Category: Shakespeare

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Experience Stacks and Matthew Perry (R.I.P.)

    When social media surfaced a clip of the late “Friends” star on “The West Wing,” it activated crashing contexts that explain how Experience Stacks work and why they can be powerful. I am more aware of Matthew Perry after his premature death last October than I ever was while he was still alive. In part…

  • Dueling Intelligences

    How realistic is the idea that flesh and blood actors will soon find themselves performing alongside long-dead movie stars? Image created by DALL-E. Last time, I shared a microfiction (1,000 words or less), a short science fiction story called “The Only Living Boy,” about an actor, Tom, who is the only flesh and blood performer…

  • The Only Living Boy, a Microfiction

    What happens when real and virtual actors join forces in a new production of Shakespeare’s “Othello” on Broadway? As regular readers already know, I’ve been experimenting with microfictions, short SF stories (1,000 words or less) that help me explore and illustrate aspects of how our lives might evolve within digital transformation. Here, then, is another microfiction. Next…

  • Economist, DeSantis, Trump, Shakespeare

    The May 27th issue of The Economist has an in-depth briefing entitled, “A bungled coup: Ron DeSantis has little chance of beating Donald Trump to his party’s nomination.” The Economist is always literate, but it isn’t often literary. This piece persistently conjures up Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar throughout. That includes the opening line: “Belatedly and nervously, the would-be assassins have been…

  • The Anatomy of Delight

    A Broadway show, a YouTube video, and a classic movie lead me to explore how surprise comes from novelty on the other side of familiarity… & why that’s actionable for creators and business leaders. People call things delightful all the time, but what exactly is delight? It’s not just pleasure, nor is it simply more…

  • A Urinal in Troutdale: Shakespeare Sightings

    Shakespeare has been ever-present for centuries because of a peculiar quality of how the brand works, a quality that other brands can imitate. Here are two weird things about Shakespeare. First, while some people love Shakespeare, others view reading or seeing the plays as a punishment from God. Second, you cannot escape references to Shakespeare—not…

  • Microsoft’s New A.I.-Powered Bing and Shakespeare

    Pundits panicked last week when oddball chats with the new Bing pushed back the frontiers of weirdness, but were those conversations a fair test in the first place? Last week, columnists and analysts took to their fainting couches (limply dragging their laptops with them) and described surreal and disturbing conversations with Microsoft’s new chat-driven Bing…

  • Experience Stacks, Competitive Advantage, and Netflix’s “Wednesday”

    The new Netflix series about the daughter from The Addams Family going to a Hogwarts-style high school doesn’t ignore the earlier versions of the story: it embraces them, which is part of why it succeeds. One difference between artificial intelligence and the human kind (at least for now) is that AI is amazing at pattern…