AI-Generated Social Media? Looks Like It’s Already Here.
The only problem? You can't simulate community.Do we need another app simulating human experience to solve the loneliness crisis? More simulation entails further disconnection.
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Peter Biles
Experience is Going Extinct
A review of Christine Rosen's "The Extinction of Experience"As more of our daily experience goes mediated and buffered through screens, it’s important to wonder what we’re losing.
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Dolphins Quarterback Suffers Another Concussion
Head trauma remains a dark reality in American footballSuffering too many concussions can result in mental health problems, including severe depression, with victims running the risk of dementia or even early death.
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Haidt: Beauty and Awe Help Us Escape the Phone-Based Life
The question is: why are we drawn to beauty?I want the beauty of the forest to actually be beautiful, not just signal a primordial drive to forage and hunt.
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Americans Are Lonely. Sometimes Even When They’re Together
Technology can obstruct our connection with others, but it can also train us to not even want friendship in the first place“Hell is other people,” wrote Sartre. For the modern apologist of self-love, no one spoke a truer word.
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The Smartphone is the Enemy of Learning
Digital devices are hijacking kids' ability to concentrate in the classroomHow can students be expected to read and study or engage in discussions when educators are competing with TikTok videos and Instagram in the classroom?
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National Novel Writing Month Approves AI Writing
But what about most of the arts and culture community?The pushback was swift and overwhelming negative.
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Will the Real Beethoven Please Stand Up?
AI images are starting to take over the internetWhereas the original painting offers a nuanced revelation of the person, the AI image looks like a malcontented version of Mel Gibson.
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Antidote to Screen Addiction? A Good Book
Sitting and reading in silence is a pleasure the modern world has forgottenWe should let ourselves take pleasure in story first before jumping back on our phones to make comments on Booktok or Goodreads.
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Live Music is Making a Comeback, and So is Bob Dylan
People still want to experience music in person.This past summer, 110,000 people convened for a George Strait concert in College Station, TX, the biggest crowd ever recorded to hear live music. Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” has amassed over a billion dollars in revenue, with the pop star traveling the world to sold-out amphitheaters. Coldplay, another massive musical act, is gearing up for the release of their tenth studio album, Moon Music, set to drop on October 4th. They plan a world tour for the album and are also known to fill up stadiums far and wide. So, whatever plights the world of arts and culture might be facing, and given AI’s incursion into the creator economy, one thing remains evident: people still want to experience music in Read More ›
The Return of the Rings
Time to revisit Middle-earthAugust has been a big month for Tolkien fans. Season 2 of Amazon’s The Rings of Power is slated to premiere on Thursday, August 29th, two years after the first season (with its billion-dollar budget) dropped and garnered mixed reviews. You can read my own two cents on The Rings of Power here and here. The question a lots of Tolkien fans are probably asking now is whether the show can recover from a slow start, some poor character development and cliche dialogue, and some basic plot issues that made many of us wish more time was invested on the story than the stratospheric budget. We’ll see. Here’s the trailer for Season 2: The Rings of Power isn’t the only Read More ›
Finally Something the Politicians Agree On: Phone-free Schools
Governors in both red and blue states are getting screens out of classroomsI grew up in a “phone-free” school in the 2010s and would highly recommend it. Phones represented clear threats to learning, collaboration, and creativity.
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Learning to Build and Create Offline as Well as On
Is the internet the only place to build and expand culture?How can we build beauty instead of glass blocks? Cathedrals instead of consumer malls? And how can we avoid simply rebuilding a modern rendition of Babel?
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A Weekend Watch: Paul Kingsnorth and Louise Perry
Who is technology serving?What do we lose when we’re never quiet with our own thoughts, always checking our phones, always listening to Spotify or a podcast in the background?
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Tulsi Gabbard Put on Terror Watch List. Is the Dystopia Already Here?
Tyranny is starting to rear its head in the western worldLast week, the United Kingdom warned its citizens about what they post online, noting they could be criminally prosecuted for sharing content that can “incite” violence. Free speech advocates were quick to condemn the announcement as censorial and undemocratic. But is America immune from the thought police? Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii was recently put on the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) terror watchlist. According to whistleblower reports, she and her husband were followed by federal agents and a team of dogs last month and checked multiple times at airports as they traveled across the United States and overseas. Local Hawaiian lawmakers sent a statement to the TSA condemning the “harassment”: The people of Hawaii love Tulsi and your actions Read More ›
What Happened to “Third Spaces”?
Many men are lacking the deep community and sense of brotherhood (fraternity) they need to flourish and grow.. Bringing back communal institutions might be crucial for social cohesionA few decades ago, the club was more of a thing. And not the kind where people rave and disco until six in the morning. No, these were “gentlemen’s clubs,” places where guys could separate themselves both from familial and professional venues and enjoy meaningful connection with other men. Anthony Bradley, a scholar at the Acton Institute, shared some of his thoughts and findings on the decline of these “third spaces” and how they’ve been detrimental towards men in particular. The rise of more egalitarian attitudes towards gender, which had the great net benefit of opening the door for more equal opportunity for women, inadvertently led to the decline of these male-centric institutions. Today, we see the result: many men Read More ›
The U.K. Government Reposts Censorious Tweet
The rising authoritarianism in western societies is becoming more evidentIn light of the violent protests and now counter-protests raging across the England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom (UK), the UK government reposted an announcement on X that those posting online content promoting “hatred” or “violence” could be criminally prosecuted. Here’s the post: Not only can citizens face prosecution by posting inciteful content (although the video makes no mention about what that really is), but they can also get nabbed for simply reposting it from someone else. The pushback on X was swift, with critics calling the post a blatant instance of government overreach and comparing the measure to something we would expect in authoritarian countries like China and North Korea. The debate over free speech in western countries Read More ›
Revisiting Neil Postman’s Laws of Technology
How can we judge technology realistically?Without guiding principles, technology can progress while our moral maturity stays the same or even backtracks.
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Our Tech Use Crosses the Line When We Trust It Too Much
Don't be like Michael Scott and let AI drive your car into a lakeI’ve never driven my car into a lake screaming “the machine knows!” like Michael Scott did but the temptation to use technology like this loom in everyday life.
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Study: AI is Actually Causing People to Work More
AI can hamper more than help in the workplaceFull-time employees, challenged to incorporate AI more fundamentally into their schedule and skillsets, are not seeing the promised productivity yields.
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