The technology has finally reached the point for which content can start to be authored via natural language and gesture (including drawing) instead of unnatural WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer).
The state of art (e.g., DALL-E-2) can already be part of the content creation toolbox, and future advances may soon obsolete legacy tools.
September 5, 2022
Natural authoring modalities
September 4, 2022
A caterpillar sleeping inside an avocado bed
With the same subject title, I created multiple outcomes via manual drawing and DALL-E-2 with different styles hints.
digital art
natural illustration
oil painting by Rembrandt
manual painting with Fresco (took about an hour)
June 22, 2022
Midjourney
I did some experiments with Midjourney’s prompt-based image generation.
(I am glad that the site imposes GPU compute constraints as otherwise I might be tempted to spend endless time exploring the rabbit hole.)
The first one came from a real life experience I encountered the very same morning: A painting by Joan Miro of a laptop computer that still works after being cracked open by heat coming from the office window, after some iterations here is one I like:
The second one also came from a real-life experience, which I iterated to bring out the vegetables from: A vegetarian descendant of Genghis Khan
June 1, 2022
Art and tech
The appearance of a new technology often changes how art is created and consumed but never replaced it.
The invention of camera made photography a new art form and shifted the portrait and landscape painters to focus more on styles than realism.
A similar trend is happening with language-based picture generation, which can shift from the traditional painting and rendering techniques towards ideas in language prompts.
May 17, 2022
Executive compensation
I takes a special kind of arrogance for the current Intel CEO to think that he deserves to earn more than 1700 times of a typical employee.
I voted yes to executive compensations for NVIDIA, AMD, and Microsoft because their CEOs are truly transformative, but would not do so for Intel until it can compete with TSMC and Samsung as a global foundry.
March 20, 2022
Workout
Before the industrial revolution humans got enough physical exercises in their daily routines without needing extra workouts or diets, which are signs of unnatural design for the modern environment and activities.
Should our cities be centered around driveways for cars, or walking/biking lanes with public transports?
Why are we sitting in front of stationary devices instead of walking around manipulating objects for work?
March 6, 2022
Autarky and innovation
A major tech company would like to own an entire meta-verse platform from hardware (servers, HMDs) to software (standards, libraries, applications), and plans to start reproducing the capabilities of existing components.
This sounds less innovative/fun than building on top of what is already out there (e.g., existing hardware and libraries), and innovation benefits more from collaboration than isolation, aside from the purpose of learning/experimentation (like this guy building chips in his parents’ garage).
SaaS and sanctions
A cloud-based software or data storage can be switched off at any moment to deny access to anyone, and is harder to pirate or circumvent than software sold as digital copies.