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Sunday Morning Reading
Crazy travel rhythms this summer. Spending time at the lake this weekend. The good thing about lake time is there’s time to do some reading. Here’s some good stuff I stumbled onto, worth sharing for this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Quite a bit revolving around Artificial Intelligence and other mind games. There’s also ants.
For some inexplicable reason defining what it means to be an American has actually become a chore these days. It shouldn’t be. Kieran Healy has written a piece simply titled American that recounts his thoughts and feelings on becoming an American citizen. Well worth your time, espeically in these crazy times.
“Memory isn’t linear; it’s relational.” That’s the thought NatashaMH leaves us with in her piece The Mind’s Mischief. The mind is indeed a curious thing.
Matteo Wong says the AI Doomers Are Getting Doomier. I don’t know about you, but if we’re all doomed at the hands of AI (does AI have hands?) human intelligence never really advanced as far as I thought it did. Or maybe we just hit the ceiling.
Speaking of AI doom, Charlie Warzel wonders why one of the impacts of AI it to make us feel like we’re losing it in AI Is A Mass-Delusion Event. I get the points and they’re well made. Referring back to my comment from the previous entry, if we’re such easy marks for this kind of delusion… well…we are such easy marks.
David Todd McCarty argues why we should resist AI with ecclesiastical fervor, especially those who create for a living. Check out The Moral Failure Of Using AI In Your Art.
Reece Rogers is marking yet another change brought about by AI. Take a look at The AI-Powered PDF Marks The End of An Era.
Barry Betchesky tells us that It Took Many Years And Billions of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes. You read that right. The money quote is:
“But now we have Microsoft apparently determining that ‘unpredictability’ was something that some number of its customers wanted in their calculators.”
Rounding out this collection of links on AI, is another article by NatashaMH where she says instead of Fearing the Machinery, Interrogate The Mindset. Excellent piece. The underlying current is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. We’re creating these machines in our own images. Or at least the images we imagine of ourselves. Humans are far too human, even when we look past or try to accelerate beyond our humanity.
One of the joys of spending time in the great outdoors is that it reminds you we’re not the only intelligent species on the planet. Although as the theme of this week’s reading has emerged, we might want to reevaluate that, just not with Microsoft’s math tools. On another front, in politics it’s certainly easy to argue for a reevaluation. Kate Knibbs takes a swipe at it in a look at how Government Staff Cuts Have Fueled An Ant-Smuggling Boom.
I told you there’d be ants.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
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Who Controls History If AI Is In The Mix
One of the scariest things about this insane period we’re living through is the attempt by those in power to rewrite, alter, or just get rid of history they don’t like. Whether it’s banning books, changing curriculums, forcing the closures of libraries, or what museums can display, I find it a cowardly, yet effective way to hide heads in the sand, bury the sins of the past, and admit we’re actually ashamed of ourselves.
I know this because I have lived this. My early education certainly tilted the American narrative towards the mythology of the Old South. It wasn’t until I left home, and got involved in the theatre that I discovered just how much I hadn’t learned, how much more I needed to, and how the future depends on the past, no matter how complicated it was.
Fortunately the information was there. It was up to me to do the work.
What happens when it’s not there? Or it’s wrong?
I find It hard to imagine that large chunks of the world’s history can be erased, growing up in an era when my access to it seemed to expand exponentially. But it’s been tried before. It’s succeeded with entire generations of populations. Now we’re facing the very real possibility of it happening again in this digital age with the aid of Artifical Intelligence.
There’s an interesting piece by Benji Edwards in Ars Technica about a college student who trained a small AI model that he called TimeCapsuleLLM on Victorian texts. During his experiments his time capsule spit out some actual history he didn’t know about real protests during the era. He checked into the info and the LLM was indeed accurate.
At first glance, that feels like a very positive AI story. Discovering lost history is a good thing. However, with the way I understand AI training it all depends on what data it’s trained on. That leaves things up to who controls the training data. Leave out, change or bias the historical record and…
Well, you can see the problem.
