The death of the guess

I can think of few things more valuable than imagination.

The ability to consider the complete possibility of what might be is our greatest endowment as a species.

Humans are not the only animals that can do this, but we’re one of, if not the, only beings on this earth who can voluntarily conjure new objects and events in our minds. Especially in a world where information is free and ubiquitous. Imagination is our currency.

But here’s a question modern technology now gives us the ability to ask.

What happens when we no longer need to imagine? What happens when the speculative becomes the iterative?

My term for this phenomenon is called the death of the guess. Here’s its origin story.

Recently I was working on a country music project. I had a backlog of songs for which I didn’t have the time, money or energy to record in a traditional studio. So I found a powerful software app that could turn my acoustic demos into commercially produced, professionally polished, full band tracks.

Since I’d already done the work of composing the music and writing the lyrics, now all I had to do was upload my words and audio into the platform, and boom, the songs were done. Artificial intelligence was my surrogate producer.

Which meant I no longer had to imagine how my song might sound fully produced. I could literally hear it. I was able to test drive the emotional impact of my work in real time. Whereas before, all of my demos were merely speculative. The tracks weren’t realized in three dimensions. Unless I went out and hired a physical studio band, taught the guys my songs, and recorded an album, those tracks would remain in demo form.

Which never used to bother me, until I crossed over to the other side. Because now I know what’s possible. I don’t have to imagine. I can know. Like, really, truly, know. I can find the song faster and with less ambiguity.

This is the beauty of technology. It not only collapses the latency between idea and execution, but idea and impact. It’s not the former hope based workflow where I’m like, write the song, hope it’s good.

Today it’s more like, write, under, iterate, validate. The process gives me real evidence. I heard an interview with one of my songwriting heroes, and he experienced this very same process, except with his band.

Adam was writing a flurry of new songs and found himself at a crossroads. He needed to figure out if they actually worked. Feeling unsure, he called up his drummer, bass player, and guitarist. He asked them all to come to his house for a week. He needed to demo the songs and to hear them with the full band, since he could not accurately judge the music on his own.

The only way to know if they held up was to bring in the band and play them live.

Same thing. The speculative becomes the iterative. It’s the death of the guess.

Where have you experienced that in your own work? What if imagination, precious as it might be, didn’t have to work so goddamn hard all the time?