Category: Culture
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Gen AI and the Future of Entertainment
Will algorithms take over Hollywood and make personalized video the dominant way people entertain themselves? Like me, my friend Shelly Palmer is in the futurist business—peering into trends, technologies, and tea leaves to make sense of what’s coming. Last week, Shelly published, “Hollywood’s AI Blind Spot: The Fatal Mistake That Will Kill the Industry,” which…
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Attentuon
What if we’ve been thinking about attention the wrong way? Perhaps the single most famous sentence about attention comes from William James in his 1918 book The Principles of Psychology: “My experience is what I agree to attend to” (page 401). It’s surprising that such a short, nine-word sentence contains two ideas that have not aged…
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When Great Artists Are Bad People
Artists can have dark sides, some alleged and some convicted. Should evil actions by artists change how we experience and judge the art? Let’s start with two thought experiments. #1. How would things be different today if newly uncovered evidence revealed that William Shakespeare was a pedophile who assaulted the boy actors in his company?…
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Today’s Wildfires, Yesterday’s Memories
There’s only one story on my mind this week: the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. The last few days tore my attention to shreds and patches. I was in Vegas for CES when the Palisades Fire exploded in my hometown of Los Angeles. I flip-flopped between thoughtful business meetings and anxious refreshes of the Cal…
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Incursions of Memory
A delightful podcast provoked three unexpected memories and a think about the differences between coincidence and serendipity. Let me start with a PSA: if you have any affection for or curiosity about Shakespeare, then don’t miss the delightful book Shakespeare: the Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea, which is part discussion about…
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Family as the Ship of Theseus
For some irksome reason, the old philosophical question about the Ship of Theseus has come to new life as a business cliché. Type “Ship of Theseus and business” into your favorite search engine, and you’ll find numberless (yawn… whoops, sorry… started to drift off there) articles about organizations as Ships of Theseus. If you’re so lucky that you…
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Can You Only GenAI Your Way to the Middle?
Should we take seriously a recent study that shows people like AI-generated poetry? And what are the broader implications? A few days ago, La Profesora sent me an intriguing link to a Poetry Turing Test set up by a couple of philosophers at the University of Pittsburgh. The test is a simple Google Form that presents the…