The last line of the article summarizes it perfectly.:
> Do things. Make things. And then put them on your website so I can see them.
I subscribe fully to the first two sentences, but the last one is bullshit. The gloom in the article is born from the authors attaching the value of "making things" to the recognition received for the effort. Put your stuff out there if you think it is of value to someone else. If it is, cool, and if it's not, well, who cares.
> I can’t remember exactly what they said, but it was something like: “I created a whole album, complete with album art, in 3.5 hours. Why wouldn’t I use the make it easier machine?” This is kind of darkly fascinating to me, because it gives rise to such an obvious question: if anyone can do that, then why listen to your music? It takes a significant chunk of 3.5 hours just to listen to an album, so how much manual work was even done here? Apparently I can just go generate an endless stream of stuff of the same quality! Why would I want your particular brand of Whatever?
This gem implies that the value of the music (or art in general) is partially or even wholly dependent on whether or not someone else thinks it's good. I can't even...
If you eliminate the back-patting requirements, and the stuff we make is genuine, then it's value is intrinsic. The "Whatever" machines are just tools, like the rest of the tools we use, to make things. So, just make your things and get on with it.