Curating The Week
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Curating The Week: AI and Search, AI in Music, Perfectionism
• An essay on AI and search. “There is a road that must be crossed, by Google and also by the rest of us. On one side is a digital world with its largely familiar structure, fuelled by familiar kinds of advertising, in many of whose forms Google excels. To make liveable whatever lies on Continue reading
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Curating The Week: AI and Thinking, Sound Designing, AI and De-Skilling
• An essay about AI and thinking. “It can seem unnatural, even repulsive, to imagine that a computer program actually understands, actually thinks. We usually conceptualize thinking as something conscious, like a Joycean inner monologue or the flow of sense memories in a Proustian daydream. Or we might mean reasoning: working through a problem step by Continue reading
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Curating the Week: Jack Dejohnette, AI and the Sublime, AI and Cognition, Apple TextEdit, Writing as Thinking
• A tribute to Jack DeJohnette. “The idea of improvisation is tied up in the very nature of our existence. We don’t expect our life to evolve without changing and we never know what’s round the corner – why should music be any different?” • An essay on AI and the sublime. “Sublimity isn’t an Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Democratic Degradation, CLA Coaching, Iterating Towards Complexity, Brian Eno, Aesthetic Lines
“The president is brilliantly weaponizing the animosity cultivated in the electorate over the past 40 years, using it as a pretext to justify his attacks on his perceived enemies. While political violence and polarization remain serious concerns, our primary focus must shift to countering the deliberate democratic degradation unfolding before us. The conflict is no Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Essay Writing, Zombie Democracy, Alva Noto, AI as Magical Thinking
• An essay by Zadie Smith about writing essays. “I developed a different sense of what an essay could be. I understood all three men to be ‘personal essayists’ in the sense that they cared passionately about their subjects, but they themselves were rarely figures in any particular piece; their energies were directed elsewhere. And Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Awe, Brian Eno’s Legacy, Daily Rhythms
• An essay on awe. “Unlike the dark passions, awe is a pro-social emotion. It can encourage attitudes of generosity and altruism; of selflessness, empathy, and compassion. The sense that we are part of something vast and meaningful can create bonds of connection.” • An essay on Brian Eno’s legacy. “It’s possible, today, to go Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Running, Terry Riley, Wisdom, A.I.
• A video (with music) about running. • An essay on Terry Riley. “I felt like a transcendentalist, an illusionist, or a magician. Something that has to do with magic. I feel it’s my field to create magic in sound. Magic in the sense of transcendence of this ordinary life into another realm. An awakening, Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Margaret Boden, Brainstorming With AI, Attention, B-Sections
• Margaret Boden’s obituary. “Computer science, she went on, helps us ‘to understand what a generative system is, how it’s possible to have a set of rules — which may be a very, very short, briefly statable set of rules — but which has the potential to generate infinitely many different structures.’” • A scholar Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Jaron Lanier On Musical Instruments, Spotify, Adam Gopnik On The Renaissance
• An interview with Jaron Lanier about musical instruments. “To me, musical instruments are the best user interfaces that have ever been invented. If what you think a technology is for is to help a person affect the world with ever greater acuity, then musical instruments are the most advanced technologies that have ever existed.” Continue reading
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Curating The Week: Fake AI Bands, AI’s Effects on Writing and Reading
• An article on fake AI bands. “The internet has fragmented and flattened subcultures. The Velvet Sundown’s puppeteers present the band’s soft pastiche of genres—psychedelic, folk, indie—as sophisticated fusion, but of course it’s nothing more than a careless smear of stylistic averages. Psychedelic, folk, and indie rock each in their own way have something to Continue reading
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