No sooner did Apple put its ad for the new iPad on the air when our reader Bob Shepherd expressed his outrage. The ad showed a giant compressor crushing all sorts of musical instruments, materials for art, materials for craft, and replacing them with an iPad.
Bob wrote:
When they come for the cellos and the metronomes; for the saws and the planes and glue pots and stains; for the palette knives, the Titanium White, and the artists’ mannequins, when they came for the notepads and the pencils, they are also coming for the musicians and the luthiers and the painters and the writers and so, so many more. They think that these people can be replaced by the abominations they create, which render mediocrity by the yacht-load in seconds. What are those of us who write music and design and paint and write supposed to do when the public has been trained to this swill from birth? Go extinct, I guess.
Is this how civilization ends?
Apple must have heard him and tens of thousands of others who thought the ad was obnoxious. The tech company apologized and pulled the ad, though it’s still on its website.
The Washington Post reported:
Apple is apologizing for an iPad ad that was supposed to celebrate the creative possibilities of its newest, priciest tablet. Instead, the company received vocal blowback for appearing to destroy beloved physical tools used by artists.
The ad, released after the company announced its newest iPad lineup on Tuesday, showed a massive hydraulic press destroying a mountain of supplies used to create music, paintings, sculptures, clothing and writing. It flattened a record player, a piano, buckets of paints, journals, a camera and drawing board. After about 45 seconds of destruction and one dramatic splatter, the press pulled up to reveal a tiny iPad.
The goal was to show how much the iPad is now capable of, but instead it offended many of the same creatives it was trying to sell on the device.
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry,” Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, said in a statement to AdAge.
According to AdAge, the ad, called “Crush!”, will not have any kind of TV run. But it’s still on Apple’s official YouTube page and has already had 1.1 million views so far. Apple has a history of high-budget, glossy ads that make a statement, as far back as its iconic 1984 ad that came out ahead of the original Apple Macintosh.
Critics online called the new ad wasteful and disrespectful. Some were upset that Apple appeared to be destroying perfectly good art supplies while most were more offended that it devalued the more analog ways of creating art — especially when tools like AI are being used to automate things like writing, music and illustration.
Generative AI tools have used massive amounts of creative works to train their systems to spit out similar style images and texts, often without permission from the original artists.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad.
Assuming that this video was reviewed by an enormous group of creators and executives and OKed by a process, the question of what the heck were they thinking is an obvious next question. Someone is not feeding the cows and shoveling the manure.
It should have been obvious to anyone that the advertisement at best failed to communicate the intended point, and at worst was somewhere to the right of vile and offensive. Are these people just stupid? The next thing you know they will be designing educational software.
“what the heck were they thinking is an obvious next question.”
That any publicity is better than no publicity?
Bravo, Bob, for expressing your righteous rage so eloquently.
Thanks, Bill.
Civilization will end with a whimper…and it is not too far off
Nadir Of Western Civilization To Be Reached This Friday At 3:32 P.M. (theonion.com)
The ad is an accurate symbolic representation of what giant tech companies do to humanity. What’s the problem? Even the title of the ad is spot on. “Crush” is of its own volition accidentally self-deprecating art. Apple crushes life. Let it be widely seen so that a large audience can experience the pain of loss and the catharsis of understanding that accompanies art. Let the audience cry out to keep Tim Cook, Laurene Powell Jobs, and the rest away from the levers of power, to stop them from forcing people, especially students, to use their destructive products, starting in my classroom.
starting in my classroom
Amen
I’ll second that Amen
Well said, LCT. The ad strips away the veil.
Perfect, Diane. Exactly.
Wait, there’s more! Some districts advertising for K-6 music teachers specifically expect applicants to know how to use tech to teach music.
Again, that’s K-6, where music is often scheduled for only one 35 minute period per week.
The tech bro mentality metastasizes throughout the culture.
Good afternoon Bob,
I thought you might enjoy this lecture by Iain McGilchrist. I believe it’s on topic. 😊
“When reductionist thinking encounters a problem reconciling apparent irreconsilables–for example, matter and consciousness–it simply denies that one element or the other exists.”
–Iain McGilchrist
Shoot!! Sorry! On YouTube search this:
A Revolution in Thought – Dr. Iain McGilchrist
I love that he starts this lecture with this question: The brain is divided into two hemispheres. Why?
One, of course, is having a backup for situations involving trauma to one hemisphere. But still, what a great start.
“Nothing wrong with a map, of course, unless you mistake it for the world.”
–Iain McGilchrist
I was horrified to hear him use the word “orientated.” Yikes.
La perfection n’existe pas. Well, things often happen in a lecture. People make slips. He is brilliant.
