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Comment by CapitalistCartr | Hacker News Reader

What if the new capital is creativity? The new model for "work" is OSS? Replace money with creativity in the definitions of capitalism. Material possessions are socially discounted; creating new designs, new originals the new currency to excel.

If so, the first classes we now cut in schools: advanced mathematics, chorus, art, music, etc. are the areas we need to emphasize the most.

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This still doesn't sound fair. It's still an economy based on luck (those fortunate enough to be creative types) in a land of abundance. In a land of scarcity, prioritizing efficiency and rewarding based on getting things done (even or especially creative things) makes sense, but not if robots are producing all the necessities of life.

It makes sense that creative work will continue to be rewarded, but something more fair (in terms of human dignity, not in terms of meritocracy) will be needed.

Read Veale's The Creativity Myth. What you call "creativity" can be automated much like anything else. Emphasizing creativity would work for an extra couple of decades at most, so there's no sense in building, say, brand new educational institutions around it. Check out the N.Y. Times article announcing the creation of the Camp Fire Girls (co-invented by Gulick, a co-inventor of basketball) - there was a panic then about automation and the problem was not solved, it has just been continually deferred as the pace of change increasingly wreaks havoc on our ability to prepare children for adulthood. When the buzzwords of today's companies are "innovation" and "disruption", you may translate them to "unpredictability", "chaos", and "social insecurity". No one even tries to design to rightfully earn a place in a human being's short life cycle - Silicon Valley designers often enough end up making dopamine squirrels for poor toddlers on touch screens. The designers then heed warnings against giving their own children screens, ban TV's in the home, and send the kids to an unplugged school. Fewer are able to escape the swathe of the indefatigueable machine. Have we made some thing more clever than ourselves? Yes and no, but the no shrinks. Perhaps instead some could follow Kant's idea of treating humans solely as ends, never as means, a sort of human-centered chauvinism or "humanism". Or one can conclude that if machines lack human flaws, and out perform homo sapiens at their supposed virtues, they deserve the future. New genders, new sexualities, new body images, these might get some attention economy for a few, but they must be rewarded by a mass of bored, a creativity economy is the fame and long tail economy we already have. The assimilation of new distinctiveness will approach instantaneousness. And computers can be reformatted much more easily because they have no "self" to worry about or reinforce.

Edit since edit feature fails: Read Veale's The Creativity Myth. What you call "creativity" can be automated much like anything else. Emphasizing creativity would work for an extra couple of decades at most, so there's no sense in building, say, brand new educational institutions around it. Check out the N.Y. Times article announcing the creation of the Camp Fire Girls (co-invented by Gulick, a co-inventor of basketball) - there was a panic then about automation and the problem was not solved, it has just been continually deferred as the pace of change increasingly wreaks havoc on our ability to prepare children for adulthood. When the buzzwords of today's companies are "innovation" and "disruption", you may translate them to "unpredictability", "chaos", and "social insecurity". No one even tries to design in order to righteously earn a place in a human being's short life cycle - Silicon Valley designers often enough end up making dopamine squirters for poor toddlers on touch screens. The designers may heed warnings against giving their own children screens, ban TV's in the home, and send the kids to an unplugged school, but fewer are able to escape the swathe of the indefatigueable machine, or have any coherent and ever-presebt religion or philosophy. Have we made some thing more clever than ourselves? Yes and no, but the no shrinks, not only as the machine gets stronger, but as it weakens us. Some instead some could follow Kant's idea of treating humans solely as ends, never as means, a sort of human-centered chauvinism or "humanism". Or one can conclude that if machines lack human flaws, and out perform homo sapiens at their supposed virtues, they deserve the future. New genders, new sexualities, new body images, these might get some of the attention economy for a few, but they must be rewarded inequally is a mass of the bored; a creativity economy is the fame / long tail economy we already have. The production and assimilation of new distinctiveness will approach instantaneousness. And computers can be reformatted much more easily because they have no "self" to worry about or reinforce. People just won't learn fast enough.

Camp Fire cite:http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=2&res=9F00E...

Creativity can be automated? Yes, you could automate parts of it if you wanted.

However, you're missing a couple of points. Firstly, creativity is enjoyable. Not because of some grand need to push culture forward and/or keep people entertained, just because it's fun to create.

Secondly, you're implying that culture will move in a unified direction, or that we'll all consume the same culture. We won't. There's too much of it to take it all in, and there's no reason to suggest that all tastes will align. Culture will grow chaotically just like it always has, the main difference is that we'll have more time to explore it.

This is what happens in the post scarcity society of Iain M. Banks's Culture series. No one has to work, but the ones that do devote themselves to intricate creative pursuits or the study of some highly obscure field. Attention and social capital is the currency of success.

Creativity may be good for human satisfaction and happiness, but it, too, will likely fall to automation.

More and more I'm convinced that computational creativity will be able to better and more finely translate resonant emotion into consumable art than humans.

In high school I read a book about this idea, "The Creative Economy", solidified my decision to go into a creative and knowledge based industry.

Are you trying to suggest that I could pay my rent with a song?

What if you could live without paying rent? What if all your basic needs were met without needing to earn money? What would you do with your time then?

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