The parallels to the complaints of the printing press are strong. The complaints, at least, are identical. They even called printed books slop. There was also a significant demographic that wanted authentically scribed books, just as there is the 'I want real human art' today. It also turns out that 'Doge' is a real name far proceeding the meme, though that's probably obvious to Europeans:
"‘The pen is a virgin,’ wrote Filippo de Strata in the late fifteenth century, but ‘the printing press is a whore.’
[...]
In a Latin address to Doge Nicolò Marcello, written at some point between August 1473 and December 1474, and in a vernacular poem composed about 20 years later, he lashed out at it with unconcealed hatred. He not only called the press a ‘whore’, but also accused printers of being ‘asses’ — and even asked the Doge to ban printing altogether.
[...]
Nor did printing completely supplant scribal production. Quite the reverse, in fact. Even decades after the foundation of the first presses, manuscripts were still being commissioned, and scribes were still much in demand. Some people — such as the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–98) or the bibliophile Federico da Montefeltro (1422–82) — actually preferred manuscripts, both for their beauty and for their extremely high value.
[...]
...he reviled them as much for their ‘plebeian’ ways as for their foreign origins. To his mind, they were beggars and thieves who had no appetite for work but were always hungry for money. They had come to Italy, babbling in that ugly language of theirs, with no other goal than to put scribes out of a job. What was worse, they had no sense of propriety either. Drunk on strong wine and success, they were hawking books to every Tom, Dick and Harry. In doing so, they were not democratising learning — as Bussi and Foresti liked to believe — but debasing it. Whereas, in the past, the expense and scarcity of manuscripts had ensured that great care was always taken over the preparation of texts, the ease with which books could now be printed — coupled with the intense competition between presses — had led to all manner of rubbish being churned out. These days, Filippo argued, you could hardly open a volume without it being festooned with errors. This clearly did immense damage both to classical scholarship and to education. By putting such defective texts into the hands of the masses, he claimed, even those who could barely speak the vernacular would feel qualified to teach Latin. But since printers were interested only in making a quick buck off such ‘unlettered’ fools, they had no incentive to do any better. All that mattered was getting a new edition on the market as quickly as possible, irrespective of its quality."
Adobe's product is intriguing. I go back and forth with the low-rent LLM "explain how to generate this effect". It lies like a rug, but one can glean ways to make it render "close enough".
Reminds me of early Windows software.
I have not played much with AI image prompts from sketches.
The parallels to the complaints of the printing press are strong. The complaints, at least, are identical. They even called printed books slop. There was also a significant demographic that wanted authentically scribed books, just as there is the 'I want real human art' today. It also turns out that 'Doge' is a real name far proceeding the meme, though that's probably obvious to Europeans:
"‘The pen is a virgin,’ wrote Filippo de Strata in the late fifteenth century, but ‘the printing press is a whore.’
[...]
In a Latin address to Doge Nicolò Marcello, written at some point between August 1473 and December 1474, and in a vernacular poem composed about 20 years later, he lashed out at it with unconcealed hatred. He not only called the press a ‘whore’, but also accused printers of being ‘asses’ — and even asked the Doge to ban printing altogether.
[...]
Nor did printing completely supplant scribal production. Quite the reverse, in fact. Even decades after the foundation of the first presses, manuscripts were still being commissioned, and scribes were still much in demand. Some people — such as the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci (1421–98) or the bibliophile Federico da Montefeltro (1422–82) — actually preferred manuscripts, both for their beauty and for their extremely high value.
[...]
...he reviled them as much for their ‘plebeian’ ways as for their foreign origins. To his mind, they were beggars and thieves who had no appetite for work but were always hungry for money. They had come to Italy, babbling in that ugly language of theirs, with no other goal than to put scribes out of a job. What was worse, they had no sense of propriety either. Drunk on strong wine and success, they were hawking books to every Tom, Dick and Harry. In doing so, they were not democratising learning — as Bussi and Foresti liked to believe — but debasing it. Whereas, in the past, the expense and scarcity of manuscripts had ensured that great care was always taken over the preparation of texts, the ease with which books could now be printed — coupled with the intense competition between presses — had led to all manner of rubbish being churned out. These days, Filippo argued, you could hardly open a volume without it being festooned with errors. This clearly did immense damage both to classical scholarship and to education. By putting such defective texts into the hands of the masses, he claimed, even those who could barely speak the vernacular would feel qualified to teach Latin. But since printers were interested only in making a quick buck off such ‘unlettered’ fools, they had no incentive to do any better. All that mattered was getting a new edition on the market as quickly as possible, irrespective of its quality."
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-war-against-printing/
Adobe's product is intriguing. I go back and forth with the low-rent LLM "explain how to generate this effect". It lies like a rug, but one can glean ways to make it render "close enough".
Reminds me of early Windows software.
I have not played much with AI image prompts from sketches.
I've built two great websites and can actually create any art I need on a whim (I have no talent or ability to draw at ALL). AI rocks