Creative Work in an Age of Digital Production

Nicholas Carr:

Evaluating works of art, or any creative products of skill and imagination, requires a mind, which the machines of media automation lack. Identifying a pattern requires only a statistical procedure, which is what the machines have. Indeed, it’s all they have. People like MrBeast didn’t crack the code of virality. Machines did. MrBeast’s great strength as a contemporary creator is that he has no ambition beyond repeating a pattern. He’s a machine-listener. He attends to the machine, and he does what it tells him to do.

Complete value capture — no ambition beyond chasing what can be measured.