In the past I’ve characterised the production of a magazine in this intro as being a little bit Groundhog Day. I’m definitely guilty of using weird film references to explain my point of view and, in the interests of making my point and being marginally more fresh, I’m tipping my hat for this issue to Edge of Tomorrow, or even Mickey 17.
Whether you exist in the Murray, Cruise or Pattinson universe, the circle of ‘Live, Die, Repeat’ is one familiar to any of us who find ourselves in a cyclic work process. Whilst our production timeframes are quite long, the deadlines come around quickly. Chasing people for content, chasing photographers for photos, chasing clients for artwork — right until this final hour — is always par for the course. But that’s what happens when you create something from scratch. It’s like the guys at The Market Juice Bar who make you fresh porridge in a little pan: if you want something truly fresh, you’ve got to labour a little.
I’ve added those em dashes above with my little human hands on purpose. It’s so tempting to think that we can use our AI friends to speed up processes and try and break the cycle, but is any content produced by ChatGPT, Gemini or any other LLM actually ‘fresh’? No, of course not — they’re all (for the moment) technically just quasi-quantum recycling machines. Every time I get an email with a set of bullet points with star graphics it makes me sigh. Where are we in the process when we’re using AI to advise us on how to advise people on AI? It’s about the opposite of fresh. It’s the opposite of human.
A fresh-themed issue should be progressive, but our content for this edition looks both forwards and back. We encourage you to look at the analogue images of Laura Dos Ramos’s No Place Like Home project and view the debate around living conditions in Jersey with fresh eyes (pg. 38) and, contrastingly, consider how we embrace AI in our work and try and escape the temptations of the hivemind (pg. 156).
It’s important to stay progressive, but still take time to smell the flowers, as the wonderful florists in our feature on pg. 48 are able to do each day. Stay human. Try to do or create something fresh each day and remember not to delegate too much of your humanity to a prompt.
BD
