An explosion of noise
Taking a different approach to creativity and curiosity
Hello, welcome! I'm glad you're here.
I'm Reid Hannaford. I'm a Canadian filmmaker and game designer living, working, and playing in Brooklyn, NY.
I make things about the harmony between humans, machines, and nature. Lately I’ve been mesmerized with creating immersive behavior in games and building worlds you can get lost in.
You’re currently reading the first post from my newsletter about creativity and curiosity.
Noise → Signal
I am on a lifelong quest to balance my personal ratio of noise and signal.
Collectively, we’re at a precipice. The introduction of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 and ChatGPT are about to cause an explosion of noise in an already overflowing internet of information.
Some predictions:
culture will shift to value whatever automation is bad at generating
authenticity, imperfection, and realness will become even more important than it already is
your work itself will become less valuable than your personal connection to your audience
This shift has monumental implications for creators and artists. It was already difficult to stand out in the sea of democratized online publishing. Now imagine what that looks like when generated content indistinguishable from handmade content is flooding the market at an unprecedented speed.
Anti-algorithm
The algorithmic curation on the social media platforms we rely on for distribution actively makes this problem worse! Algorithms aren’t human-centric by design.
Instagram doesn't care if you're forming meaningful connections with other humans. Its primary focus is to keep you on platform for as long as possible.
TikTok, similarly, has made it clear that it doesn't really matter who you choose to follow. They're going to show you what they think you'll find most captivating. TikTok is an entertainment platform, not a social platform.
Engagement with these platforms is self-defeating. Worse, it fails to leverage what makes the internet such a powerful vehicle for connection. So, I've decided to forsake the algorithm-driven creator model.
Enter: an alternative
I am, at heart, a consumer of long-form information. I enjoy blog posts, books, articles, personal websites, analysis, and the cross-pollination of ideas.
I'm also not interested in hustling for the algorithm, constantly revising my "content strategy" to serve whatever app is most popular. I want to connect with real people. Feel seen, feel heard, and see and hear others. I'd rather connect with fewer people that actually care about who I am and what I'm making. Quality over quantity.
The answer, I think, is a veteran approach: email newsletters. The old, tried and true.
This newsletter, which I'm calling Enter, will be playful, personal, and experimental. I’ll attempt to write weekly. You can expect explorations about the intersection of art and tech, and the future of creativity. You can also expect posts about my own personal work and process. A development log for my games, movies, and other things I make. If you’re a creator, or you’re at all interested in following my creative process, you’ll enjoy these writings.
I'm actively attempting to let go of polish in favor of creating in public. I'm still finding my voice, and I don't know how it will evolve, but I’m diving in anyway. This makes me pretty uncomfortable. That's kind of the point.
Thanks for reading until the end! I hope you'll join me on this creative journey as we continue to figure out how to make sense of this changing world, and how to make meaningful creations.
Speak soon,
Reid
Some things I'm thinking about:
📄 The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI
📄 LLMs and information post-scarcity