An excellent read related to themes I discussed in my newsletter today:
“But these noncommercial experiences—art and god and so forth—are perhaps the only private forms of resistance to corporate ideology that don’t capitulate or participate in the totalizing and banal language of neoliberalism; and it’s of existential importance to get the corporation out of your head.”
#AI #Capitalism #Neoliberalism #Art
https://open.substack.com/pub/patricknathan/p/resistance-isnt-futile
AI cannot make art, period. it makes dead images whose banality is often hidden behind garish colours and eye dazzling designs.
cartoons, satire, wallpaper patterns, perhaps. depends on the human doing the prompts.
but art, nope. i'm not surprised it's de rigeur in some circles because people don't buy art because they love it but as an investment. end of story 🤑🤑🤑 there's one born every minute. NFTs, yup, QED.
The problem is that shoddy journalism is giving techbro hucksters free rent to spew their hype. Here's the latest BS from Publisher's Weekly, literally allowing someone with a vested interest in "AI" futures to extol the utter enshittification (to quote Doctorow) of mainstream publishing.
(Pardon my French, too, but the blatant rush to be in on the ground floor of so-called "inevitable" industry changes is just so sleazy.)
@MLClark There's a great exercise in Le Guin's Steering the Craft that's solely for sentence length variety. One part is a challenge to use no punctuation at all to develop a sense of where it's truly needed.
@JakeA I love Steering the Craft so much I brought it with me to Colombia. :) Good note, & a great exercise!
@MLClark A worthy choice! My favorite practical book on writing.
Pairs well with Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, which I often read simply because his enthusiasm gets me really inspired. Then I turn to Le Guin when it's time to do the work. 😁
@JakeA My two go-tos. 😊 I find Delany's writing about writing life, and letters full of counsel to others, to be highly instructive and motivating in other ways critical to my practice. What I love about those pieces is that they're rich with his full (messy) humanity - which means I don't always agree with everything, but I can *wrestle* with those disagreements, you know? A lot of writing guides these days filter that out.
Bradbury's is a phenomenal choice, too!
@MLClark Thanks for sharing! In general, for me, the best kinds of books on writing are more of an invitation and less of a declaration.
is it crypto all over again? about as realistic. NFTS says it all imo. people are suckers for novelty.
100% crypto and NFTs all over again. Each scam replacing the last, in one grand hustle to secure venture-capital while the hype is at its height, then cash out before the next crash.
Watch out for articles warning about the species-ending dangers of AI, too. They're also profit-driven, working to convince us of the utmost importance of paying attention to AI & investing in AI mitigation schemes.
(Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!)
And...
Since I was pulled from my writing by someone sending me the infuriating industry article linked above, here's a nice fun oldie-but-goodie to encourage writers to play with their prose until the variations in it "sing".
Back to writing with me! No more sleazeballs today! 🤞
#AmWriting #WritingCommunity #WritersOfCoSo