Tag Archives: technology

Generation Spirit

When did I become political? (My stance against AI-generation tools.)

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When I started down this publishing venture, I said to myself that there were two topics I would avoid posting about on my feeds. Politics and religion. If you want the lynch mob to come after you, those two topics are the most efficient way to do it. And for over a decade, I have successfully sat on the fence with almost every topic out there.

Sure, there were times when I piped up to say that "enough was enough" when it came to the bullying that was happening in certain corners of the social media networks. But for the most part, I never really took a stance that could be considered "political" on any of my public profiles.

Until now.

In the last year, so many things have happened within the publishing industry, endangering the livelihoods of writers, editors, publicists, publishers… basically, every single human in the industry.

I'm talking about the war against artificial intelligence (AI)… and it's not even AI's fault. The ones to blame for this AI war are the humans who are deliberately taking action that misuses and abuses the technology. And because it is such new technology, those wanting to be honest in this industry have no way to truly fight against what is happening—except to go public and say that it's not okay.

What is happening is far from okay. Copyright of creatives everywhere is being abused in the training of AI-creation tools. The good names of several creatives are being trashed because of false AI-generated works that appear using their names. Creatives are being forced to choose between their future earning potential and that paycheck right now, because publishers are wanting to use their works to train AI, so the publisher can create more works like the creative's work, but without the creative's input. And to top it all off, the technology at the heart of this mess is also being compromised because of the shady practices of the ones looking to abuse the technology.

It's not okay, and I'm publicly taking a stance against the use of AI-generation tools within publishing.

In today's post, I am breaking my promise to myself about political posts on my public platform, because this is one topic that I can't stay silent on.

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#DigitalDetox Challenges, Lockdowns and Teenagers… Oh My!

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I'm at the end of the third week of my #DigitalDetox challenge adventure... and talk about adventures. Things got totally derailed in ways that were expected, just not this soon. And it made doing the little challenges within my little #DigitalDetox coloring book all the more important. Because it gave me time to breathe!

So... This week, not only was I attempting to finish last week's challenge of writing someone a letter, but I had this week's challenge of spend 30 minutes looking at the clouds. AND my home country of New Zealand decided to go into Level 4 Lockdown in the middle of all of this, thrusting two teenagers into home learning situations again.

Yeah... Life is always filled with unexpected turns.

So... Here's how the week went.

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#DigitalDetox Challenge 2: Write someone a letter

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So... It turns out that not only am I obsessed with minimizing the influence that social media and the internet have on my daily life, but I'm also incredibly busy that I forget to take just a few short minutes to do the simple things.

This week's #DigitalDetox challenge was to write someone a letter. You would think that for a writer, this one would be simple. But the truth was a bitter pill to take.

I had colored in the picture for the challenge, and... Yeah... Um... That is sort of where it ended. I had allowed my busy schedule and my interactions with others to take over, and when it came time to recharge... Well... I binge watched Friends on Netflix.

So, there were a few lessons to learn from this week's experience.

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#DigitalDetox Challenge 1: Walk with no technology

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I'll admit it: I'm a little obsessed with my over usage of social media and the internet in general. It goes beyond a need to understand everything regarding security on the internet. It's mainly because I know how much of a time suck that social media can be.

And my obsession isn't just because of myself alone. I see within my husband and children how technology (namely the games and Netflix) are designed to be additive. And when I see my family struggling to get enough sleep because of the addictive nature of devices, I'm going to take active steps to try to do something out it.

I have tried multiple times to put the family on Device-Free days, only for the idea to fail abysmally. And in all my attempts, there is one thing that I have learned: I can't control the actions of the other adults (and even though my youngest is 16 years old, she's effectively an adult). BUT, I can make other adults feel guilty when they see the results of the minimal device usage life.

For that to have the impact I want it to have, I need to get my own dependance on devices and the internet under control.

To that end, I have started a #DigitalDetox challenge.

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Is the next generation really that disconnected?

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There is no doubt about it: the world that I grew up in is gone. It was filled with kids having water fights in the streets, our house being the place where all the hoses seemed to converge. It was bikes and bells, and doing what we could to get the ball away from the dog. It was riding the Tonka toy fashioned to look like a Jeep down the driveway (mom rode that toy down the driveway too). And it was pen pals with snail mail and waiting for the postman to come.

Pay phone

Who remembers these? They used to be on every street corner. Now, you don't seem them at all. At least, that's the case in Christchurch, New Zealand.

You were at the mercy of whatever the TV networks decided to air. You didn’t like what was on, you either lumped it or read a book. Phone conversations were scratchy at best and, in some areas, party lines were still a thing. There were phone boxes on every street corner, and cash paid for everything.

The concept of cell phones didn’t exist in my youth. Car phones were for the rich only. The internet was this unheard-of thing, and modems required you to place the handset from the phone onto this chunky device with pulses and high-pitched noises going down the phone line.

Video calls and streaming your favorite show to a handheld device wirelessly was something seen only in science fiction. Genetic modification of human embryos was the source of freaky war storylines from Star Trek. Yet, here we are.

Science fiction has become science fact. (And yes, genetic modification of human embryos is now science fact.)

Yeah, the world I grew up in is definitely gone, but there will always be those who wish we could go back to the way things were. Their reasoning is often linked to some comment as to how out of touch with the rest of the world the next generation has become—how the next generation is so caught up in an internet world that they're missing the life in the local neighborhoods. In some aspects, I agree with them. But while I would love to cling to those go-outside aspects of the world that have vanished without me even noticing, there are other aspects of this new internet-based world that I have openly embraced and would never look back.

But these changes that I see in my world and in myself, was it really just technology that brought them on? Have we, as a society, really changed all that much?

Has our new level of technology brought about a level of disconnect between the generations that wasn't there before?

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