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"People said this about cameras. About digital cameras. About digital photo editing software."

Also about desktop publishing.

Remember all the printers (ie. people working in the printing industry operating printing machines) that were put out of a job when you could just buy a (electronic) printer for your home computer and just print whatever you wanted yourself?

People were wringing their hands about that too back then... now we take it for granted that we can instantly print whatever we want whenever we want, without having to pay an expensive professional to do it for us (something most people couldn't afford).

Has it resulted in more junk being printed? Absolutely. But it also let people print all sorts of fantastic not to mention useful things that would almost never have seen the light of day without cheap and easy access to home printers.

The xerox copier was similarly revolutionary... as was the printing press itself, which put a lot of scribes out of business.

Photoshop put a lot of airbrush artists out of business, and who does copy and paste with physical glue and paper anymore?

As with photography, printers, copiers and photoshop, artists who embrace this technology will be able to use it to enhance their creativity and speed up their creative process.

There'll be a lot more competition, a lot more junk but also a lot more fantastic art that we can't even dream of yet.




> [...] and who does copy and paste with physical glue and paper anymore?

When I was finishing high school in the early 2000s, we still had teachers who made worksheets that way.

I remember one history teacher in particular. She used a photocopier to get sections from books, cut-and-paste them together, and then use the photocopier again to make the final sheets to distribute to the students.

I was very surprised at the time, but also admired the ingenuity. The process is much more physical than using a PC.




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