He tends to start off strong and then drift off into utter vagueness and assertion without evidence. But he’s generally right to be attacking scientific determinism and materialism. He makes WAY, WAY too much of a crude distinction between right and left hemisphere functions. Much of contemporary neurological mapping has reinforced the idea that most functions are whole brain phenomena–that almost every time, when you go to map a function, it is NOT localized but scattered widely.
This is one little lecture Bob. It can’t compare to his books which are extremely detailed. It’s just a taste. The Matter With Things in hardcover is a beautiful book- the paper is substantial. But I think it’s out in paperback too.
The Matter with Things was self-published. That might account for the unusual paper. High-quality paper at low cost is available by doing printing in China, but there is a huge environmental cost to that not worked into the pricing. At any rate, there is no excuse for a self-published book to be this expensive, and the over-the-top notion that everything is about the split brain just doesn’t make enough sense to me to pursue, especially given, AGAIN, the fact that contemporary neurological function mapping runs toward whole brain functioning (i.e., the idea that when a particular function occurs, it involves widely disparate brain areas, including ones across the corpus collosum. He sounds stuck in 1980 to me. Given that, though I share his anti-materialism, it is highly unlikely that I am going to spend the money on these books given that there is so much else to read while I still have time.
😊🙏
Sorry, Mamie. I do share much of Mr. McGilchrist’s perspective. I just hate the whole left brain-right brain idea, which is crude and has been, I think, largely refuted, with some exceptions for stuff like language processing, but even there, other parts of the brain, including of the right brain, come into play..
Well, Bob. I think of the great words of Dr. Spock! “It would be impossible to discuss the matter without a common frame of reference.” 😊🙏
Great response, Mamie. I have not read his books. So, . . .
Also, his books (and thus his ideas) would have much wider circulation if they weren’t so insanely, so ridiculously overpriced.
$82.34 on Amazon for The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, and this is a dramatic reduction from what it was. I see that The Master and His Emissary has finally come down in price from its former stratospheric price.
“But it’s still on Apple’s official YouTube page and has already had 1.1 million views so far.”
Remember that any publicity is “good”.
I think that Apple, like other corporations, is about profit. I never bought the horse manure about Jobs being a visionary and how Apple was somehow different and better than other tech companies. Apple just did better PR and legions of tech junkies and reporters bought it.
Silicon Valley is filled with arrogant libertarian types who think they ought to run the world for their profit.
Jobs was notorious for his self-entitlement and for literally screaming at employees.
The ad is symbolic of Silicon Valley’s “smash and grab” mentality.
You are. Right, retired teacher.
The Ad was funded by the wedgie institute of under garblements. An Ad ploy to increase sales. Subliminal ultra-sonic “pips” advise to buy a LARGER size as they bunch less than the smaller versions. The WIUG motto: Panties can only bunch if you wear them OR buy ’em too small…
Haaaa!!! Well said!!!
Here’s my other post about this commercial:
OK, the new commercial for iPad shows musical instruments, metronomes, phonographs, writing implements, art materials, and so on being crushed because no one needs them anymore.
I hope this makes you as furious as it does me. F the Fing uncultured, barbarous Fs who produced this monstrosity and F as well their Fing crap technology designed by barbarians for use in the production of mediocrities. Theirs is a bankruptcy of intellect, imagination, morality, spirit, and empathy for the artists among us and the artists in us. F these tech bros. F them. F them. Wait. No. Don’t F them. Immediately stop Fing any F tech bros. They do not deserve the gift of you. Asshats.
Oh, and BTW, let met take this opportunity to express my continuing admiration for Diane Ravitch, who is herself a great artist. In what sense? Well, she takes materials from the world and puts them together into a coherent, unifying, clarifying story–clarifying in the sense that the blooming confusion makes sense, in the sense that patterns, or trends, emerge. It is not an accident that one of the nine Muses is Clio, the Muse of history. That she turned from early modern history to contemporary history–to history being made–was due, of course, to her grasp of the necessity of having our public intellectuals address real and present dangers when they see them.
cx: Let me take
The barbarians are not only at the gates, they are trying to get in our psyche.
Who needs art from artists, when you can buy an NFT?
ROFL! From Glorious Leader himself, now at substantial discounts! Pick up a nationalist jingoist propaganda Bible while you’re at it!
The huge advantage human intelligence has over AI is that we are sentient. We feel, we touch, we taste, and we have a sense of smell. Perhaps the greatest sin of this ed tech age is that we have substituted experience with data compilation. I’m am not surprised to hear of Apple’s new ad. Silicon Valley is getting further and further away from wholistic creativity that can only come from human endeavor. Well played Bob Sheppard!
Thanks, Paul!
this afternoon on NPR’s “The World” (BBC I THINK) there was an interesting discussion of the Japanese reaction to this commercial. Apparently they hated it even more viscerally than Bob Sheperd.
Not surprising, given their many traditions of exquisitely honed crafts and their appreciation of the human in craftworks–of wabi sabi.
