We are living in yet another time before a fundamental shift in how ordinary people interact with computers. The last time that happened was 2007, when the iPhone came out. Another was 1993, when lots of people first started using the Web.
In another decade or two, everybody will be used to simply telling their computer what they want to get done, and the computer will do it. You’ll be able to tell your computer to create an original song that blends together The Beatles’ “Yesterday” and Ed Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”. And that will be a song that you created.
You will be able to tell your computer to write a play based on some new ideas that you’ve dreamt up, and then to conjure up a performance of that play, complete with blocking and appropriate props and lighting. And that will be a play and a performance that you created.
Young people in that future time will understand intellectually what it was like back in the old days, but they won’t really have the emotional sense of it. It will seem amazing to them that we needed to struggle through so much toil to create a new work of art, rather than simply using modern tools.
And try as we might, we won’t really be able to explain it to them.