Elon Musk has already hinted at this kind of manipulation. I’m sure there are others thinking the same. They say history repeats itself. Actually history doesn’t. Humans do. History is just the record of the repetition. Humans just use newer and different tools to mold the past into something more comfortable. I may be mistaken, but I think history, in the long run, also proves that never really works out.
Correcting and rewriting history is not for the faint of heart. But when there is no heart, there’s a problem.
Time machines and time travel have always been fraught with danger in the history of science fiction. So has Artificial Intelligence. I’m reasonably sure we’re not smart enough to walk whatever fine lines might exist in a future when the past can be more easily manipulated. We haven’t been in the past when the erasing was harder. But I am dead certain we’re going to be facing this unreal reality.
Again.
Just with newer methods.
Without anything resembling Artficial Intelligence, we’ve managed to forget, alter, or set aside many of the horrible lessons of human history. Why should any new tool we create be any different? I’m sure these AI geeks think they can strip ego and emotion out of these robots they are building.
I doubt they will ever remove hubris.
(Image from Peter Herrman on Unsplash.)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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The Reason Trump Won’t Declare Martial Law
Drip, drip, drip. The daily dilly dallying on the margins that the Trump administration keeps doling out continues. Horror after horror is revealed on this fascist march into demolishing the world’s oldest democracy. But the money keeps rolling in.
The ongoing debate as to whether or not these despicable actions are distractions is in and of itself a meaningless distraction. We’re essentially living under a dictatorship already, and yet the putzes with power can’t really go there. Doing so would cut their mother’s milk off at the teat.
There’s a reason for the pace of things. There’s a reason why Trump hasn’t just declared a full national emergency and implemented martial law and shut the place down. That reason is political fundraising. That’s where the money is. That’s where the suckers are.
Without elections the con men and women can’t shake down the public, corporations, and foreign countries for political donations. Cut off that cash flow and you cut the power, quicker than flipping a switch. It’s not just money for candidates and causes. It’s money for consultants, think tanks, and the advertising dependent media. Declare martial law and the spinning wheel stops.
In order to keep the money flowing there needs to be an opposition. Without one it would be all about selling meme coins, fake gold phones, and silly shoes. The shake downs would still continue, just on a different levels. Gifts, grifts and gunpoint.
Of course the silver lining is all of those fundraising emails would stop.
(Image from Freddie Colins on Unsplash)
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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Apple TV+ Price Increase and the Dummy Price
Times have changed how money changes hands. Back in the day purchasing a subscription meant you got a deal. It also created a relationship between the customer and the service, that often, but not always, protected subscribers from price increases. At least for a time. That really no longer exists. Sure there are deals and free trials to seduce new customers, but typically those deals are for a period of time and then the price goes up. It’s changed the definition of what we used to call “the dummy price.”
“The dummy price” was for those who didn’t subscribe, thus paying full price. We used to joke in the theatre biz that “the dummy price” was for the guy who’s wife told him she wanted to see a show, and then he’d have his secretary use his credit card to buy the tickets when he got to the office.
When we had to raise prices we’d do so on single tickets and reward our subscribers by telling them we’d keep their current prices intact, thus increasing their savings and further building trust in relationship. That made it a bit easier sell when we inevitably had to raise subscription prices.
It was similar to buying the newspaper each day, instead of subscribing. A subscription was always cheaper than the newsstand price.
The only thing I think I subscribe to these days that actually offers any type of real savings is an E-ZPass, which in my state cuts the cost you pay at the toll booth by 50%.
Of course those are different markets than streaming entertainment, which didn’t exist when I was setting “dummy prices.” Subscriptions for streaming entertainment only gets you access. Certainly a lot of content is available for the price you pay, but realistically it’s more than anyone could ever consume. But the promise is access. The quantity makes much of the content as disposable as it is available, even if it is cheaper than back in the day when you had to purchase physical or digital media in order to view it at home.
The only thing you’re really buying is the inevitable price increase and a bit more frustration in balancing out your entertainment budget.
