# The Soul of Art Keeps Moving

What incumbents experience as a loss of soul is often a relocation of soul toward new dimensions of value.

I recently came across a recollection from 25 years ago of a college photography professor describing digital cameras as “pictures with no soul.” From his perspective, that may have been true: digital cameras removed some of the craft through which photographers experienced the art. But by making photography easier and cheaper, they allowed millions of people who would never have become photographers to practice it, and to experience some of that soul for themselves.

This should sound familiar. Remember Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma? Underdogs ship a worse product that's also dramatically cheaper and more accessible; that enables wider use, which changes the metrics that matter; and that eventually makes incumbents obsolete.

Something similar happens in the arts. First, technology enables the masses to practice an art, albeit in a “worse” form. Then, that redefines the metrics that matter: less emphasis on the old forms of execution, more on creativity along other dimensions. Eventually, incumbents become obsolete, no matter how good they are at the old craft.

For incumbents, that means losing the soul that mattered to them. For everyone else, it means finally gaining access to a soul they previously couldn’t experience, albeit in a slightly different shape.

What incumbents experience as a loss of soul is often just a relocation of soul: away from the dimensions they mastered, toward new dimensions where value is now created.