Ouroboros

Parasite

I have consumed all my life. Scrolling, watching, reading, bookmarking things I never return to. I know a lot about things other people have made, but if I added up everything I've actually made so far in my life, it rounds to a mean of 0.

It's self-feeding, which makes it a parasite and not just a "bad habit". Consuming feels like learning and learning feels good because it feels like progress; this feeling of progress in-turn removes the urgency to make anything, so I end up consuming more and more. A snake eating its own tail, growing fatter and longer as it goes...

Invisible

I was standing at a crosswalk the other day, and for once actually observing things around me. The lane markings run for thousands of miles, and someone painted them. To think that someone sat in a truck, in the heat, doing the exact stretch I was standing on. The lamppost over me, the curb beside my feet, the pipes under all of it... none of this is natural. It was all left here by people, most of them anonymous or forgotten by now. And it works so well that it has become invisible, but we simply cannot live without it. I suppose the better something is made, the less you notice it. You only see infrastructure when it breaks.

Kevin McCloud:

Every decently-made object, from a house to a lamp post to a bridge, spoon or egg cup, is not just a piece of 'stuff' but a physical embodiment of human energy, testimony to the magical ability of our species to take raw materials and turn them into things of use, value and beauty.

A bricklayer has added more value to this world than I have. What they made, exists; what I've made, mostly doesn't. It's as simple as that, an accounting fact.

Marc Andreessen:

Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that's to build.

Scale

It doesn't have to be grand. I was actually going to write something like, "Jobs would have been just as nourished growing a garden in his backyard as he was selling a billion iPhones." That would've been a crazy exaggeration; it's untrue. A man as ambitious as him probably needed the scale, but (I suppose) the nourishment for him came from the act of making, not the billions.

Slop

I hope I don't use "make something" as a permission to add ugliness into the world. Since all the friction is now outsourced to tools such as LLMs, making things is the easiest it has ever been. And that means making carelessly is also easier than it has ever been.

Adding garbage to the pile is worse than staying a passive consumer. At least a passive consumer isn't actively depositing anything. I could pat myself on the back for "creating something" but if it's just a steaming hot pile of garbage, then I've actively made things worse.

I think it comes down to toil and labour. Toil would be drudgery, like paperwork, emails, chasing an invoice, appealing a parking ticket etc. Basically, any grind that doesn't give anything back. Conversely, labour would be the act of making itself, like laying a brick, cooking a meal for someone etc. I think tools should target the first and leave the second. When a tool removes my drudgery, I still remain the source of the thing; when it removes the making, I remain a spectator.

I don't have a clean test for the difference between something made and something extruded. Maybe it's whether I would still make something if nobody ever saw it. I don't know for sure yet.

Useful?

If nobody uses what I created, does it actually matter? I think it does, because I could make some thing to learn or simply because they're beautiful and I just wanted them to exist. There's value in usefulness, but usefulness in itself isn't important in the act of creation.

Also, if I start scoring what I make by metrics such as reach, views or impressions, I'll end up making things for the score. (Then again, I've barely made anything yet, so I hold this loosely.)

Hypocrite

I'm writing this from inside the problem (not above it), as I'm a part of it. I'm addicted to slop on both fronts - from consuming it to producing it. I know how good the shortcut feels and I've added to the pile of garbage I just spoke about.

But now, I cannot keep hiding behind the ignorance as a refuge. If I still cave to the ease of production of slop over the natural care and labour required for creation, then I'm making a conscious choice (since it's not a blind spot anymore).

Awareness != execution, but it's a necessary first step.

Start

None of this is original. Everything I wrote has been thought through, communicated and executed better than me by others. I had to write this down anyway because I needed to see the thoughts in front of me, clarified and out of my head.