Sinking in

“Petals yet to fall”, by Robert Cornelius.

Well, the summer days of swimming are certainly coming to an end as the days grow shorter and the chill reality of winter starts sinking in. This afternoon, while writing the newsletter, I was watching incessant waves of rain lash against the house. Looking out to the woods through the window was like looking at a wet smear.

Time to get the woollies out.

Welcome to Vóg.

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On the Home Front

It’s been eerily quiet on the home front this week. After Christmas, we had both kids home for a few months. One left, only to be immediately replaced by a constant stream of visitors from Ireland and parts of New Zealand, many of them staying for three weeks or more. There were also visits from several extended family members - one of the more interesting consequences of ‘inheriting’ a tribe.

Before my son left to start his first full-time job since leaving university, it was amusing to see his excitement at getting holiday pay over Easter (Dad, they’re paying me … and I’m not even there!!). Honestly, it’s enough to make you feel old and cynical.

On the employment front, we’ve also been hosting a second cousin who’s travelled to Wellington for a new job and needed a place to stay until she became familiar with the city and was able to find an apartment. We’re fortunate enough to have the space to help family and host friends and catching up with them is always fun but it was a huge distraction from my work. Now, I’m selfishly relieved to have the house to ourselves once again.

Until the next lot turn up of course.

Sheesh!

Creator challenges, AI, and the Death of the Internet (in its current form)

This is a short article I wrote relating to various patterns I’ve been picking up on the internet over the past two years. The subjects covered are huge in scope and I couldn’t really explain them or do them justice unless I did a full-on analytical report. As a result, I simply fell back on the concept of ‘enshitification’ instead. All of these developments have huge ramifications for small scale creatives like myself but I haven’t gone into detail on that here.

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There’s a very good writer called Cory Doctorow who’s one of the few strategic thinkers I’ve come across in terms of the internet and technology. He’s also one of the few public writers I’ve encountered who understands that, despite all the grandiose promises and the hype, the effectiveness of technology will always be dictated by human behaviour.

One of Doctorow’s more interesting (and amusing) concepts was one he espoused back in 2023 (you might have come across this before) called “Enshitification’. This essentially covers the issue of commercial tech platform decay and can be summarised as follows (this is actually the first line from his article):

Here is how platforms die:

1. First, they are good to their users;

2. then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers;

3. finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

4. Then, they die.

Over the past two years, this concept has been bobbing away in the shadows at the back of my head as I’ve had an increasing sense of reaching an important tipping point in terms of the internet functionality. Nowadays, to put it bluntly, in western (English speaking) societies, the internet has predominantly been reduced to services provided by – and controlled by – a handful of large, mostly American multinational monopolies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, pre-Musk Twitter, etc.).

That situation has arisen predominantly because:

1. there’s been no real largescale competition in social media/tech development from other western countries; and

2. there’s been an absence of any meaningful regulation of internet based commercial service provision in America over the past twenty years

Over time, this has gradually led to an environment where those monopolistic technology companies (the tech giants) controlling the main flow of western internet use, have increasingly commercialised their services (often to the detriment of their users). For example …

Even worse, some of these tech giants have also allowed their services to be weaponised by political interests as subtle – and, these days, far less subtle - propaganda machines.

Step two of the ‘Enshitification concept’ … tick! √

To date, as far as I know, only Europe (through the General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR], the United Kingdom [through the Online Safety Act 2023], and Australia (through the Australian Privacy Act [APA]) have put any kind of comprehensive frameworks in place to protect their citizens (I’m unsure about the Canadian protections so if you’re up to date on that, let me know).

Given the large multi-million dollar fines the tech giants have had to pay due to their uncompetitive and harmful behaviour in those jurisdictions, they’ve since allied themselves completely to the current American administration in the hopes of undermining European regulation (although, of late, that seems to be backfiring).

To be honest, you could write screeds on that topic alone but over last year or so, with the advent of AI, a complex situation has become a hundred times more complicated.

