Blog: analogue

In March of 2020, the world went largely virtual. With no way to go out and live normal day-to-day lives in the physical sense, the digital world took over – from Zoom calls with family members to social storms around Netflix shows, replacing the workplace ‘watercooler moment’.

Drake has had perhaps one of the most publicly up-and-down relationships with generative AI. There was the AI Drake music generator, which he was dead set against. Then there was ‘Heart on My Sleeve’, the AI-generated mix using the voices of Drake and The Weeknd by a creator known as ghostwriter, where Drake again expressed displeasure at the use of his voice.

The jury is very much still out on generative AI and its copyright obligations. Yet the Pandora’s box of AI-generated content has already been opened, and there is no going back. For a world which has become almost entirely reliant on digital content– be it song mp3s or job applications – the implications are widespread and the challenge is simply one of volume.

It is now 2024 (yikes), and New Year’s resolutions are making the rounds. Anecdotally, at least seven of us at MIDiA have resolved to go more analogue this year. More broadly, many people, alongside the traditional attempts to go to the gym more or do ‘Dry January’, seem to be opting to cut down on their social media and broader smartphone usage.

Spoiler alert, to the disappointment of some: it is not going to be NFTs. Scarcity, real or artificial, is what drives value. The diamond industry is perhaps the most obvious example of managed scarcity driving high-margin revenues .