But even more visceral than my response? You should have been present when I first saw this. I thought I would blow a gasket. But then, I am a short story writer in an era in which almost no one buys or reads short stories, and every chatbot these days thinks it can write them. Oh, wait a minute. Large-language-model chat bots do not “think.” They predict the medicore, pedestrian, lowest-common-denominator next thing that might be said based on what was already said.
Mediocre. But I kinda like mediocore, too. LOL.
I’ve been in battles with another AI, BING. I hate to say I hate something, but I hate BING’s sneaky AI.
I actually think that the iPad and other technology is a vehicle for human creativity just as are paints, clay, instruments and other media. The problem is that we tend to think of technology as being exceptional and the height of progress and therefore we tend to denigrate other media which have been the vehicle for human expression for millenia. I think the ad shows us what is in our psyche now. Yes, our use of technology will crush the humanity in us if we let it. We already see ways in which it is doing so. So it’s not the technology per se but our attitude towards it and how we choose to use it.
I think the ad shows us what is in our psyche now. Yes, our use of technology will crush the humanity in us if we let it.
Yes! Unintentionally, it does JUST THAT.
The ad is a kind of Freudian slip. Well observed, Mamie!
we were at the Met a few years back and saw a David Hockney retrospective. The end of the exhibit featured Hockneys recent work on IPad projected on flat screen televisions. It was wonderful! I have no problem with art in technology. We just have to understand the role of engagement with tactile practices are critical for creative problem solving. Our neurotransmitters require the workout.
Vermeer used a camera obscura. Love me some Hockney.
How wonderful that you were able to see this, Mr. Bonner! His work is really impressive in person, isn’t it? His iPad drawings are awesome, but then, he’s Hockney. The point is not that one cannot produce great work using digital technology. I have myself produced quite a bit of digital artwork and digital design for clients and just for creative purposes. But the notion that digital technology will replace hands-on-real-materials work by artists and artisans is disgusting, should disgust, I think, all human beings. I have come to think that it is essential to our survival that our intelligence be augmented, but I don’t want to see us replaced by machines.
I agree! As an art teacher it was obvious to see the learning advantages that came for students who were able to use their hands to produce their art. This has been confirmed for me as I spent time doing a deep dive into brain research while studying to become a neurodevelopment provider. Our entire body is made up of interactive neurons that require ongoing activity to grow intellectually. We have to use our hands to manipulate materials to grow in thought and creativity. I have also delved into digital art, but technology should never replace fundamental human encounters.
Well observed, Mr. Bonner! I play classical and jazz guitar. If I get busy with other things and don’t play regularly for a while, I have do work quite a bit to regain my chops. Disused neural pathways get isolate. Eventually, the disappear. So, they have to be exercised, just like muscles.
Paul,
You reminded me of a book called “Shop Class as Soulcraft.” Doing things with your hands is an important aspect of being human.
Paul Bonner, as you describe it, Hockney used the iPad as another medium to make art. The ad was offensive because it portrayed the iPad as an instrument to crush all other means of creative expression.
Mamie K: AI appeals to what is worst in us: thoughtlessness. Coming just after a set of “I hate school” generations, . . . not good. CBK
What a horrible ad! Glad it’s taken down.
They haven’t entirely taken it down. It’s still on their website. Meaning that they still stand by it.
We could use it as an invitation to reflect on ourselves and our culture and to understand the feelings it brings up in us. I would have loved to have been in on the process of making this ad. Who came up with it? What was their take on the world? What were they trying to express? How did the creative process for this unfold?
What a horrific prospect. I wish I had a recording of this to use to expose these asshats.
I can think of a worse corporate meeting: the one where the Ford executives sat around and decided that settling lawsuits would be cheaper than replacing the exploding gas tanks on the Pinto.
Yes, an invitation to reflect… Some prefer real fakery compared to artificial fakery. Real fakery (breathing actors) or artificial fakery (CGI) trade in fiat fakery (sans gold standard). Mellotron or orchestra, player piano or piano, live or memorex, paint by number or just paint, All in all, beauty is still in the eye of the beer-holder. If AI can get your goat, you weren’t in charge of the pen in the first place.
If AI can get your goat, you weren’t in charge of the pen in the first place.
You can’t be serious.
I stopped subbing in one high rent district when they started using chrome books heavily. Too many teachers stopped preparing sub plans and just sat them on their tablets. I stopped subbing there when the kindergarten class I was assisting in were instructed by the teacher to pull out tablets to do their science lesson. It almost made me physically ill.
These people stop teaching and become simply classroom proctors. They could be replaced by anyone–by kids just out of high-school, who can say, “Do the next lesson on your Chromebook” as well as anyone can.
