CSotD: Humpday’s Happy Diversions
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Funny you should mention it, Jen. My friend and I were discussing movies we were supposed to like but didn’t, which included a mashup of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and the Lion in Winter called “Guess Who’s Coming to the Crusades,” in which Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine exchange witty suburban repartee some 750 years before urbane dialogue existed.
But the winner was Braveheart, which created a furious, wonderful uproar on soc.history.moderated as members of that venerable old newsgroup unearthed its festival of anachronisms and impossible relationships, and added ridiculous thoughts such as why, since Braveheart was clean-shaven, he didn’t pass the razor through that tangled birds nest on his head.
In olden days, as Sorensen observes, there were a lot of happy discoveries as you wandered around on your own, picking up intriguing things by happenstance and sharing them with other curious people.
There was a particularly fun listserv called the Internet Tourbus that collected interesting sites, such as a website in which a Chinese grad student recounted his time in Antarctica.
But as Sorensen reports, the easier the Internet became to explore, the less fun and the more dumbed-down it became. And not only are the results disappointing and uninteresting, but they keep insisting that this is what you wanted, no matter how much you thought you wanted something that wasn’t all glitz and clickbait and commercial pesterware.
It’s still possible to find information, if you’re a combination of Sherlock Holmes and a safecracker, but it’s really become rare to stumble onto anything delightful.
I’m not sure the Intertubes have become quite as cynical and exploitive and heartless as seen in this scenario, but I’m pretty sure the days when venture capitalists were willing to throw money at the wall to see what stuck are at least greatly diminished if not gone entirely.
In my own industry, newspapers, I had to cringe and despair as the Powers That Be made foolish, suicidal decisions about a new medium they didn’t understand, but there was a lot going on elsewhere that was fun and exciting. When Google first said “Don’t be evil,” I think they really meant it, as did a lot of other companies.
They’ve outgrown it. Google changed its motto in 2015 to “Do the right thing” but “the right thing” seems to mostly involve making a lot of money and Google certainly doesn’t have that market cornered.
Asher Perlman seems to know how the creative process has always worked. Back when I worked on a succession of major projects, I really did clean up my office and clear my desk between gigs, but as I became more successful, I stopped fussing over such things because there wasn’t really much time between deadlines.
Or to be more honest, I started having real clients and real deadlines instead of having really good ideas that weren’t going to go anywhere. As they say, if you don’t know where you’re going, any direction will do.
And you can take as much time as you want getting there.
There may come a time when artists and writers are considered artisans, and like the artisans who make bread and cheese for farmer’s markets, everyone will admire their skills but without actually buying the stuff that costs three times as much as the crap on the shelf in the regular store.
This cartoon was posted on line and somebody commented of AI that “it’s just a tool.”
No, man. You’re just a tool.
German is right: Whether we want it or not is hardly the question. Unless you plan to go back to quill pens and ink pots, you’re going to have AI because it’s being embedded in everything.
I don’t want it. But I’ll admit that, when I just want to know how hot to make the oven and how long to bake the chicken thighs, I’ll use the AI at the top of the page rather than scroll through the life story on a recipe page where keeping me there forever helps make more money for someone I have a sneaking suspicion doesn’t exist to begin with.
I don’t think it will quite come to this. When my brother was working on his doctorate in Spanish medieval history, he had to learn some Catalan to work through the old manuscripts, but it’s still widely spoken. I suspect that if most people aren’t able to read cursive in the future, it will be because they’re lazy and lack curiosity, not because handwriting has disappeared entirely.
Which brings us to this
Juxtaposition of the Day
I know Liniers is kidding in Macanudo, because he’s incredibly curious about everything. Not so sure about the Flying McCoys, because they seem to be taking a slam more at the media than at Taylor and Travis.
It would be hard for any reasonably intelligent person not to know about Taylor Swift, just as it was once hard not to know about Frank Sinatra or Johnny Carson. You don’t have to like her or care about her. You just have to have an IQ in three digits and a minimal amount of curiosity.
We used to celebrate something called the Renaissance Man, a type of Jack of All Trades, admired for knowing something about a whole lot of things.
It wasn’t confined to Leonardo da Vinci, either: Samuel Johnson spoke with some awe of Elizabeth Carter, whose intellectual accomplishments are jaw-dropping, but who Doctor Johnson admired for being a down-to-Earth person, saying “My old friend Mrs. Carter could make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose a poem.”
The real snobs these days are not the ones who can translate Epictetus but those who sneer at anybody who can.
For my part, I am curious and well-informed enough to know we have Cabinet members who like to cosplay as police officers, though I hope to god that, like Barney Fife, they’re permitted to wear the uniform but not to load their guns.
I save my admiration for Suzi, who would rather cosplay Rover than strut proudly around made up like Rin Tin Tin.
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