Sadly, now the tech giants have not only waded deep into step two of the ‘Enshitification concept’, they’re entering the untested depths of step three (they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

To make money from the new AI technology, the tech giants have recently shifted their predatory gaze from their’ users’ to their ‘business customers’ (the artists and creatives who’s original work forms the basis of the content people spread on their platforms). As a result, the recent development of AI products by the individual tech giants has involved the wholesale plagiarism of other people’s work.

Facebook, for example, infamously bought a whole bunch of books, images and albums from the illegal pirate site LibGen which they then used as the basis to develop their AI systems (they needed creative images, music, and particularly books for their quality writing, style, expression, and long-form narration to train them). Rather than pay the owners of those creative works (as any normal business would do), Facebook instead decided to pay the people who’d stolen them so they could appropriate the resources for a fraction of the cost. They know they’re not going to be regulated or penalised for this in their home jurisdiction (the US) and they’ve assumed they can probably get away with it in other jurisdictions too.

Pro and Cons of AI from a creative perspective

I have to admit, when it comes to AI Overall, I’m pretty agnostic. I can certainly see the exciting creative benefits of the technology (see later in the newsletter) but history has repeatedly demonstrated that if a new technology isn’t regulated carefully (and AI isn’t), it invariably blows back in our faces with huge consequences for society. I also think that as a fundamental principle of fairness and societal function, those people whose work is used to train an AI model should be fairly compensated for that. Given that my own books are being used to train Amazon’s new AI, for example, I probably have some bias in this regard, of course but I’d prefer the larger proportion of my fee go to the creators rather then the tech giants.

For me, a lot of this came to a head last month when I received three different newsletters from other professional creatives (writers/artists) that I follow – where, in each case, those creatives expressed growing distrust in the tech giants and their platforms.

One – an artist – was so disgusted at the proliferation of work he’d been developing, that he went back to creating original works in non-digital form. This was because he’d discovered the AI tool he’s been using to date, automatically shared his work worldwide before he’d even finished creating a final product.

Beginning of a new era. Writing first drafts of all my scripts long-hand in an effort to stay off screens, give the finger to AI, and enjoy the world of fountain pens and all the ink and paper options that go along with it.

Another creative (a writer), renowned for his early use of tech wrote as follows:

Because one angle on AI is that it’s a listening service that shoves your every digitally recorded thought into spreadsheets that are then compiled and sold back to you - and everyone else - as a product.

And everything from social media to the open web is being scraped to fill those spreadsheets, right? We have to choose what to put out there now. The distrust goes deep.

Another writer, who’s far ahead of me in terms of his understanding of the ramifications of these issues, wrote:

These fuckers want to feast on every phrase, every conversation, every note, to make their shitty generative AI conversation software a little more verbose; because it will continue to churn out slop and misinformation at epic rates but it can learn to further plagiarize us.

I mean, you can dismiss all this by saying these people are cranks or Luddites or whatever, but they’re not purists by any means. As professionals, they use tech all the time and have experimented and dabbled in AI tools as well but … and here’s the most important point … they do not like what they’re seeing. They’re not willing to use tech giant tools or platforms that pretend to offer benefit while at the same time undermining their ability to work and make a living.

Given the anger and distrust I’m now starting to see everywhere, it seems inevitable to me that unless there are some serious changes, the internet tech giants are charging straight into step four of the ‘Enshitification concept’ …

‘Then they die.’

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Currently In Production

With all the various distractions and interruptions and the relief of releasing FIONN: The Betrayal, I’ve taken it easy this month on the writing front and spent some time working on different aspects of my creative space. .

(1) BEARA: Cry of the Banshee [currently at 7,000 words]

After so many years writing ‘Fionn’ (six books) and ‘Liath Luachra’ (5 books and a novelette), I was getting desperate for a change so it was nice to get back into the Beara narratives again.

It’s interesting to return to characters I haven’t written for such a long time but, to be honest, when I’m writing, from a creative sense it feels as though I’m walking in boots that are slightly ill-fitting. Despite the fact that I’m completely familiar with the characters and have an in depth understanding of their motivations, it still feels as though I haven’t succeeded in getting under their skin as yet.

