“Don’t measure yourself with someone else’s ruler”

Liberation from vanity metrics

Dear Friends,

It feels damn good to be home. After two weeks of work in Kenya followed by a week of winter flu and then two weeks of adventure in Japan, I arrived home a deflated, disoriented mess. I returned two weeks ago, but only now does my second cup of coffee fill me with my usual morning optimism. The worst of the blustery wet winter storms is behind us and warmer weather is tantalizingly close. This month will bring out the best of the Bay Area: impossibly green hills covered in orange poppies and yellow mustard, framed by a deep blue sky and wisps of luminescent clouds. Do you remember “Bliss,” the default wallpaper of Windows XP, the most viewed photograph in history? It was taken nearby in 1996 while the photographer was driving to visit his girlfriend. Everywhere you look these days: Bliss.

To create and to consider creativity

Is there a golden ratio of how much time we should spend each week creating versus considering the creativity of others? Writing versus reading? Painting versus viewing paintings? Could we try to calculate that percentage based on, say, how many books are published each year compared to how much time people spend reading those books? Or how many newsletters are published on Substack each day compared to the total number of time that people spend reading them?

The more time I spend writing one of these things, the less time you, lovely and busy readers, seem to spend reading. I don’t think it’s just me.

Over 3 million books are published in the U.S. each year. Traditional publishers warn on their website that “sales of traditionally published books are shockingly small.” The average published, printed book sells fewer than 300 print copies over its lifetime. Most books are only purchased by people who already follow the author online. (In other words, a book is just another format to disseminate words to the same people.) I’m still envious of my published friends, though they tell me unanimously that it wasn’t worth the effort. Writers spend years of sweat, blood, and exhaustion writing a book that few read and fewer remember.

David Sasaki @oso

I bet that Suzanne poured her heart and soul into writing this book and only a couple hundred people will read it. But 4.2M have seen this tweet. #FutureOfPublishing

Suzanne Young @suzanne_young

If you ever want to see a career low point, this is it. Crying my entire way home. https://t.co/aQ8LDMi8H5

It’s embarrassing to admit that I look at the stats. How many people opened the newsletter? How many links did they click? Do I have new subscribers? Is my engagement rate going up and down? I aspire to not care.

I’m even more embarrassed to admit how much time I spend writing. My book review of Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill must’ve taken me around 8 hours to finish; the 27 people who clicked on the link spent on average 3 minutes reading it. 🤷‍♂️

The stats tell me that the less time I spend writing — and frankly, the less of an effort I make — the more that people will read. “Know when to stop” could be one takeaway. “Know why you write” could be another.

For the past few months, I’ve been working with a writing coach. (The way to make money from writing, it seems, is to help other people write.) She’s great. Every month I send her one or two drafts, she sends me back her edits, and we talk about how to make them better. But more than anything, we talk about why I write. And so I came up with a list. Actually a few lists: why do I write in my journal? Why do I write long emails to friends? Why in god’s name do I still write on Twitter? And why do I write this newsletter?

1. To spark meaningful conversations with friends offline

2. To stay observant about how the world is changing

3. To build community by introducing my friends to each other

4. To recognize and engage with other people’s writing by drawing associations and sharing my reflections

5. To integrate my identity, interests, and observations from what can feel like an otherwise disjointed life

Oh right, I remind myself. I’m doing this to prompt meaningful conversations. To foster community. To stay curious. The vanity metrics collected by Substack don’t capture anything relevant to what I want to get out of this. And I am getting a lot out of it. So to all of you who have started a conversation with me based on something you’ve read here, thank you.

And if you haven’t, this is a zone of guilt-free creativity. We’ve never had more time to be creative and, perhaps, less time to consider each other’s creativity. A friend jokes that Substack’s business model depends on people feeling guilty for not reading their friends’ newsletters. (Except I’m pretty sure that she’s not joking.) I hope that’s not true for any of you.

As I’ve come to care less about how many people read and more about the five goals listed above, I’ve felt a liberating sense of calm and purpose. Perhaps there is a parallel between writing and cooking. Sure, some people become super famous and rich because they are great cooks. But that doesn’t mean the purpose of cooking is to become rich and famous. Becoming a better cook makes life more interesting, even if just for a few people.¹

🧰 An intriguing tool: Group chat with AI on Wavelength

I’m the default IT support person for most friends, family, and strangers in coffee shops.² And so I figured when starting out this newsletter, why not share a couple of useful tools and tricks? I wanted to share tools that I find truly useful, not just intriguing.

Then OpenAI released Chat-GPT, and every week since there has been new AI-based software to try out. So now I’m more inclined to share intriguing tools than useful ones. This week: Wavelength, which is in between a messaging app like WhatsApp and a collection of threads like Slack. It’s also the first messaging app that allows you to integrate ChatGPT as a participant in a group chat. Why would you want an AI chatbot to join your text exchange with friends? I’m not entirely sure, but that’s what makes it intriguing. (I do wish my team had it as a reference librarian while we were working virtually on our last 5-year strategy refresh.) If you’d like to try it out, let me know. In the screenshot below, Luis and I asked ChatGPT to settle a recurring debate from our podcast.

📧 The future of email

(h/t Claudio)

🎤 The future of JAY-Z. (We’re all immortal now.)

Last week I shared the viral AI-produced images of Trump getting arrested and the Pope in puffy jacket. When you stop to pay close attention to those images, it quickly becomes apparent that they aren’t real. The magic of AI depends on the fact that we rarely pay close attention.

But the video below is different. It is a rap verse by JAY-Z, except that it’s not JAY-Z at all. A 44-year-old producer from France used AI software (we don’t know which) to create a voice model of JAY-Z rapping and his partner J. Medeiros wrote the lyrics. This is the first time I’ve seen or heard something produced by AI that I can hardly distinguish from the real thing, even after listening several times.

JAY-Z’s longtime producer Young Guru is pissed that now anyone can produce a JAY-Z track without needing access to JAY-Z. (Ironically, he shares his thoughts with an AI-produced portrait that makes him look 20 years younger. 😂)

Last year, Amazon announced that Alexa could create a voice model for anyone with just a minute of recorded speech. With a single voicemail recording, someone can replicate your voice and use that voice to impersonate you in all the ways you can imagine.

It will be interesting to see how copyright law evolves. Hollywood production companies are suing AI companies that have been trained on their content while also adopting those same tools in order to cut costs. Already, James Earl Jones has licensed his Darth Vader voice to be AI-replicated for future Star Wars films.

We can only assume that future generations will if they are interested, be able to have interactive conversations with a replica of our voice trained on all the content we’ve shared online. If our species survives long enough, will our AI replicas make a good impression on our great-great-great grandchildren? That’s a question for another newsletter!

Next week: more thoughts on depopulation, the effect of AI on jobs, and migration.

Until then, have a great week!

David

1. I suppose the obvious difference between cooking and writing is that everyone loves to eat, whereas a diminishing minority (my tribe!) seem to enjoy reading.

2. I assume that I’m repaying the karmic debt for the misbehaving of my previous incarnation.