It’s 8:10pm as I type this. I bet you thought I had given up after one day…
Welcome to Day Two of 1,000 Word Spring! If you missed yesterday’s opener as I thought through my future on Substack, I’ll link it here… I briefly talked about how I loathe self promotion and would only do it occasionally, but then neglected to take the golden opportunity to self promote with that post. So, here we go. If you enjoy what I’m offering and think someone you know would like it too, please share! Now on to the goods: you need to be vintage maxing.
I typically don’t listen to a lot of music, because I guess I’m not very cultured. But I’ve recently been using a cool new feature from Spotify either in the car or while cutting the grass every Friday. Allegedly, it’s a listening assistant powered by Artificial Intelligence that mixes up some of the music you’ve recently listened to with some new stuff you might like, or it may even take you back to some songs you couldn’t get enough of during a certain time period, like your senior year of high school. Apparently, I listened to a ton of pop country during my senior year. Oh, the memories. Every six or seven songs, the AI’s voice breaks into the music to recap the last handful of songs and set you up for the next handful, talk about the artists, what it likes about them, and how popular the songs are or were.
Isn’t that cool? What a neat little idea. Amazing the things technology can do! Or… Maybe that’s something that’s been done before. The AI’s name is DJ, by the way, and this is really no different than the art that’s been perfected over many years by live DJs on the radio. It is nice to be able to skip the songs you don’t like, which is of course something you can’t do on the radio. It is cool that it gives you a good mixture of current stuff AND throwbacks tailored specifically to your listening history, which is something you can’t really find on a radio station. It’s a nice little changeup for your listening habits, but I’m not so sure that it’s better than a real radio DJ in the long run. The human touch is missing, and I think that speaks to a larger piece of the discussion about artificial intelligence. There’s been a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence will change the world, how it will help or how it will hurt, and how it might eliminate your job. You might have heard of ChatGPT, and you might have been amazed at what it can do, or maybe you were just frightened.
ChatGPT can do a lot of things. Most artificial intelligence tools can, and there’s plenty of reason for concern. I’m not the one to publish those opinions, but I do think this little bit about DJ from Spotify is instructive. Regarding the creative world, there are some things that machines just won’t be able to replicate, because creative things require a human touch in order to be unique. It’s possible a lot of artificial intelligence tools will just end up being cheap imitations of the human touch.
This got me thinking about other vintage things that should come back into style, and this video from Brett Cooper over at The Comments Section hits the nail on the head. Brett goes where many dare not venture in order to bring expert commentary on what The Youth actually think: the comments section. Hence the name of her show. In any case, the video cites a few studies covering the pretty well documented mental health crisis experienced by GenZ and what many of them are doing to cope. Can you guess it? They’re actually opting for LESS screen time, even though they still value communicating with their friends. Is that even still possible? Yes, if you buy a flip phone! No social media, no email, no Internet. Just calling and texting. A dumb phone, if you will.
S A M E
I know I’m called to internet ministry and that requires me to be online. I love it, but…
Behold, the greatest Dumb Phone ever created: the LG env3.
This is the last phone I had before I got my first iPhone in 9th grade because I “needed” one, and I miss it every day. If you love this publication, show your support by purchasing me a vintage phone! Maybe I can at least swap the SIM cards on the weekends… In all seriousness, there is a lot of good that’s come from the digital revolution. It really has opened so many doors for the gospel. But we’re allowed to be nostalgic for a simpler time with buttons that you actually had to press and much less distraction.
There’s just one more vintage topic I’d like to briefly explore before I let you go… Kayla and I listen to The Rick and Bubba Show pretty much every morning, and have the whole time we’ve been married. We mostly watch on YouTube in the morning and then we’ll watch the Best-Of hour on BlazeTV every night. It’s nice to add the visual elements. Unfortunately, this morning our internet cut out, so our stream was dead in the water.
Kayla: “Oh no! The internet cut out so the stream stopped!”
Me: “Never fear, the alarm clock radio was created for such a time as this. We will listen to the show as it was originally intended to be heard, on vintage terrestrial radio. I promise it’s better this way anyway.”
She wasn’t amused, but that’s okay. She’ll come around…
Maybe this all seems a little silly, but I really encourage you to try it some time. Maybe for you it’s not tuning into the DJ on the radio or trading your iPhone for a Dumb Phone, but just try something.
I have one friend that still buys music. Can you imagine?
I’ve given him plenty of grief for that, but on second thought, there’s no artificial intelligence that knows his listening history like it knows mine… I’m sure that’s a good feeling.
Anyway, you need to be vintage maxing. Go outside and touch some grass.
1,054 words, before editing. Day Two is done. Talk to you tomorrow.