When I first picked up a pencil, tuned a guitar, or scribbled thoughts in a notebook, I wasn't just learning tools - I was learning a mindset. Creativity had a physicality. You felt the brush stroke on canvas, the magnetic pull of analog tape, the embodiment of crafting an idea in the moment. That hands-on background - what I've come to think of as an analog education - has been an enormous benefit in the AI-infused creative landscape of the present. As with so many who spanned the transition from analog to digital, I discovered that the restrictions of the older media had a way of providing the foundation for creativity in the new.
I began recording on a Tascam 4-track cassette deck. Anything you did was a choice. There was no undo feature, no easy edit. You bounced tracks, created space, and lived with errors. But those constraints taught discipline. They sharpened instincts. When digital tools arrived - initially with workstation sequencers and then with Pro Tools - I approached them not as tabula rasa, but as extensions of processes I'd already internalized. I operated Pro Tools like a tape machine with unlimited tracks. I learned to edit from cutting Super 8 film. Sampling, which I discovered via early hip-hop, made me recognize editing was itself an art.
Now, with generative AI, I see the same trend: people who have analog backgrounds really excel. A 2023 study from Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, "Human-Machine Co-Creativity with Older Adults," found that older creatives - people who had spent a lifetime mastering physical tools - were often more effective at co-creating with AI than younger professionals. Why? Because they brought structure, taste, and experience. They didn't wait for the AI to lead; they directed the AI.
Another study, "AI Literacy for an Ageing Workforce" (Lidsen, 2023), reinforces this. It turns out that having lived through multiple technological shifts builds the resilience and adaptability that AI workflows demand. The ability to translate intuition into action, honed over decades, allows experienced creators to see past the surface novelty of AI and into its potential.
My own dive into digital was back in the early 1990s in San Francisco, making MIDI soundtracks for CD-ROMs. My crew were also former bandmates, and we approached these new media projects the same way we approached gigs: define roles, push each other to improve, and stay open to happy accidents. That band ethic - team structure with room for improvisation - has served me well in leading creative teams through each innovation wave since, from interactive web to AI-augmented storytelling.
Dynamics and Simulation into a 3-D package
You see this pattern play out across disciplines. Architect Frank Gehry, who started out working with paper models and hand sketches, was an early convert to digital design by insisting on not letting go of the handmade appearance of his buildings. Filmmakers like Spielberg and Scorsese, who learned their craft on flatbeds and splicers, took up digital editing not as a replacement for narrative judgment but as a way of serving it better. The same happened in journalism, where the leap from typesetters to digital publishing transformed the speed of news without destroying the need for editorial judgment.
Even in medicine, this analog-to-digital handing over of the baton is apparent. Radiologists trained on film X-rays read digital images more subtly than those trained solely on screens. Why? Because they know what they are searching for. They've seen it in the flesh.
Visual artist Takashi Murakami, in a 2023 interview with Vogue, summed it up quite succinctly: "AI doesn't replace creativity; it augments it. But you have to first thoroughly understand the traditional way to make good use of AI." That belief - that depth is what matters - is the throughline.
Takashi Murakami A Little Flower Painting: Pink, Purple and Many Other Colours
Influences like Brian Eno, who bridged tape manipulation and ambient synthesis, or Radiohead's bold plunge into digital experimentation on Kid A, showed me that mastery over the old language qualifies you to invent a new one. One can say the same of analog-trained professionals working with AI now. We're not intimidated by the machine because we've worked with machines - ones that hissed, warped, and misbehaved.
The more sophisticated AI gets, the more valuable the human touch is, not less. The ethics of design, the emotional arc of a song, the rhythm of a compelling sentence - these aren't things AI necessarily gets. They require sensibility. And sensibility is what the analog age taught us best.
Looking ahead, we who were raised on paper and tape aren't just learning to operate AI - we're shaping it. Our challenge isn't just to utilize these tools, but to impart to them the vision and values we've always had.