Adam Norwood

Tag: writing

  • Dave Karpf: On Generative AI and Satisficing
    Visit the source: davekarpf.substack.com

    In contrast to the flood of hyperbolic pieces about ChatGPT and other LLM-based AI (“It will revolutionize productivity!” / “It will destroy all creative fields!”), I appreciate Dave Karpf’s pointing out that these things are really best thought of as cliche generators, and that in some contexts it’s OK for the results to satisfice:

    The AI isn’t going to give you the optimal Disney World itinerary; It’s going to give you basically the same trip that everyone takes. It isn’t going to recommend the ideal recipe for your tastes; it’s just going to suggest something that works.

    And that sounds great, because both of those tasks are obnoxious time-sinks. (Yes, please, recommend a basic meal that my kids might eat! Offer me the same bog-standard Disney vacation that everyone else eventually settles on!)

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  • Monastic vs Scholastic Reading Habits
    Visit the source: www.europeana.eu

    Example from a 15th Century manuscript in Latin featuring extensive marginalia, handwritten notes between lines of text, and a manicule pointing to a specific passage
    PETRUS LOMBARDUS, Sententiarum libri IV (no copyright)

    It’s interesting to know that the introduction of scholarly reading — needing to reference many different texts quickly for relevant snippets to quote from — led to changes in how text was laid out, with new features like section headings and passage markers (and those nifty typographic manicules) being added initially by readers as quick reference aides:

    Amongst the medieval literate elite, there were two major methods of reading: monastic and scholastic, each divided into three ‘levels’. Monastic reading consisted of lectio / meditatio / contemplatio – that is: reading / meditation / contemplation. This method was primarily concerned with memorisation and enlightenment through repetition and deep reading (contemplation). To read this way was to know by memory and intimately understand a very few books in their entirety. […] Scholastic reading appears in the 13th century and proliferates in universities, growing in popularity throughout the late Middle Ages. It comprised of legere / disputare / praedicare, or: reading / discussing / presenting. The emphasis here was on a person’s capacity to read widely and to be able to pull choice quotes from important works to use in intellectual debates (disputatio) or lectures.

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  • All Communication is Lossy
    Visit the source: aworkinglibrary.com

    A nice piece on how the significant problem with communication between individuals isn’t so much that the conversation is lossy, it’s the lack of acknowledging and correcting for that “signal loss”.

    Adopting the mindset that lossiness is a fact of life has another benefit: that of beginning to see communication not as simply a transference but as a generative space. That is, we often think of communication as simply moving understanding from one place to another, the way we might move electrons from a substation to a home. This assumption is behind a lot of otherwise well-intentioned efforts to reduce or even eliminate synchronous communication, as it can seem wholly inefficient compared with other methods. But the best communication makes way for something new to emerge in the exchange. It’s not passive but generative, not mere delivery but a creative transformation.

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  • Max Planck Society: Glyph
    Visit the source: glyph.shh.mpg.de

    Getting burned out on playing Wordle? Want something that’s more about the letters individually? Want to play around with taxonomies of multicultural letterforms for the sake of science? (who wouldn’t??)

    Glyph is a newly-launched game that will help researchers better understand how crowdsourced individuals around the word perceive the shapes, texture, and patterns of letters from 45 different written languages. The video below explains how it works:

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  • He Wanted People to Read Novels As Carefully As

    He wanted people to read novels as carefully, as ardently and as sleeplessly as they would read dirty letters sent from abroad. It was one of modernism’s great insights. James Joyce treated readers as if they were lovers. From Kevin Birmingham’s new historical account of the publication of Ulysses, The Most Dangerous Book, which was reviewed very favorably in today’s NY Times.
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  • Chinua Achebe on Aspiring Writers and Work

    I don’t get the deluge of manuscripts that I would be getting in Nigeria. But some do manage to find me. This is something I understand, because a budding writer wants to be encouraged. But I believe myself that a good writer doesn’t really need to be told anything except to keep at it. Just think of the work you’ve set yourself to do, and do it as well as you can. Once you have really done all you can, then you can show it to people. Chinua Achebe, on being solicited for advice from aspiring novelists. Quoted from an 1994 interview with the Paris Review.
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  • Chinua Achebe on History

    That was the way I was introduced to the danger of not having your own stories. There is that great proverb—that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions. Chinua Achebe, RIP. Quote from a 1994 interview with him in the Paris Review. Things Fall Apart was one of the novels we read in middle school that really changed my understanding of the workings of the world, and remains one of the books that I hope to always have on my bookshelf. (hat tip to @hawkt)
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  • What Sumerians Can Teach Us About Data

    Gathering data is not a neutral act, it will alter the power balance, usually in favor of the people collecting the information.
    From What the Sumerians can teach us about data, a blog post noting that the predecessor of writing was the depiction of data, a concept that helped establish the hierarchical systems of power in the early city-states. (I like his comparison between the data-protecting curses inscribed on the cuneiform tablets and the FBI WARNING notices on VHS!)
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  • Comedy Is Always Happening

    Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening. Steve Martin, from his autobiography Born Standing Up.
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  • Spreading the Word About Good Stuff

    I had an urge to write. When I saw something that I thought might be publishable, I wrote something. I just wanted to spread the word about good stuff. From the NY Times obit of Daniel D. McCracken, who starting in the 1950s wrote books on computers and programming aimed at non-scientists, a true pioneer in the field. Spreading the word about good stuff is a noble achievement.
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