The digital renaissance

How we create the next Renaissance: credits, fellowship, and the creative capital

In the beginning, there was man. ⋯
Then man made the machine in his own likeness.
—The Second Renaissance, in The Animatrix, 2003

It all started with a humanoid.

A servant robot brutally murdered its owner Gerrard E. Krause, his chihuahuas, and Martin Koots, a technician visiting the millionaire’s house to reclaim the machine once it was deactivated.

At the trial, attorney Clarence Drummond stated, "He did not wish to die," in defence of the robot. The New York State Appellate Court consequently ordered the destruction of the robot and all of its kind.

The decision resulted in protesters flooding the streets, which devolved into a riot. Authorities made a declaration for the elimination of all artificial intelligence. The Machine War persisted for decades until mankind fell. The Second Renaissance takes place between 2090 and 2139 in the world of The Matrix.

Matriculated, in The Animatrix, 2003

Do you agree that this could rightly be considered a Renaissance? The Wachowskis’ insights on social progress leave me awestruck. They ask the question by naming the event in celebration of the victorious rebels. It’s a renaissance only because the machines won the war and took over the world.

The Second Renaissance makes a thrilling analogy to the historical essence of the first, real Renaissance. The Renaissance was a softer part of the rebellion against the church alongside the Reformation. And we cherish it only because we indulge in its legacy.

In plague-torn 15th-century Europe, people had a couple of different ideas about what the future was going to look like. Germanic Europe had severed its connection to the hierarchy of the church to find God through their own faith.

Meanwhile, the Mediterranean thought they would relax after all the turmoil, looking forward to enjoying their Greco-Roman heritage just a little further than what priests told them to.

Both were questioning the status quo of their time. The authority was incompetent in the face of a catastrophe that was orders of magnitude bigger than what they could handle or even explain.

Instead, the survivors made a visit to antiquity to find an answer. The human-centred arts and sciences were a promising new vision for the shaken society. Because it was inappropriate for the church to directly back such an excursion, the wealthy nobles took the credit as patrons.

The patronage granted the rich prestige and social recognition showcasing their wealth, taste, and education. That was the deal made for the artists and thinkers to challenge the traditional medieval worldview and work on new ideas and techniques.

The Renaissance was a part of the larger social progress of modernisation. The discrete, intimate deals between the very few rich and elite artists were not particularly noticeable. Instead, people saw individual geniuses and inventions. Only some intellects were sensible enough to detect the cultural inclination and put words for it.

What was more evident to the Europeans were The Age of Discovery, the rise of Protestantism, and the slow recovery from the plague. The gradual change is presented to us as a spectacle, delivered in the form of dense, analytical tourism.

For us modern people, discussing the Renaissance often focuses our perspective on its commercial and artisanal aspects. Some say we don’t need another renaissance for various reasons: craft is outdated, people make enough art already, and so on. Some others call for a Renaissance just to feel arty making enough money.

Why look back stepping forward?

Just like the medieval people going about their daily affairs, it takes a particular effort to even vaguely appreciate the historical significance of the present. The beauty of the Renaissance lies in the intricacy of systemic social progress, and the role of the creative in it.

What’s the societal, systemic change happening right now? The counter-intuitive contribution of the plague to the Renaissance makes me ask the question. Similar to the suffering that provoked the shift, the social stage of our time conditions a new one.

This is precisely why the next Renaissance will not look like a replay of the former. Artificial intelligence, robotics, social media, nanotechnology and digital biology. Digital transformation is what our Florentine pioneers did not have, but the fictional State of New York did.

The digital future is more than the optimised present. Aside from the fancier gadgets, hypnotising content, and the startup gamble, we have existential opportunities and threats. Artificial general intelligence, lethal robotics, and climate change. It seems we are living parallel to the world of The Matrix.

The difference in real life is that humanity doesn’t let things go into dystopia, because it has come out of it. If you have been a guest in the digital world, you should partake in this transition too. Now, how do we stand for the future like adults?

I’d like to suggest a creative transition in society, not just for the elite artists but a more pervasive and systemic version of the Renaissance. This shift towards creative work and entrepreneurship can be seen as a response to the changing nature of work in the digital age.

Automation obliterates labour as if it were a temporary thing after all. Only the creative, high-level skills will be in demand. Such mastery takes an intense, organic, and continuous process of learning, which you simply cannot expect from the status quo.

