12/19/11: Robots Finally Take Over the World

So it’s finally happened: robots are taking over the world.

Remember when there was a collective excitement that robots would start doing the boring jobs of humans? We had visions of humanoid metallic creatures like Rosie from the Jetsons cooking our dinner and cleaning our house (awesome!). The reality is much more banal – extremely un-humanlike robotic arms moving widgets on assembly lines, the proliferation of ATMs and self check-outs at the grocery store, and of course, the pathetic attempt at a cleaning robot, the Roomba. Our robots don’t really look like the robots of science fiction, which is pretty disappointing, but for most of us, these robots make life a little easier. After all, who wants to actually go in a bank and get money?

Robots are just computers, which complete robotic taks in very uninteresting shells. (Think about how much cooler it would be if an ATM looked like a humanoid robot and when you stuck your card in its torso its eyes would light up and then money would shoot out of its hand!) Anyhow, if you were in the service industry (say a checker at the grocery store, a teller at a bank, a cleaning woman – ok the Roomba did not replace any maids!), robots are a different story: they are job stealers. But for those of us in the creative field, we never feared robots. Computers just made our lives better (does anyone want to go back to paste ups? No!). We could take comfort that our artistic vision and voice would be something that could not be replicated by technology. Well recently I found out that we are not so unique and armed with just enough data, robots (ok computers) can now write “unique” stories, and in very human individualistic language.

Yikes, I’m glad I’m not a reporter! Here’s the deal: this company, Narrative Science, figured out that if given enough data in a data set, it could set up an algoritihm to write a variety of stories with the same information but from different perspectives. So, for example, let’s say you gave this robot (computer) a bunch of stats from a baseball game, runs, bats, pitches, blah blah, the computer could generate different stories about the game for different news environments, e.g., a quick blurb as if it was a wire story, or a story that focuses on the home team as if it’s in a local newspaper, or an analysis of the game play-by-play. The computer then stores the stories it writes and makes sure it never duplicates itself thereby creating a more human approach.

So as I heard this, I felt scared. How long will it be before a client can go to a website, type in “brochure,” and blam, there’s the perfect brochure? Turns out stuff like this already exists for logo designs (see logomaker.com, yuck).

To be fair, I haven’t read any of the articles from this computer-generated source, and I can only hope that they lack the depth and dimension of a real human authored piece. But for now, I remain scared: the robot revolution is finally happening, and it doesn’t look cool at all! They aren’t cooking our dinners or cleaning our houses. They’re taking over the world.

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11/07/11: I make people cry

When I taught design in an associates degree program, I was known as either a total b%$ch or an awesome teacher (obviously this depended on which student you asked). I have little tolerance for laziness and even less for people wasting my time. On more than one occasion, I made a student cry. I’d like to say I felt bad about this, but I didn’t. Sometimes it takes a good swift kick in the pants to get students motivated. If I had to be the one to do so, so be it. However, this became a frustrating role to fulfill day after day. No one wants to always be the bad parent. So when I left that job I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I wouldn’t find anyone in cowering and weeping in a bathroom stall after a trademark Kerstin tirade.

Last week I was surprised to discover that I made someone cry again, especially since I no longer teach in an associates degree program. But this time, to my immense relief, it was tears of joy! I just wrapped up a project that the author spent over 15 years researching and writing. It’s a project that has involved the collaboration of many talented people and I was just one in the mix. But, I will say that the design of the piece came out spectacularly well and I was really proud. An assistant told me that when the author saw the design in print, she burst into tears because it looked so beautiful. Now that’s the kind of crying that doesn’t make you quit your job!

 

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10/07/11: Reality Check

I haven’t moved for 8 years.  This is strange because prior to my current living situation, I had been fairly nomadic, moving every 1-2 years since college.  Moving forces you to cleanse your belongings, staying means accumulating (see previous post about my aversion to accumulation…) So now we are moving and it means time to winnow! Hurrah, or ugh.

This is the first apartment I have owned. It was acquired through a long, drawn-out process that I will not bore you with, but suffice it to say we rented it first, and then bought it. Rent to buy is really the lazy way to purchase property because you never end up paring down. But now we are selling and I’ve been thrust into the strange real estate world of “staging.” Staging your home basically means packing up 2/3 of your stuff and pretending you live like an aesthete. You take your stuff to a storage facility and present the guise that your place is huge with loads of cabinet space. It’s a sham for potential buyers so they look around and think, well, if these people live here (and have children!), so can we.  I kind of feel sorry for our potential buyers, I hope they don’t have too many pots and pans. Not sorry enough to leave my stuff around, but still…

So this past weekend we began the arduous process of determining what must we live with and what can survive without for 3 or 4 months (sample, must have computer and couch, can probably live without rice cooker and cat tunnel). Our real estate agent was nonplussed with the amount of books we have. Apparently 4 floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books in every direction do not help sell an apartment, they just make it look cluttered. So one of my first orders of business was to pack my office books. It was kind of fun to visit some forgotten design and typography books (including this amazing one in the sidebar image—click to enlarge—this artist is an autistic man who visually categorizes and catalogues obsessively. The whole book is filled with categories like “The Trowels,” and then drawings of many kinds of trowels).

While it was exciting to visit my forgotten book friends, it was also really depressing because I was confronted with a sad reality check: I am an aspirational book buyer, or perhaps more simply said, I lie to myself and am lazy. I ambitiously purchase books thinking I will educate myself in my free time. Some examples of my folly: Sams Teach Yourself Flash MX ActionScript in 24 Hours (um, didn’t, never cracked), XML in a Weekend! … (neither weekend nor week day was this book ever opened) EPUB: Straight to the Point (read one chapter and felt eyes glaze over, read Us Weekly instead). Now the lesson here is probably that I shouldn’t buy instructional books, but I’m pretty obstinate in my resistance to this. Even though the Flash book is woefully out of date, and the other books will probably never be opened, I still packed them up with the dim resignation that if I ever get free time I will conquer them. In the mean time, there’s an Us Weekly just begging for my attention. I have priorities you know.

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08/23/11: Saying No

“No.” My son says it all the time. It often comes in string-form, as in nonononono! In fairness, I say it a lot to him too, as in “No sitting on the cat,” “No jumping off the kitchen table,” “No throwing your food,” etc. It’s a big part of our vocabulary these days.

So why can’t I say no to clients? The past few months I was crippled by the word no—it just would not exit my mouth. Need more revisions? Sure! Another project that I don’t have time to do? Yes! A troublesome client that pays too little for an insane amount of work? Sign me up!

When my son was born I made the decision that I would work 3 days a week and spend 2 with him. Due to my complete inability to say no, for the past 5 months I’ve been working 4 days a week and weekends. What happened? Why is it so easy to throw around that word at home but when it comes to work, it’s just the opposite?

So last month I made a decision. I would say no. And I did. To three projects. But now it’s August, the traditional slow month, and I’ve returned to yes again. Better catch me while you can…

Nonononono!

 

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