The Frequency of Nature
Thoughts on Technology, Communication and Creativity
I went to the mountains to find myself again. To feel the sunshine on my skin, breathe the crisp air. Embrace the hug of White Mountain peaks, draped in shades of green, reflecting in both shadow and light. Rugged mountain silhouettes rising amongst the evening sky, blue and calling,
Slow down.
Many a storyteller and poet have found themselves nestled here, searching for quiet. Inspiration. Frost himself spent many days staring at these peaks.
And what’s on my mind? That even as I sit with the surrounding mountains . . . and hike up the rocky trails to watch waterfalls tumble . . . I’m still thinking about technology.
It’s not hard to do. I am, by day, a tech lawyer, after all. My job is to think about technology. Negotiate it. Celebrate its innovations—because it sells. It also allows me to do my job remotely so that I can balance my family life. It helps me meet other writers, creatives, people I’d never otherwise have the opportunity to know. A miracle of modern times. Innovative communication.
It’s also what drains me. And it was not until I sat in the silence of the forest that I began to realize that.
Humans are funny. We like to think we’re so modern and hip, with all this social media, AI, and whatever else gleams at our fingertips. But none of it, I assure you, including the debates on its uses, is anything new.
Did you know the term “social media” was actually coined in 1897? I didn’t either, not until I read the excellent, highly recommended book, Superbloom by Nicholas Carr. While reading it, I learned that Charles Horton Cooley first coined the term “social media” in his 1897 article, “The Process of Social Change,” published in the Political Science Quarterly.*
And Cooley had some fascinating thoughts on technology and communication.
He argued that humans are “imitative and sympathetic,” that we “adjust attitudes and behavior in response to social cues.”*
In other words, the way we communicate shapes how we think and act. According to Cooley, whenever the “mechanisms of communication” change, so does society.
It makes sense if you think about it. Our ancient ancestors could only communicate with those in their immediate vicinity. They were not communicating with everyone, all over the world, through all space and time, at any given moment.
It’s interesting to note that Cooley lived through pivotal moments in communication history: the first transcontinental telegraph, the earliest telephone prototypes. He also died in the same decade as the first commercial radio broadcasts and the invention of television.* Surely, he witnessed countless shifts in society as our ways of speaking to each other evolved.
And since his time, even more technology has arrived. Yet our reactions remain remarkably the same.
In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg, in a lengthy letter to would-be shareholders, wrote that Facebook had a “social mission” to “create a more perfect society.” According to Zuckerberg, social media would help us understand the lives and perspectives of others. By comparing it to printing and television, Zukerberg stated that “simply by making communication more efficient,” society, through these mediums, would undergo a “complete transformation of many important aspects.” In short, he said that it would give more people a voice, encourage progress, and essentially, bring us closer together.*
It all sounds nice, doesn’t it? But this way of thinking is and always has been a fantasy.
In 1898, Nikola Tesla said he’d be remembered as the man who abolished all war with a wireless telegraph. Guglielmo Marconi, in 1912, declared radio would make war impossible. And then, in 1923, AT&T’s engineer J.J. Carty predicted that the telephone would “join all peoples of the earth in one brotherhood.” This, of course, was not to be outdone by RCA Vice President Orrin Dunlap, who, in 1932 claimed that television would “usher in a new era of friendly intercourse between the nations of the earth.”*
And yet, what followed?
These technologies didn’t bring peace at all. In 1914, faster communication helped armies mobilize and escalated World War I. Later, World War II. The twentieth century became one of, if not the, bloodiest in history.* All after the invention of faster communications and other technologies and innovations which were promised to bring world peace. It is not that these inventions caused these disparities, but they did help mobilize it.
And here we all still are — waiting for world peace while arguing on the effective use of Chat GPT.
It seems to me the problem is not technology, it’s people—and how we use it.
For example, Mike Cook, a computational creativity researcher, recently found that while existing generative AI makes it easier to produce things, it doesn’t make it easier to be truly creative. He states, “many of these creative AI systems are promoted as making creativity more accessible, but instead, have adverse effects on their users in terms of restricting their ability to innovate, ideate and create.”**
Why? Because these systems don’t let us fail, a crucial part of learning new skills.
As Cook points out: “If you talk to artists, they’ll say, ‘I got good by doing it over and over… but failure sucks. We’re always looking for ways around it.’ Generative models let us skip the frustration, but they also remove the very thing we need to grow: failure.”**
Kind of like communication, don’t you think? If we can’t fail, we can’t grow. Just as it’s hard to read emotion in a text message, it’s hard to deepen ourselves without struggle. It’s hard to understand one another without true human connection.
Does this mean we should abandon technology when creating art? In how we communicate with others?
Maybe. Maybe not.
History is full of breakthroughs that changed the way art gets made.
Recipes for paint colors, for example, naturally changed art.
Music even, was largely influenced by algorithms. In the 1960s, Stanford researcher John Chowning spent years working on an algorithm that could manipulate frequencies of computer-generated sounds. This tech was licensed to Yamaha, who built it into synthesizers, including the DX7 which is behind the sound of many 1980s hits including A-ha’s “Take on Me” and Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”
Thus, technological innovation helped fuel art.
The key, it seems, is what you do with what you are given.
Will we use high-tech communication technologies to spread kindness, hope and connection? Or to fuel hate and war?
Will we let AI do all the “creating” and spare ourselves the artistic process? Or use it to challenge ideas, biases, finding new angles to our art?
The choice is not up to machines. It is up to humans.
How about you? How will you move forward? What will you consume? How will you balance the line between knowing who you are and what an algorithm says you are?
As for me, I’ve decided to unplug for a while as I ponder these things. Stare at the stars. Remember what it feels like to be human, as I listen to the rush of the river, the swoosh of ocean waves . . . feeling the frequency of nature.
I don’t have all the answers, but this is what I know to be true:
Who we are is who we choose to be. How we progress depends on if we choose to take on the challenge to grow, or not.
To grow, we must fail, but we must also push, strive to do better.
We can choose to lose ourselves in algorithms or we can choose to use technology to enlighten, inspire. To build community, not tear it apart.
What will you choose?
Till Next Time,
Sarah Crowne
AKA A Busy Lady
*Carr, Nicholas G. Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. W.W. Norton & Company, 2025.
**Heaven, Will Douglas. “How AI Can Help Supercharge Creativity.” MIT Technology Review, June 2025, pp. 24–30.
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A Busy Lady is written by an actual human—no AI, just chocolate, creativity, and a love for storytelling. This also means there may be an occasional typo, just to prove a human did it ;)