> Did Photoshop kill graphic artists? Did film kill theatre?
To a first approximation, the answer to both of these is "yes".
There is still a lot of graphic design work out there (though generative AI will be sucking the marrow out of it soon), but far less than there used to be before the desktop publishing revolution. And the kind of work changed. If "graphic design" to you meant sitting at a drafting table with pencil and paper, those jobs largely evaporated. If that was a kind of work that was rewarding and meaningful to you, that option was removed for you.
Theatre even more so. Yes, there are still some theatres. But the number of people who get to work in theatrical acting, set design, costuming, etc. is a tiny tiny fraction of what it used to be. And those people are barely scraping together a living, and usually working side jobs just to pay their bills.
> it feels a bit like mourning the loss of punch cards when terminals showed up.
I think people deserve the right to mourn the loss of experiences that are meaningful and enjoyable to them, even if those experiences turn out to no longer be maximally economically efficient according to the Great Capitalistic Moral Code.
Does it mean that we should preserve antiquated jobs and suffer the societal effects of inefficiency without bound? Probably not.
But we should remember that the ultimate goal of the economic system is to enable people to live with meaning and dignity. Efficiency is a means to that end.
But the number of people who get to work in theatrical acting, set design, costuming
I think this ends up being recency bias and terminology hairsplitting, in the end. The number of people working in theatre mask design went to nearly zero quite a while back but we still call the stuff in the centuries after that 'theatre' and 'acting'.
I think "theatre" is a fairly well-defined term to refer to live performances of works that are not strictly musical. Gather up all of the professions necessary to put those productions on together.
The number of opportunities for those professions today is much smaller than it was a hundred years ago before film ate the world.
There are only so many audience members and a night they spend watching a film or watching TV or playing videogames is a night they don't spend going to a play. The result is much smaller audiences. And with fewer audiences, there are fewer plays.
Maybe I should have been clearer that I'm not including film and video production here. Yes, there are definitely opportunities there, though acting for a camera is not at all the same experience as acting for a live audience.
Right but modern theatre is pretty new itself. The number of people involved in performance for the enjoyment of others has spiked, err, dramatically. My point is that making this type argument seems to invariably involve picking some narrow thing and elevating it to a true and valuable artform deserving special consideration and mourning. Does it have a non-special-pleading variety?
Well, I didn't pick theatre and Photoshop as narrow things, the parent comment did.
I'm saying an artform that is meaningful to its participants and allows them to make a living wage while enriching the lives' of others should not be thoughtlessly discarded in slave to the almighty god of economic efficiency. It's not special pleading because I'd apply this to all artforms and all sorts of work that bring people dignity and joy.
I'm not a reactionary luddite saying that we should still be using oil streetlamps so we don't put the lamplighters out of work. But at the same time I don't think we should automatically and carelessly accept the decimation of human meaning and dignity at the altar of shareholder value.
I'm not a reactionary luddite saying that we should still be using oil streetlamps so we don't put the lamplighters out of work.
No doubt. A few years ago there was some HN post with a video of the completely preposterous process of making diagrams for Crafting Interpreters. I didn't particularly need the book nor do I have room for it but I bought it there and then to support the spirit of all-consuming wankery. So I'm not here from Mitch & Murray & Dark Satanic Mills, Inc either. At the same time, I'm not sold on the idea niche art is the source of human dignity that needs societal protection, not because I'm some ogre but because I'm not convinced that's how actual art actually arts or provides meaning or evolves.
> the idea niche art is the source of human dignity that needs societal protection
I mean... have you looked around at the world today? We've got pick at least some sources of human dignity to protect because there seem to be fewer and fewer left.
They aren't, broadly speaking, interesting forms of expression so the fact you can draw some trivial string match analogy doesn't seem worth much discussion.
That was my point. The fact that we call people wearing CGI suits hopping around green room, and people on stage playing a character for a crowd, both acting doesn't account for the fact that doing one doesn't mean you can do the other.
To a first approximation, the answer to both of these is "yes".
There is still a lot of graphic design work out there (though generative AI will be sucking the marrow out of it soon), but far less than there used to be before the desktop publishing revolution. And the kind of work changed. If "graphic design" to you meant sitting at a drafting table with pencil and paper, those jobs largely evaporated. If that was a kind of work that was rewarding and meaningful to you, that option was removed for you.
Theatre even more so. Yes, there are still some theatres. But the number of people who get to work in theatrical acting, set design, costuming, etc. is a tiny tiny fraction of what it used to be. And those people are barely scraping together a living, and usually working side jobs just to pay their bills.
> it feels a bit like mourning the loss of punch cards when terminals showed up.
I think people deserve the right to mourn the loss of experiences that are meaningful and enjoyable to them, even if those experiences turn out to no longer be maximally economically efficient according to the Great Capitalistic Moral Code.
Does it mean that we should preserve antiquated jobs and suffer the societal effects of inefficiency without bound? Probably not.
But we should remember that the ultimate goal of the economic system is to enable people to live with meaning and dignity. Efficiency is a means to that end.