July 2022: Front seat art is the best way to pass the time on the way up north. The scene en route to Georgian Bay is all puffy clouds and miles of yellow mustard fields. Ontario, you’re gorgeous.
The Ink Spot
June 26, 2023
Are you curious to try the new AI features inside PhotoShop?
Here’s a one-minute tutorial on where to find it and how to start using it.
In this example, I wanted to add an AI-generated background to my drawing of a beagle.
After uploading a transparent png file of my dog drawing, I prompted the bot to generate a background image of “the Lake Ontario shoreline.”
The Industrial Mindset
June 13, 2023
It’s 2023, not 1953, and the industrial mindset is asserting itself for the final time. Let it go.
#KnowledgeEconomy #Autonomy #WFH #WeveMovedOn #CommandAndControl
Inspired by Seth Godin, a champion observer.
Kathryn Barlow is My Web Genius
June 8, 2023
Kathryn Barlow is an award-winning Canadian web designer.
When I decided I wanted to add splashes of colour to the landing page of my personal website, she made it happen.
When I have questions about how to evolve my Shopify store, she is my sounding board and website carpenter.
Kathryn has been a steady presence in my professional life for the last 10 years. She’s also a good friend.
If you need a Kathryn in your life, go to kbarlowdesign.com.
She didn’t know I was going to do this. (h/t to Mariellen Ward for introducing us at a backyard party).
Delia Ephron
May 31, 2023
I love juicy ink sketches with a graphic punch. This one was created with a Pentel Brush Pen and Noodler’s fountain pen ink.
I almost never nail the drawing on the first try. You have to warm up your hand and your head, like a ballet dancer at the barre sliding her foot to the front, side, back, and repeat. Once you’re in flow mode — hand, mind and spirit aligned — the sketch happens.
The angels weep.
Be sure to keep them away from your page. Teardrops can dissolve a drawing.
Portrait of Delia Ephron.
This is Your Brain on AI
May 29, 2023
What are the incentives to think for ourselves now that we are starting to outsource thinking to machines?
Will the long-term effect of ChatGPT on our brains be similar to the impact of fast food on our bodies?
The more I use ChatGPT to help me write, the more I feel my brain getting flabby around the middle. I’m talking about when I perform a “gap analyses” where I challenge myself to compare bot outputs with my own writing and then integrate the AI suggestions into my final copy. This process has yet to make me feel grateful, deeply engaged or amazed.
This is not my definition of a partnership. Instead, I feel usurped and underworked. It’s the same feeling I get when I spend my entire morning scrolling on my phone instead of working to yank a piece of writing from my chest. Is there such a thing as muffin top for your brain?
Where I do feel excited, and where I start to crackle and dance in place like that fried egg (… sorry kids, don’t do drugs), is when I use AI in a creative project I’m directing to show me how conversations on a particular topic would have sounded in Shakespeare’s time, complete with swear words and exclamatory expressions. The options itemized in the output sound like dialogue for a new play. AI saved me hours of research at a library and that makes me feel grateful and empowered.
I made these two drawings after listening to a fascinating conversation between Mitch Joel and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic on Joel’s podcast, Six Pixels of Separation (Ep. #881 – “AI, Automation and More Humanity”), Sunday, May 28, 2023. It was Tomas who questioned the effect of AI on our brain development and who made the comparison with fast food. He also said: learn and keep following the evolution of these tools (keep your enemies close) but “don’t downgrade yourself just because machines and AI will keep upgrading themselves.” I look forward to readings Tomas’s latest book, I, Human: AI, Automation and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique (2023)
The fried egg sketch was inspired by the large-scale US anti-narcotics campaign by Partnership for a Drug-Free America launched in 1987.
The Future of Blogging
May 25, 2023
What is the future of blogging in the Age of AI? Here is my dot connecting so far.