Steve Jobs must be turning in his grave over this downright stupid and insensitive Apple ad. Whoever created and okayed this ad needs to be reminded that creativity is (was) one of the main inspirations for the creation of Apple products. I’ll take sitting on a mountain top or coastal dune, walking in the coastal redwoods, playing around with art projects and listening to musicians any day over any/all computer experiences. I treasure my old mac plus days and the utility of my present MacBook Air but they are all “second fiddle” to real music, the outdoors, visiting art galleries and most other outdoor experiences.
Yes, Jobs and calligraphy
Guess those calligraphy tools Jobs was so fond of need to be crushed now that any idiot with an iPad can outdo the great calligraphic masters.
Not.
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, painted by Tatsuhiko YOKOO, Teisho by KUBOTA Ji’un, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)
I read years ago that technology is sort of like quicksand. (My word, though.) Like quicksand, the more you fight it, the more it pulls you in.
Technology creates problems then offers up technological solutions, manufacturing a self-reinforcing system. (A knot that just keeps getting bigger and more complicated, humans be damned.) And, yes, I’m speaking of technology as if it is autonomous, like it has a mind of its own. That’s the concept, many hundreds of very densely written pages later.
A prime example of this idea is the bombshell drug Ozempic and other pharmaceuticals of its type.
The problem: for the first time in human history, huge numbers of us have gotten, well, huge. It’s complicated. But clearly long hours sitting in front of computers combined with the engineering of all sorts of high calorie, oh-so-tasty foods have not helped our species.
A solution: a drug that promises weight loss, though it’s expensive and people apparently have to keep on taking it otherwise the weight will pop back on.
So, technology contributes to a problem then engineers a possible technological solution, though with its own “package” of possible drawbacks.
Ah, life in 2024. (Remember when the year 2000 sounded so far away?)
Meanwhile…
A true Luddite has come to live in our house!
“Moon” a 60 lb. Old English Sheepdog.
(Long story short: wonderful, hard-working daughter gets apartment but her lease says ‘no pets allowed’.)
The issue, though, is my wife and I have never had any sort of dog and this sheepdog is just out of puppyhood, full of wild energy. (Picture an old guy, me, trying to hang onto a leash, being pulled up the steepest part of a learning curve. Yeah, it ain’t a pretty cartoon.)
And, Moon the sheepdog does not do well with me typing on this computer. At one point, he upset the keyboard causing unintended alterations to my digital life -whatever that actually is. It took me hours to set things right.
But he’s a fun, lovable diversion from the world right now. He pulls, I hang on. I’m sure there’s some sort of training method that could be applied to he and I, some dog whisperer or YouTube video full of advice. We seem to be doing fine, so far, at least. Meandering all about.
But here’s the kicker when I thought about it. I’m still walking around without a smartphone, nary a set of keys in my pocket when I go out for a walk. But there’s Moon right beside me, wearing an Apple “AirTag” on his collar just in case he gets loose, chasing a deer off into the miles of woods we have here. Our doggy makes me trackable, too!
We can run but we can’t hide.
P.S. Thanks as always, Bob, for getting me thinking!
John, thanks, as always, for your beautiful writing!
Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in HD (youtube.com)
Beautiful, John. My dog Mitzi is about 100 lbs. Most lovable dog I’ve ever had. People are sometimes afraid of her because she’s big. But if she gets close enough, she wants to kiss everyone. Only problem is that she’s terrified of firecrackers. We have to be very careful anytime close to July 4 or New Years Eve.
John O: I know a state governor who can solve your problem in a jiffy, something to do with guns and goats. I’ll get back to you on that. CBK
You know, I was driving this morning and that came to mind. Yeah….. crazy
John O: Hmmmm . . . maybe the issues here are related here? . . . techies eliminating unruly artist’s materials and politicians eliminating unruly animals Hmmmm. Then there’s Putin eliminating unruly people.
Oh, cxxp . . . I’m going back to bed now. CBK
As a tech liaison for my school, I attended monthly and special event meetings in Manhattan along with reps from the other D75 (special ed) schools in the 5 boroughs.
The New York City Department of Ed was one of, if not the, largest client of Apple for awhile. We were invited to training sessions and unveilings of new features, regularly.
The training session involving the advent of iBooks Publisher (now Apple Books) was disturbing to me.
After showing all the cool features and possibilities for the independent, individual or small scale publisher; the presenter proudly proclaimed that this would do to the publishing industry what iTunes had done to the music industry.
As a long time musician with many many friends in the “little known but really good” category; I was compelled to leave the room. I had seen (and continue to see) the effects that this innovation was having on lesser known artists, struggling to make a living.
Apple and other large scale tech related companies often seem to be tone deaf to the potential (and realized) far reaching consequences of their products and actions.
I haven’t seen it, but : Consider me offended. Saving my outrage for AI replacing teachers. We are headed to technozoic era rather than the ecozoic era for darned sure!