Art and entertainment have undergone revolution after revolution in the modern age, on both sides of the stage. From changing how we create projects to how we engage with them, the effect of technology within these realms continues to be immense. It’s easy to take these developments for granted, as we overlook small steps in our fascination with the big picture. The little things add up, however, and if you step back, you might see just how much we’ve taken the advantages of technology for granted.

A Change in Music and Movies with Storage

One of the most consistent ways we overlook the changes in how we absorb art and entertainment comes from the simple concept of storage. What used to be enormous physical libraries can now be reduced to minuscule sizes, saving us hugely on storage costs and convenience.

For a more direct illustration of this idea, some of the first hard drives ever created came from IBM in 1956 in RAMAC 305 systems. These were roughly the size of two refrigerators, offering a total storage capacity of 5 MB, with a cost of around $10,000 a megabyte. Today, a one terabyte Micro SD card can cost around $160, working out to less than 0.01 cents per megabyte.

“As small as a fingernail: close-up of Mi” (CC BY 2.0) by verchmarco

Scalability in Online Casino Games

The first forms of online casino games were difficult to get working on many machines because they were produced for specific systems. Modern digital casino games like online scratchies have bucked this trend, scaling perfectly to different desktop, smartphone, and tablet systems. This is thanks to advanced HTML 5, which allows releases like Football Scratch and Viking Wilds Scratch to understand and modify themselves to whatever systems they’re loaded on. Utilising this possibility, online casinos cut out the confusion faced by players without technical knowledge. Most other modern entertainment websites, from music to game streaming platforms like Spotify or Twitch embrace the same idea to vastly improve access.

Creative Potential with Artificial Intelligence

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but expression is often in the hand of the creator. No matter how great a person can be at thinking of an idea, a lack of dexterity or visual concerns can hamper attempts at creating complete projects. Alternatively, an artist might have a complete project in mind with some aspects they excel at, while other components are out of their wheelhouse. Wealthy artists might be able to commission helpers in this case, but artists and wealth rarely go hand in hand, which is where AI comes in.

AI creative systems like Midjourney are becoming powerful at filling in the blanks, opening up a world of possibilities for artists who would otherwise be at a loss. Even if just a temporary measure for allowing creative expression, such developments are fantastic for broadening the artistic world.

“’Not Newton’s Apple’” (Public Domain) by Dennis S. Hurd

Traditionalists might not agree, but for most of us, technology is a path to expand artist and entertainment horizons. It lets us see and do what we could never experience before, and in this, we have to be appreciative. Sure, we might prefer traditional methods some of the time, but for the sake of progress, we can’t overlook the possibilities of the new world too.