The new definition of “the dummy price” is hoping there are enough customers who don’t pay attention and miss the price increase.
Apple announced today it’s increasing its monthly subscription price for its streaming entertainment service, Apple TV+ from $9.99 to $12.99 a month. Other streaming services do the same thing, more frequently than Apple. But every player in the market affects the perception of all the rest.
It’s led to a sort of comedic game for consumers who want to stream from different services. They cancel a service for a period of time, often waiting for new content to become abundantly available or a particularly desired title, and then they’ll resubscribe after canceling another service. Or they’ll just keep creating new email accounts, resubscribing under a new name.
Currently the streaming companies seem to be comfortable enough with this type of customer churn, but it builds more attraction to titles than it does to a service’s brand, which in turn drives up the marketing costs for each new title. I imagine at some point streaming companies will find a way to clamp down and try to minimize that churn, the same way they have done with password sharing.
But the subscription game is not just an entertainment industry business practice. There are quite a few services that want your monthly tithe and offer the same kind of price inducements. But it’s certainly easier to cancel Netflix for a period of time than it is some of these other types of services once the inevitable price increase comes along. It will be interesting to see how the AI market shakes out once the first big company needs to break the $20 a month barrier for general consumers.
Bottom line it’s a shell game for both customers and companies. Death and taxes used to be the only constants in that old axiom about the only things certain in life. That needs to be amended to include price increases for subscription services.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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Lightning and Thunder and Memories
We’re all always watching the weather, especially as the dire promises of climate change become reality. Hurricane season in the Atlantic is swinging into the its most dangerous months after some guy who wants to build gigantic energy sucking and polluting server farms got let loose in the U.S. government and did his best to dismantle departments and the science that help us know more about what’s to come.
I grew up in the hills of central Virginia and survived a few dangerous storms during my childhood. One of those was Hurricane Camille in 1969. I wrote a piece about the night that the storm many had thought already dissipated dumped 25 or so inches of water on our county creating massive flooding and mudslides, and taking lives. That night haunts me to this day.
You can check out the piece on the Medium publication Ellemeno called The Thunder Never Stopped. I hope you go and check it out.
Thanks to David Todd McCarty and NatashaMH for letting me publish the piece on Ellemeno.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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Everywhere Else is the South
I laughed out loud. As we watch some states sending National Guard troops into Washington DC bowing subserviently to the convicted felon’s desire to stop everyone but him and his followers from committing crime, a friend in frustration said “the South is sending all of these troops.” Well, not exactly.
But then again, maybe so.
Yes, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi are sending troops and they are indeed Southern States geographically, socially, and historically in the context of the American Civil War. South Carolina makes perfect sense as it was the first state to secede from the Union. Some of the others with their secessionist histories do as well. But at first glance, Ohio certainly doesn’t, nor does West Virginia.
The American Civil War has been studied and written about so much, it’s amazing how much so many just don’t know. It’s actually a bit stupefying how many accept the mythologies about the sentiments and ideologies that underpinned that conflict. The maps in the history books make it easy with their North/South divide. But it was never easy. In an ironic twist in this latest reactionary resurgence of racist rewriting history, West Virginia actually split off from Virginia to join the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union.
Like I said, it’s enough to make me laugh at the ignorance of it all.
But then I remember a line from Lanford Wilson’s play Talley’s Folly. A lovely two-hander that features Jewish New Yorker Matt Friedman wooing Sally Talley in Missouri. As she demurs with objections about their different backgrounds and ways of life, in frustration he tells her:
…there is New York City, isolated neighborhoods in Boston, and believe me, the rest is all the South.
I’ve found Wilson and Matt’s observation to be extremely accurate in my travels through life, and certainly it resonates the same in today’s insanity as well.
Put it this way, in this Civil War we’re inching into there won’t be anything like a Mason and Dixon Line dividing the opposing sides. Actually there never was.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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National Potato Day
In honor of National Potato Day here in the U.S.
