I find myself collecting an assortment of articles, videos, and other various bits of flotsam that make their way to my side of the Internet, and then wondering what to do with them. I want to talk about these things with someone, but I must confess that I detest receiving a link about something new to "think about" as if it were a wayward, unsolicited d*ck pic, so I am not about to send these things to someone without prior authorization.
So the solution I've come up with for now: I'll occasionally post some of these random pieces of the internet that have caught my attention with a brief summation of my thoughts/questions/interactions, if not for anyone else to interact with then for (what is rapidly becoming my own most overused word of 2024) posterity! (But if you do have thoughts, HMU!!)
Article: "The New Luddites Aren't Backing Down" by Bryan Merchant in The Atlantic
I did not know that I was going to become so interested in technology, AI, and futurity when I went back to grad school. Now, firmly half of my thesis revolves around the study of the sacralization of AI and technology in contemporary fiction and I'm currently taking a class investigating the field of "Critical AI." (Academia really knows how to make fascinating topics sound solemn and dry AF.)
I am not an anti-AI crusader—though as an educator and writer maybe I should be—nor am I an early adopter. This is usually true for me across many different arenas. (I think it's my Aquarian nature that makes me reject outright popular things on the basis of their popularity, a sickness, really.) But as I dive deeper into the world of machine learning, AI, and the future as ordered by cyber-capitalism, not to mention the terrifying omniscience of the cryptopticon, I find myself questioning the employment of AI and machine learning more and more.
Algorithm-powered technology is already amplifying the disastrous human biases that exist and pervade throughout society—why are more people not extremely concerned about the far-too-reaching incorporation of this vastly unstable (and frankly kind of stupid) technology into daily life? If asking that all of us take a second to really consider where AI and machine learning can be most usefully integrated into society, rather than jamming it into every single process we come across, makes me a Luddite, so be it. And that's what Merchant's article is about: the "new" Luddites who reject universal implementation of technology for implementation's sake.
Music: John Cage's “Organ2 /ASLSP" as performed at the St. Burchardi Church in Germany
John Cage actually came up in a book I've been (slowly) making my way through lately (Nathan Hill's The Nix) so it was a fortuitous Baader-Meinhof situation that I came across this story about a church in Germany that is taking Cage's avant-garde approach to music to a whole new level.
The organ at the St. Burchardi Church began playing Cage's piece in 2001. Yes, 2001. You see, "ASLSP" stands for "as slowly and softly as possible" and musicians decided to take that in the most literal way possible. The article about the performance is really fascinating, actually, and moves quickly, which I appreciate. At first I, like article author Rob Haskins, dismissed this performance as a gimmicky farce. But! By the end of Haskins' article, I'm changing my tune, as it were.
Latest addition to "Makes Me Happy" saved Instagram folder
I've always portrayed myself as an anti-winter person, probably because my mother is so anti-cold. (It helped that I spent a great deal of my formative years in a tropical country, so I never really had to deal with winter for a good stretch.) I'm not sure what it is about this winter, but I'm finding myself really reveling in the feeling of cold air on my cheeks, having a bright cherry red nose, and wrapping myself in big coats and hats and scarves. It feels like mindfulness and gratitude and like slowing down to enjoy the season I'm in, as opposed to wishing fervently for a different one, and that's exactly what Yaz evokes in this short reel.
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