Employment will present challenges for both employers and employees. Companies can’t hire because lack of high-skilled workers, while workers don’t see adequate jobs.

The creator economy does completely different maths than the material production which has been a big deal after the first Renaissance. It comes down to zero-marginal cost. Once something is created, it costs little more than nothing to replicate it and move it around.

Instead, it goes through an organic socio-political process online: viewing, sharing, subscribing. Well-received content can create a significant educational impact on each individual and connect them to form an actual social network.

This might seem like a stretch, but looking at the nature of the creator economy, I suspect that the current corporate-centred industry will differentiate into a reticulation of creators.

To bring this new Renaissance into reality, we must relocate the core social feedback cycle from finance to creativity.

Capitalism was born when the early Dutch people realised that they could apply the agrarian principle to commerce. Frugality and reinvestment, like farmers saving grain to sow next year, were going to claim the world order.

If the creative can focus on making ripple effects that make others creative too, instead of picking coins, we can envision the creative capital. Data points that capture social recognition of creative impact, I call them credits.

You are crediting creativity daily: likes, comments, follows. The digital interaction form the social consensus on the value of a piece of content. Just like the medium of capitalism has evolved from gold nuggets to digital notes, I expect them to grow into different, more elaborate forms.

These credits would serve as a way to quantify and acknowledge an individual’s creative contributions, similar to how academic citations recognise intellectual work.

You might be in doubt thinking about the inane videos and "gurus" dominating the space. The algorithms from the tech companies arbitrate how social data amplifies voices. And they need to stay loyal to their owners.

The field of creation is limited to the creator-follower relationship, a thin slice of the business stack. The YouTubers, Instagrammers and Twitterers have no choice but to hack into the lower levels of consciousness with spicier content that lacks nutrients.

Still, you cannot deny the massive impact of digital content. While the current content platforms has their drawbacks, such as the pressure to create viral content and the prevalence of superficial engagement, there is an opportunity for creators to use their platforms to elevate consciousness and provide more meaningful value to their audiences.

The Renaissance effectively brought human life to higher standards while the church tolerated its secularity. By focusing on nourishing the mind and soul, creators can drive a new Renaissance in the digital age, one that prioritises substance over spectacle.

How can we grow out of the stunt and lust industry? Apart from the business, creators are obliged to nourish their audience’s lives with creative projects. In this way, a more robust network of social recognition can develop, where participants acknowledge one another for the creative influences they share.

Such a network has the potential to embody creative feedback cycles, replace arbitrary algorithmic administrations, and generate material value with endorsement in exchange for access to goods.

On top of the creative network, a modern version of apprenticeship could replace employment. Let’s call this one creative fellowship. Partnership is the foundation of this new model for social value creation. Creators get together to spark inspiration, make projects, and share their learnings.

The creative credits keep people organised. Participants expect their names somewhere relevant, so it would prove their value when needed. A successful project is a jackpot. But even if many of them turn out poorly, no activity is ever wasted because the point is creating digital content out of the process, not the result.

I believe our existing social conditions are already driving these changes. Most of us won’t survive the digital transformation mentally or physically unless we engage creative work as a daily activity. But still, there won’t be enough compensation to go around.

Crediting can be an effective way to recognise value without the need for material or financial resources. It’s the currency for people’s attention, embellished with detailed context.

Something similar to the Renaissance and modernisation would have happened anyway as a natural course of history, even if it had not been the plague and Christian Europe. As described in Sapiens, human society is on its way of integrative evolution.

But the suffering from the Plague and the distributed nature of European society hurried the transition. I see the digital renaissance as inevitable. The question is if you and I can move a little faster to take the lead.

In the movie Matrix, the machines incorporated humanity as their part because it’s a great energy source. The human body has terrible efficiency in a thermodynamic sense. What it means though, albeit fictitious, is human creativity. It was useful even for the almighty super-machine intelligence.

Now let’s consider the alternate scenario: we remain the masters of machines. The world needs your creativity because AI is taking over.

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This post is an answer to

Elle Griffin

’s call for the next Renaissance. Thanks to Elle for the great prompt. I was able to align the prompt with my vision for the next social system.

Writing Prompt: How do we create the next Renaissance?