That’s not overly bothering me at the moment. It’s still very early in the development of the novel and, instinctively, I know that once I get back into the Beara mindset, it’ll flow far more easily.

(2) Irish Mythology 101 [42,000 words]

I spent the writing time I had in April working on Beara, so over May, I’ll be focussed uniquely on this work. I have some meetings relating to the final product in Ireland later in the year so I want to have a relatively decent draft to bring along to that.

There’s not much more I want to add on this work at the moment apart from the fact that I’m still trying to come up with a decent concept for the cover image (i.e. not the working image below that I’ve been using). I really don’t want to use a ‘fantasy’ style or any of the usual ‘Celtic Studies’ type styles either. More reflection required on that, evidently.

(3) Other Projects in the Works

(A) Audio

Those in the ‘paid’ followers group will have received an audio version of Liath Luachra: The Consent in the mail last month. This was my first attempt at narrating an audiobook (using AI technology to clone my voice so that I can narrate my own works).

Essentially, although this turned out to be quite a lot of work and it took a long time, I learned enough from the process to start working on an audio version of FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma. This is going to be a bit of a process however as all the tech is very much designed around the English language. Unfortunately, the Irish language includes a number of sounds that simply don’t exist in English (and vice versa) and which can’t really be reproduced phonetically. Given the number of Irish names, placenames and Gaelic cultural constructs/concepts I use throughout my works, that poses a particular challenge for me.

In any case, the work has been initiated and, if its works to my satisfaction, I’ll probably make the complete series available in audio. Don’t expect any announcements on a finished product for a few months, though. If possible, I’ll include a taster in next month’s newsletter.

(b) Video

I’m also in the process of playing around with video at the moment. To be honest, although this was fun, I’m not entirely convinced that it’s practical mechanism for future story projects. I think there’s some potential in there but it’s still very early days and there’s a lot I need to get my head around.

The following is an image of Liath Luachra (from the later Fionn mac Cumhaill Series) that I used for a tiny promotional snippet. The full piece - with some analysis and comment on future plans - is available in the ‘paid’ section of the newsletter.

(C) Direct Store

I’m also in the process of setting up an independent online store where I can sell what I want to sell and provide people on this newsletter with output I can’t provide via the likes of Amazon/Apple etc.

To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed working with large, tax-dodging, global corporates for my creative work. Over the years, they’ve become increasingly predatory and harder to deal with (no doubt, you’ll have picked up my thoughts on that in the earlier section of the newsletter). As a result, my overall objective is to separate myself from them to a much larger degree (if not completely) and this online store will be the first step in that direction.

Hopefully, I’ll have some news to share on that next month.

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Other Items of Note

Cairde

Twisted Lane at the ‘Cairde’ Festival. This Sligo-based arts festival actually ran from the 5th to the 7th of July so I missed it last year. I’d been hoping to catch it as I’ve enjoyed Twisted Lane (a Spectacle Theatre performance company) works in the past. I really like this image of theirs.

Another Input for Liath Luachra 5

Apparently, the Hungry People ate figs! An interesting article on a recent find in Ireland. You can read about that HERE.

Sale!

I should probably have mentioned that to celebrate the release of FIONN: The Betrayal, I rejigged the cover of the first book in the series and put it on sale in the UK and the US where you can currently get it for 0.99c/0.99p ($4.99).

The price of the second book (FIONN: Traitor of Dún Baoiscne) has also been dropped to $2.99 ($4.99). I’ll probably revert to the old prices in the week or so.

You can find the links here:

FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma (UK)

FIONN: Defence of Ráth Bládhma (US)

If you haven’t tried any of my works yet, this is probably the best place to start.

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The End

Well, that’s all I’ve got for April and I’m not entirely sure what May is going to bring. Either way, I’m looking forward to returning to full creative mode next week.

I’ll tell you all about the results next month.

This month’s ‘paid’ section gets a look at my video efforts and my thoughts on how I might use that in future. There’s also a bit in there on another project I’m working on.

Until next month, then …

Slán go fóill!

Brian