Tine Thoughts

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Nala looking concerned about Simba hiding something about his past, a comparison:

Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:

• asks the wrong question • says something they shouldn’t • notices something uncomfortable • refuses to drop the topic • misunderstands something important • interrupts at the worst moment

They want something REALLY REALLY REALLY bad, but for some reason they can't ask for it -- or can't have it even if they did ask.

They don't notice something that the audience HAS noticed (like in a horror movie when the monster is sneaking up behind the protagonist, or if someone drinks a glass of unboiled water during a cholera outbreak because they don't know about germ theory)

Takes a risk (or otherwise does something they "shouldn't" do) which the audience has to sit through for a prolongued period of time (e.g. slips away from the party to go into the host's private office and rifle through their papers before the guards catch them)

Cutting - in my opinion, the most labor intensive part of the process. The amount of time/effort needed varies depending on the pattern and if seam allowance is included or marked separately, but no matter what this process can not be done by machine. Each and every panel and piece of fabric that goes into a garment must be cut by hand by a person.

Pinning/clipping - pinning (or clipping) is the stage at which you align the pieces you are going to be stitching together and hold them together with — you guessed it! — either pins or clips. This can not be done by machine.

Stitching - the actual sewing. This can be done by a sewing machine, but that machine still needs to be operated by a human being.

Ironing/pressing - two words that mean the same thing. The iron itself is a machine, but once again, it needs to be operated by a human being.

Finishing - depending on the technique you use, there are certain finishing techniques that can only be done by hand. But, let’s assume we’re talking about fast fashion, which is usually just finished with a simple overlock/serger. Once again: these machines need to be operated by people.

These are just the basic steps to making a garment, and don’t include textile arts that I am not as knowledgeable about, such as weaving, knitting, and crochet. Also, it is important to note that there are a lot of things that can only be done by hand, such as certain stitches and decorative techniques.

Also, the machinery being operated in textile factories is not equivalent to a domestic sewing machine. We’re talking about one of these guys:

See that gray cylinder under the table, behind the knee pedal? That’s the motor. These machines can sew through your fingers bones and all and not even stop. The people in these factories and sweatshops are operating heavy machinery, and are subject to all the risk that comes with that in addition to all of the work I mentioned above.

" I'm taking a sewing class and I asked my teacher about how much machines can actually do. She said that while a lot of actual fabric we use in our projects is machine-woven, and sometimes there are machines for particular knitting patterns or for the same small thing over and over and over (i.e. socks), the overwhelming majority of pieces of clothing are in fact just sewn together by humans. Usually women. Underpaid and overlooked. Thousands and thousands of them, working 12 hours a day or more in huge warehouse-factories. You're probably wearing something one of those women created right now.

Most of the students (including me) were horrified. We had *no* idea. We figured that, given that we have supercomputers and massive industrial systems for almost every type of product you can buy, surely we would have figured out a better way? Surely there are machines that can put a t-shirt together by now?

She said, no, that's why fast fashion is really so bad. It's not simply about the quality of the product, it's about the human cost.

When you buy a cheap tee that says "Made in Bangladesh", this is where your clothing came from (and these are from one of the nicer factories):

(By Fahad Faisal. CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89582692)

And then generative ai was created.

And now I get it. I get why nobody on Star Trek spends all their free time in the holodeck. I get why all the crew are putting on stage plays, and holding music recitals, and building models, and playing poker. I get why everyone was so skeptical and mean to the Doctor on Voyager. I get why the ONE TIME we see someone obsessed with the holodeck it infringes on people’s likeness rights and permissions.

Because fundamentally at the end of the day we are human beings and we ENJOY working with our hands and making REAL human connections. A person who learns to play an instrument is always going to be viewed as an artist over someone who asks the computer to generate music for them.

Even as recent as Lower Decks they were making fun of the fact that the crew were putting on amateurish plays and holding music recitals. But after living with Ai for so long and seeing how detrimental it’s been to the world… I’d much rather watch my friends put on a stage play than “participate” in a holodeck movie.

What’s most amazing about this is that it was completely unintentional. I do not for one second think that the writers of the time in the 90’s were really thinking about the larger issues that generative ai and chatGTP would cause. How could they? Text to speech back then was still robotic as heck. More likely they wrote that stuff in because it was cheaper to film on sets the owned than try to build, film, or rent out different locations each week.

That’s the down to earth logistical real reason Data is reciting poems about his cat or Riker is in a play put on in ten forward. It’s just cheaper to do that than to build a whole new set or move production to a new location.

Yet at the end of the day, I think that unintentionally speaks to a very human need that ai is making more and more prevalent to us day in and day out.