HAVANA TIMES — I had been trying for a while to get my uncle to find me a program for creating objects, characters, and settings in three dimensions. The day he finally installed Blender on my laptop, I felt like dancing, even though I have two left feet when it comes to following any rhythm.
In the tutorials I had watched, everything seemed simple. Open the program, learn how to use the tools, let your imagination run wild, and after a few hours, you would have something beautiful to show.
Except reality is different. I open Blender, a whole lot of options appear on the screen, and for the first few minutes, I have no idea whether I am about to create a character or accidentally delete something I will never be able to recover. The tutorials move at a pace that doesn’t match mine. The instructor moves the mouse, presses three keys, and achieves something I have been trying to figure out for half an hour.
It’s frustrating and exciting at the same time. I pause the video, rewind, try again, and just when I think I’ve finally figured out how a tool works, I discover I was using a different one. If I manage to make an object look the way I imagined it, I’ve won a battle. During those few minutes, all the hours of trial and error finally make sense.
I’m absorbing something I didn’t know how to do before. The problem comes when I remember that we live in the age of artificial intelligence. While I’m trying to understand how to model a three-dimensional object, there are tools capable of generating images and creating models from prompts.
I’m barely learning to walk, and it already seems as though the world is looking for a way to teleport to another level. What if I spend months studying Blender, and by the time I’m ready, artificial intelligence has changed things so much that my knowledge is no longer enough?
I’m not trying to become an expert overnight. Learning takes time, but what worries me is not knowing how much time I have before the rules change.
In a few days, I’ll turn sixteen, and at this age, I’m supposed to be thinking about my future, even though I still don’t know exactly what I want to do with it. Everyone asks me what I’m going to study and what career interests me. I know I have to choose a path, prepare myself to follow it, and trust that it will lead me somewhere.
Artificial intelligence can now write texts, generate images, help with programming, and perform tasks that once required specialized knowledge. That doesn’t mean it can do everything or that people are no longer needed. But we can’t pretend these changes don’t affect us in some way.
On the other hand, while people in other parts of the world discuss how to take advantage of the latest technological advances, here I have to worry about having a working computer, electricity, and Internet access.
An Internet connection isn’t always available. Mobile data can’t be topped up as often as one might like, and it’s expensive. Power outages interrupt any activity that depends on electricity, and technological resources aren’t within everyone’s reach.
The power goes out, the connection fails, time passes, and artificial intelligence keeps advancing. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m afraid of it because I think machines are going to steal my imagination. In fact, I’m interested in everything that can be done with it. It’s fascinating that an idea can be transformed into an image, or that a tool can help someone accomplish something that once seemed impossible.
My mom tells me that the fear of falling behind shouldn’t stop me from getting started. And she’s right. If every time I try to learn something, I think it’s pointless, I could spend my entire life waiting for the right moment to begin.
Learning Blender could help me better understand how digital worlds are built, develop my imagination, and discover whether I really enjoy creating things in three dimensions. It would be wonderful to study something simply out of curiosity without constantly having to wonder whether it will help me earn a living.
I’m interested in too many things, and I’m still discovering which ones I truly enjoy: drawing, creating, and trying out tools that allow me to turn my ideas into something more than just thoughts. I don’t think that’s asking too much.
I wish the place where I was born didn’t determine how many opportunities I have, that power outages didn’t interrupt my studies, that connecting to the Internet wasn’t a luxury, and that learning something new didn’t depend on so many conditions beyond my control. It’s one thing for the future to change; it’s quite another to have to chase it using the resources of the past.
In the meantime, I’ll keep working with Blender. I’ll learn to model, make mistakes, and probably get frustrated again when things don’t turn out the way I expected. I have many unanswered questions, but one thing I’m sure of is that I still want to try.
Read more from Isabel Gonzalez’s diary here at Havana Times.