The internet promised a lot, and delivered on a lot of that too. One such thing is inspiration – infinite inspiration, in fact. But somewhere along the way, everything began to collide together, amalgamating into a single entity, whereby creatives – at the whim of algorithms – are being fed a lot of the same stuff. This conundrum is what’s explored in Stocksy’s latest trend report, The Curation Paradox, asking why, despite the boundless access to creativity we have, originality is feeling harder to come by.
With platforms today – and arguably design software too – encouraging an almost fast-food approach to imagery, where we find ourselves in a loop of scrolling, liking, sharing and repeating, Stocksy’s creative director, Genevieve Ross, explains the internet’s drastic impact on how creative people process (and value) visual information. “The constant scroll flattens our attention spans and lowers our tolerance for ambiguity or complexity,” Genevieve says, meaning we lose our ability to think laterally. “Our eyes and brains evolved over millions of years,” she says, “and now we’re expecting AI – barely a few years into functional existence – to match or surpass that.” As such, we face the threat of AI not helping us execute tasks more rapidly but replacing how we think entirely. “When we outsource inspiration, intuition, and those weird, unexpected mental leaps to machines,” she explains, “we risk hollowing out the core of the creative process,” stressing the need to preserve that approach, especially thoughts, philosophies and mindsets that don’t mirror a traditionally optimised digital workflow. “Things that take time,” Genevieve adds, “things that come from people thinking for themselves.”