Here’s something that connects a lot of the moral injury and just awkward conversations that I have as a digital artist in the 2020s:
A concept, tool, or field of enquiry was once a broad possibility space, explored by folks with lots of different perspectives and interests. A big pond that you can swim around in around fairly freely, without feeling a strong pull in one direction or another. Some currents lead you closer to capital, some lead you further away. Participants imagine the space they’re exploring in lots of different ways. Some schools look askance at others, temporary alliances and exchanges form and dissipate, activity ebbs and flows.
Then some arsehole with a lot of capital notices that this field could be useful to him - typically, he can use it to justify the value of some technology in which he has invested heavily, despite it being highly inefficient and having no demonstrable purpose. This investment probably now looks like several massive datacentres full of GPUs. I think of this arsehole as Dodgy Derek, because I picture him as a kind of Only Fools and Horses wheeler-dealer who owns a garage full of useless crap that’s poisoning the environment and needs to find a way to make money out of it.
So, Dodgy Derek comes along into this wide open possibility space, persuades his friends to invest some of their cash into his venture, and puts a load of resources into system. Immediately, the possibility space starts to collapse. Whirlpools form, and things that used to be distinct are now pulled into each other. Dodgy Derek’s garage of crap poisons the pond, it smells really bad, and it starts to attract attention.
It’s at this point that people start asking you about the new massively-hyped thing. And you have nothing positive to say about it at this point. Perhaps you vaguely remember when this was a much broader, vaguer, and more interesting space, but you don’t really want to say that because it sounds snooty. People will hear “I was into this before it was cool” but that’s not what this is - you were into it when it wasn’t a horrifying churning morass of toxic crap. You share a couple of points about why people should probably stay away from the nasty pond, and maybe the other person hears you or maybe they get defensive, or maybe they label you technophobic. “But think of the possibilities” they say, as if you haven’t been thinking about the possibilities for a very long time, as if you haven’t seen Dodgy Derek’s antics actively destroy most of those possibilities.
In the process of all of this, it becomes apparent just how differently your fellow swimmers were imagining the pond. Some people were there to explore the various interesting things living in the pond, and some were there to become the biggest fish in it. After you’ve left the pond, it’s mostly those bigger fish who stay behind. They think they’re going to keep eating the smaller fish and getting bigger and bigger. They think the naysayers are just resentful because they didn’t become a bigger fish. But the pond is toxic. Why do they want to be the biggest fish in a toxic pond? Why would you keep going in a space that has no life in it?