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Craig Hockenberry’s Take on the Why of Liquid Glass
There is a quote largely attributed to Robert F. Kennedy. No not the one rampaging through the U.S. healthcare system. It goes “some men see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were, and ask why not?” But, it actually came first from George Bernard Shaw in his play Back to Methuselah.
The text gets mangled often enough as does the attribution. Regardless, the point is made. In my experience as a theatre producer/director/designer/playwright the biggest part of the game is the “dreaming” part. The next hurdle is finding a way to turn that into reality. The dreams often come when least expected, occasionally after many attempts at finding a solution, and sometimes at random moments. They sometimes come into focus as almost impossible, or perhaps wrong-headed.
Typically, in something completely uncharacteristic for me, when I find I can’t articulate what I’m feeling or seeing, I know I’m on to something, and that’s the moment to ask “why not?” rather than “why?”
I’m also very familiar with the desire or temptation to do something new instead of doing again what I know works. Speaking from my experience that’s yielded both positive and negative results. There’s a reason some things are called “tried and true.” There’s also a reason to hold your breath, roll the dice and gamble it all on something new.
Honestly, either way is a risk. And that’s how it should be. But if you feel the need for change, go for it and don’t reverse course.
But what do I know? I’m just a theatre guy who’s produced hits and flops along the way and comfortable taking slings and arrows along with occasional accolades. I’m not sure what feels better, being admired for a courageous leap of faith, or feeling accomplished for sticking the landing. In the end, I’m not sure it matters.
Liquid Glass
A lot has already been said, good, bad, or indifferent about how Apple’s designers dreamed up its new Liquid Glass design approach. But that doesn’t answer the “why?” Was it a compulsion for something new? Time for a change? A diversion to distract? Or a romantic new vision spurred on by a heavy new headset?
App developer and designer Craig Hockenberry of the
, in an interesting post recently asked that question and provided what he thinks is a possible answer. It’s titled simply Liquid Glass. Why? I don’t want to spoil the post. You should go read it yourself. But his answer points to a possible future of devices “with screens that disappear seamlessly into the physical edge.”
A cautionary note here. For several years Apple trumpeted “edge-to-edge screens” that still had bezels. Marketing mavens often outrace product dreamers to the destination.
I joked with Craig on Mastodon that he should have subtitled the piece Liquid Glass is an Edge Case.
The joke may indeed prove to be true, but it’s a truth we’ll live with in some form or fashion for the next few years, edge case or not, regardless of the good, bad, or indifferent reactions.
Anyway, go read Craig’s piece. However Liquid Glass is received in a few weeks, I’m looking forward to discovering it myself.
I mean, why not?
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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Mainstream Media Continues to Dismantle Itself
It’s been an accepted part of conventional wisdom for quite some time that what we consider mainstream media is gradually fading away in the face of newer generations turning to other sources available on the Internet for news and entertainment. Heck, even some older generations are turning what used to be the dial.
The business models have suffered for a while now whether it’s print, broadcast or cable. The fading away has gained new and seemingly panicked momentum thanks to the depredations of the Trump administration, aided by the greedy cowardice of the corporations worried more about avoiding the wrath of the beast they helped create, than the standards they all proudly trumpeted for years. Those trumpets have largely fallen silent or just ring hollow.
The end of late night comedy shows captured a lot of attention recently, but eventually most broadcast scripted news and entertainment will also give way. Which is ironic given that the convicted felon largely responsible for this quickening pace came to prominence via Reality TV, which let me tell you is anything but reality and is very scripted.
Now NBC Universal, owned by Comcast, is making a move away from MSNBC, attempting to distance the Peacock from controversy by rebranding as MS Now. That little branding acronym stands for My Source | News | Opinion | World.
Yeesh. I guess the marketing department was the first place they made changes. As a social media friend Judgment Dave says, “it sounds like a translation of something in Japanese that doesn’t translate well into English.”
It’s weird, yet it isn’t to hang onto the ‘MS’, given that MSNBC was birthed as partnership with Microsoft and NBC, long since dissolved. Somewhere Bill Gates is laughing because it also sounds like a software program delivered on a CD-ROM.
