ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

In Order To Save Downtowns, We Need To Destroy Them

At least the way they're configured now. The issue: "What to do with office buildings when we don’t need offices anymore?" - Wired

Why Does Voicemail Refuse To Die?

What? "If its full storage capacity was purposed for music, a modern iPhone or Samsung Galaxy could hold hundreds of thousands of downloaded songs, representing more than 1 million minutes of audio. And yet those same phones will sometimes whine that your voicemail is full." - The Atlantic

We Get More, Not Less, Creative Over Time

But it's all about persistence, not fairy dust: "The serial-order effect applies to tasks that last minutes or days, but creativity also improves across years, decades, and even careers." - The Atlantic

Stuffy, Stereotypical, And Stunningly Time-Saving

That's what Google's new chatbot can be, at least according to one author, who let it write some wedding-related emails. And it's really, really good at consumer complaints. - Wired

Mythology Of The “Dark Ages” Belies Actual History

Today, all serious historians and archaeologists acknowledge that the cross-fertilization of “Western” and “non‐Western” cultures happened throughout human history, and that the modern West owes much of its cultural DNA to a wide range of non‐European and non‐white forebears. - Smithsonian

Ghost In The Machine: What Andy Warhol Understood About Computers And Art

He was one of the first who saw machines had something to offer to the artistic process. The artistic technique for which Warhol became best known treated the mechanical part of the process, the screen print, as a transformative element, even though it was technically “just” a recreation of something that already existed. - Tedium

On The Internet No One Knows You’re An AI

If a computer system can write code—as ChatGPT already can—then it might eventually learn to improve itself over and over again until computing technology reaches what’s known as “the singularity”: a point at which it escapes our control. - The New Yorker

Philosophers And Their Obsession With Language

In the 20th century, Western philosophy split into two discourses, each with its own canon and jargon, usually referred to as ‘analytic’ and ‘continental’. Mastering them simultaneously was a very intimidating prospect, and few had the motivation. - Aeon

The Moral Ambiguity Divide: How Gen Xers And Millennials See The World

While Gen Xers grew up with the moral gray areas and disdain for authority, Millennials were raised on Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, neither of which would exist without a sincere belief in the battle between good and evil—and, critically, a driving need for good to win. - 3 Quarks Daily

There Was That Moment Computers Started Beating Humans At Chess. Now They Will Start To Beat Us At Everything Else

We’re living a new, much broader Deep Blue moment, when the basic boundary lines between the outer limits of what machines and humans can do are suddenly in flux. Only this time, the people directly concerned aren’t just a few dozen grandmasters in the rarified world of top-level chess. This time, it’s everyone. - Persuasion

Google’s AI Will Likely Be Quite Boring

As the company moves the technology into more of its products, perhaps the generative AI revolution will turn out to be a lot less fun than you might expect from the early shock and awe of ChatGPT, a chatbot that has an edgy charm. - Wired

How We Know What We Know

Simon Winchester worries “that today’s all-too-readily available stockpile of information will lead to a lowered need for the retention of knowledge, a lessening of thoughtfulness, and a consequent reduction in the appearance of wisdom in society.” - Washington Post

Hollywood Is So Addicted To Peter Pan

Isn't that just a little weird? "Nearly every single thing you learn about the origins of Peter Pan, Wendy, the lost boys, and Neverland makes what is marketed as an uplifting tale about innocence and imagination instead a sobering reminder of the inevitability of loss, decay, and death." - LitHub

Google’s AI Is Truly The Offspring Of Clippy

"Google’s Duet is surely in a different league, both in terms of its reading comprehension and the quality of the text that the generative AI spits out. But the basic spirit of Clippy — identifying what you’re trying to do and offering to help — remains." - The Verge

The Father And Son Duo Who Just Won A Pulitzer

"Watching your kid go into journalism is like hearing he wants to rappel into a volcano to rescue a puppy." - The Atlantic

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