Intro, or “Why like this!?” 

This guide is a labour of love for humans, not technology. It was born from my frustration with current writing about ChatGPT in general, and practical advice on LinkedIn in particular. And honestly — from a feeling of urgency, as I fear the bad advice will take hold and create bad business outputs, damaging careers and adoption rates for AI.  

Currently, the debate about ChatGPT’s usefulness (and the usefulness of language model chatbots in general) is dominated by the question “Is it a search killer?”. I believe this question comes from a spin that Big Tech propagates because it’s good for the share price. You can find my full view on that here.  But when this spin spreads into the practical discussion, framing our perceptions of how this tool may change our industry (by which I mean marketing, strategy, brand, media, creative, design, advertising, content, digital), the result is a blurry vision of what ChatGPT can do.  

This ‘blurry vision’ framing usually results in three kinds of ‘advice’:

  1. Don’t believe the hype
    “Look at the mistakes it makes, LOL; it’s not even as good as Google; there’s no serious use-case here. It’s a toy.” 
  2. This changes everything (superficially)
    “ChatGPT can do everything. Not only has research changed forever, and we no longer need to use search engines, but look at this brilliant [insert dull and superficial result] to [a crucial, nuanced and deep business/marketing/creative task].” 
  3. Moar content! Zero effort! 

“Here’s a listicle about how to use ChatGPT to create the most boring spammy articles and posts the world has ever seen.”

None of these are helpful,  or give meaningful guidance about how to use these new tools in our daily working life. Rather, they lead you down a garden path, at the end of which there’s a fork in the road and a signpost that reads, “this way to arid desert” or “this way to cloud-cuckoo-land”. 

Read the full guide here.

Pages: 1 2

Designing reality’s interfaces – Between the Tube map & Facebook

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The People Mover by Trey Ratcliff (CC)

The People Mover by Trey Ratcliff (CC)

(The following article was originally published on Marketing Magazine’s blog. Since the original publishing coincided with The London Underground’s 150 anniversary, the broader theoretical aspect was cut out to turn this into a post about the Tube map alone. I’m publishing an uncut version here for your interest)
In 1931, a part-time engineer draftsman sat in the offices of the London Underground. Like designers of all periods, he was working after hours on a pet project. That project turned out to be with one of the most revolutionary information design concepts in history.
 
As most of you have guessed – the design in question is the London Underground map. The engineer turned design-legend was Harry Beck. An amusing/alarming fact is that it took about a year for “The Suits” to agree and trial Beck’s radical, uncomissioned, concept. It was another year before it was published on a mass scale. The rest is history. Beck’s map became the blueprint for public transportation maps worldwide and Beck himself spent the next 30 years tweaking his map to near-perfection. He was paid 5 guineas for his map – the equivalent of about £144 in today’s money.
Some things never change, indeed.
 
Train maps were a popular giveaway with newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century, and looking at some historical maps will quickly reveal the scale of Beck’s conceptual breakthrough. Navigating the increasingly intricate London Underground network was a design problem. It was waiting for the right solution for decades. Like many major design problems, it was born at the intersection of social change, technological advancements and rapid expansions in commerce. 
 
It seems 1930s spam was much better than what we get nowadays. Tube maps lived side by side with poster campaigns exalting the many benefits of travelling by underground, many displaying levels of craft rarely seen in today’s graphic design. Maps were often given away for free with the evening papers to encourage the public to ride by train. They were a marketing application, a touchpoint – part of a campaign. “Swift and sure” exclaimed a logo tag-line on a 1908 version. Like most key touchpoints, maps weren’t single sided propaganda that shouted at the audience; they were useful brand utilities. These maps were a tool to help guide the audience in a modern world of ever more complex urban living. A part of a more complex meaning system.

The Apocalypse is bad for business

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coming soon, by Digital Trash on Flickr

Coming Soon, by Digital Trash on Flickr

(The following post was originally published on Marketing Magazine’s Marketing Blogged blog. It has also been posted on Linguabrand’s Science and Learning section, among a highly flattering group. This is a delayed cross-posting.)

Expanding the definition and remit of sustainable marketing
When initially introduced to c-suites and boards, the allure of sustainability was that it made a certain brutal business common sense. Performance driven business leaders don’t have to love trees to understand that ignoring environmental impact will eventually kill their business: Materials and fuels will get more expensive, regulations will bear down on them and other forms of public scrutiny will become increasingly unforgiving.

Over the years, the remit of business sustainability has expanded from environmental responsibility to include other economic, social and almost any other aspect of responsible long-term resource management and social stewardship.

However, sustainable marketing has so far remained focused on the environmental aspect. It largely stands for paper sources, non-toxic inks, recycling, etc.

This is an oversight as it’s clear a large part of marketing’s impact on our society is not physical. I would like to challenge this narrow view of sustainable marketing by suggesting that just like businesses increasingly look beyond the environmental impact of resource management, marketing should do the same.

The two new elements I would like to introduce into the definition of sustainable marketing are the cognitive and the cultural aspects. Continue reading →

The Disappearance of Childhood: Postman’s blind spot

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Grown ups are obsolete

Just finished Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood.

Postman is a wonderful writer, and the first part, about the historical invention of childhood is truly breath-taking. Just chock-full of amazing insights about the relationship of culture and technology.
I particularly found interesting how the same "dangers" are re-purposed again and again for each technology.

(Narcissism is, apparently, particularly popular, possibly because of the built-in hubris of any technological revolution. I’m sure the discovery of fire and the wheel promoted narcissism too. What with firelight being so complimenting and making us see human faces 24 hours a day and the wheel making us strong and taking us places… But I still need to think this bit through…)
 
However, as he moves to describing the disappearance of childhood he largely misses the mark.

Not because of his somewhat luddite view of technology or conservative views of society (you expect that from Postman) but because although the phenomena he describes to support his arguments are largely true, he completely overlooks the emergence of teenage culture as a transient stage between childhood and adulthood (quite odd for someone who was merely in his thirties in the 60’s). As well as the increasing importance of this stage. And while this stage is "blurred at both ends" to our day ("tweens, anyone?"), and especially into adulthood, you can still see marked distinctions between the culture of prepubescent children (e.g. "toddlers"), pubescent and post-pubescent teenagers.
And any cross-overs don’t change the fact prepubescence is protected on many levels and teens are often overprotected, regulated/policed by adults, and frequently demonised by the media.

Ah well, thankfully today we have people like Danah Boyd who approach youth with insight and empathy.

(Make no mistake, this book is still worth your time. All his books, with all their flaws…)