Whatever sturm and drang comes from this news of the moment, (news of the Now?) the bigger picture is that these troubled corporations, in what feels like desperate efforts to try and save themselves, are essentially hastening their eventual final curtains in the wake of current trends already overtaking them.
Some may lay blame on the rise of the Internet and mobile devices in every hand, but the fact of the matter is the smart folks at the top of these corporations missed the moment. Some eventually tried to make changes. Remember CNN Plus? But in my opinion their failures were less about the delivery mechanisms and more about the decline of the news and entertainment products that they delivered as the cost cutters held sway.
NBCUniversal isn’t done trimming the sails yet. Plans are in place to spinoff other properties as well (CNBC, USA, Oxygen, and E!).
Some will blame it on advertisers seeking the best way to reach customers. That’s mostly true, but ask podcasters how that’s going for them these days. Chasing advertising revenue is always a cyclical game for just about everything except sports.
It’s no wonder then that it feels like we see our politics more and more resembling blood sports. Of course the irony is audiences claim they want less, not more in that realm. What will be interesting to see in the next decade or so is how political advertising, which fills so many corporate media coffers sorts itself out, once the usual outlets fade away as they continue to play to ever diminishing audiences that keep spreading themselves wider and wider, attempting to flee the same old, same old.
Certainly ads will continue to be designed to run on social media and circulate that way. But the only folks making real money off of that trend are the political consultants and ad-makers.
I hope I’m around to see how my grandkids eventually consume what we once revered and respected as the news. I’ll regale them with what I imagine they will view as fairy tales and myths.
You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.
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Sunday Morning Reading
We’re technically out of the Dog Days of Summer, but it doesn’t feel much like it. It’s the kind of hot Summer I remember as a kid when the dogs would spend the hot part of the day lazing under the porch. I’m spending mine traveling (too much traveling) and sharing what I can here and there. Find some shade and check out this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.
Peter Wehner thinks the only way out of the wreckage we’re in is to rewrite the cultural script. Tall task. He spells it out in The Virtue of Integrity.
Knowing is half the battle. What you do with knowledge is an altogether different story as knowing and knowledge are two different things. Check out Jim Stewartson’s piece The War on Knowing.
Somehow in all of the wreckage we’re sorting through, empathy became a bad thing for those doing the wrecking. NatashaMH thinks this crazy Artificial Intelligence race we’re in is taking the human out of being human. If you ask me it’s all a bit too human as we look to foist off responsibility for the choices we make. The Risks of Synthetic Empathy is a great piece. Give it a read.
Then take a look at Mathew Ingram’s piece, People Fall In Love With All Kinds of Things Including AI Chatbots. When chatbots start filing for divorce I think we might have created Artificial Generative Intelligence.
Kyle Chayka is exploring The Revenge of Millennial Cringe. Home may be where the heart is, but it was a terrible song.
Stephen Marche is talking about Profound and Abiding Rage: Canada’s Answer to America’s Abandonment. Abandonment is a good way to describe what we’re all feeling these days.
Apple’s about to unleash new operating systems for its devices in a few weeks and the one that has my interest is for iPads. From what I’ve seen (I don’t run the betas) the changes to the multi-tasking capabilities will be a positive step forward. Craig Grannell takes a look at how long it took for Apple to finally make these changes in Apple Finally Destroyed Steve Jobs’ Vision of the iPad. Good.
Chicago’s Uptown Theatre celebrated 100 years this week. Robert Loerzel takes a look in Uptown Theatre: 100 Years of Glory and Decay.
When you think you’re the center of the universe it can rock your world when you find out you’re not. Kids learn this. Republicans in the current administration have not. Eric Berger writes about NASA’s Acting Chief Calls For the End of Earth Science at the Space Agency.
(Image from Machekhin Evgenii on Shutterstock.)
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.
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Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3
Musings on life, the theatre, technology, culture and the occasional emu sighting
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 