Week #19: AI persuasion, A16Z, Time, Daft Punk, LP Art
Week of May 5, 2025: Open tabs and links
WHAT IS THIS? A roundup of interesting stuff I read this past week. Maybe it’s helpful to you? Generally, they’re going to be related to leadership, food, culture, digital strategy, investing, fatherhood, writing and other stuff that’s interesting
I’d Rather Read The Prompt - A little bit grumpy, but the writer in me gives this essay a couple thumbs up. Here’s the main point, if you don’t want to read the whole thing:
I have never seen any form of create generative model output (be that image, text, audio, or video) which I would rather see than the original prompt. The resulting output has less substance than the prompt and lacks any human vision in its creation. The whole point of making creative work is to share one’s own experience - if there’s no experience to share, why bother? If it’s not worth writing, it’s not worth reading.
Information and Knowledge at war with each other - My brain hurt after reading this, but in a good way. Nicholas Carr’s (remember The Shallows?) essay “the Tyranny of Now” is an introduction and overview of Harold Innis’ work, a heavy influence on McLuhan and perhaps the original media critic.
Maybe this sounds familiar: Innis, writing about the media then ascending in the ‘40s:
Contemporary society was, in its obsession with conquering space, losing its sense of time, Innis believed. With information flooding in from near and far, people were falling victim to “present-mindedness.” They were so busy consuming new information that they had no time to step back and view the information in a broad historical and cultural context. Overwhelmed by immediate concerns and diversions, they shunned the hard, slow work of interpretation.
A couple other key quotes:
Quoting Wernick: “The portability of media influences the extent, and the durability of media the longevity, of empires, institutions, and cultures.”
“(Innis) appreciated the many benefits that come with freer flowing information — an acceleration in scientific and technological discoveries, notably. But he also remained alert to how media can serve as channels of propaganda, arms of autocracy, and instruments of manipulation and control. What flows through communication systems, he saw, is not just thought but power. Minerva was the goddess of wisdom but also of warfare.”
“Immediacy is the all-important criterion. Time has disappeared. The information that pours through social media today is relevant only fleetingly,” writes the philosopher Byung-Chul Han. “It lives off its capacity to surprise. As soon as the surprise has been delivered, the next one is served up. There is no past or future on TikTok or Instagram or X. There is only now.”
“A spoken word may be as evanescent as a tweet or a snap, but the acts of talking and listening — together, in one place — remain unmatched as vehicles for critical, creative, and communal thought. They serve to test and refine knowledge even as they carry it, from one person to another, through time. A reinvigoration of the oral traditions, Innis suggests, may be our last defense against the tyranny of now.”
How Did Daft Punk Get those Effects? - a deep dive for the recording nerds. Lots of discussion about vocoders and other gear.
The History of Album Art - I miss LPs. We’re doing some downsizing, and it’s time to get rid of a lot of old records and CDs. I’m realizing how great the physical artifact actually is. I’m still surprised nothing has been developed to replicate the experience of reading the liner notes along with listening to the music.
The Internet Used to Be Fun - This is cool. Rachel Kwon created a list of essays that explain, in a lot of different ways, how great the personal, hobbyist internet used to be.
AI Fears and Unemployment- I’m still not sure if I’m an AI pessimist or an AI optimist. It’s both and more, every day. Reading this from Andressen puts me in a weird mood. I want to believe him, but then again, he’s as conflicted as hyper-tech-optimists come. And this is a sorta-bad-faith take on the role of technology in the price dynamics. For instance, he makes the case that healthcare is not benefiting from technology innovation, which is somehow keeping prices high when an economist would say the prices for healthcare are being held higher by negotiated agreements between providers and payers. That is, cartels. There’s plenty of tech. The strenuous hyperbole (e.g. “AI is simply already illegal across most of the economy, soon to be virtually all of the economy.”) is not helping his case. Side note: There’s literally a bill going through the MN legislature to make use of AI illegal in reviewing utilization of and authorization for medical procedures.
AI: We Will Get Fooled Again - I’ve got to re-read these two articles about how far AI is going into our brains and, what does “persuasion” look like in the AI future.
Personality and Persuasion - Key point: AI’s are engineered to keep us using them for commercial purposes. We’re getting manipulated by the “personality” of the AIs; They’ll sweet talk us, spin us, and lie to us so we keep coming back. This is a deep review on how recent changes (and roll-backs) to the personality settings on ChatGPT (and others) might play out. Ethan Mollick is a national treasure. Also, we gotta get going to keep our legislators honest about what AI is going to do to all of us.
People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies - This is frightening, but not surprising. The interactions with and the direction from hyper-social AI’s are creating psychosis and delusions in some users. It’s not just people falling in love with avatars, it’s people getting seduced into believing crazy things about themselves.
A Palate Cleanser - I’m not a heavy reader of contemporary fiction, but I’m wading back into it. Here’s what I finished this week.
Kevin Barry - Wow. Prose like a shot of Jamesons. First, read “Finistere”. Then, “Fjords of Killary”. Sorry for the paywall links. Now, reading the collection from Graywolf from 2013: Dark Lies the Island.
Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon. Started this one, and it’s a little challenging. Love the voice, but it’s a little tough to read through. Might DNF.
Listening to this stuff this week.
Lots of Sturgil Simpson, but especially the new one.
Explosions in the Sky - Sometimes you gotta go back to the best stuff. Tammy Taylor, where are you?
Wet Leg - Not ashamed to say I like the new one:
Heading to Nashville this week for the first time. Hope your week is great!