the limits of the human artspace
Art is no longer going anywhere, it has arrived: we have explored the artspace available to us as fully as the surface of our planet.
industrialised creativity and valueless abundance
For a while now, the Digital Revolution has been industrialising creative production: with the advent of AI-based systems, it is now industrialising creativity itself.
mindweavers and power looms
Midjourney, AI deep learning systems and human creativity
the dreamtime resumes
The Invaders were here for less than eleven generations. The land—especially where it nears the ocean—is disfigured by the bleached shells of their habitations. People trek there to salvage trinkets. It’s dangerous: you have to tread carefully. Children love to burn the brightly coloured plastic—that is the only way to get rid of it. The Elders warn against the noxious smoke and say its stench is characteristic of that terrible time. The Invaders devastated the …
a bonfire of the vanities?
The Internet could be the ultimate liberation of human creativity: into the hands of anyone with access to it, it puts a printing press and a recording and film studio—all connected to a world-spanning distribution system. By volume of output, by its breadth and quality, it has brought us a New Renaissance. But this revolution casts a shadow
giving up our first prize
Eating meat adjusts how we think about other animals, could that in turn carry over to how we treat each other? Meat eating is playing a part in the various ecological crises that we are intensifying. We became major predators when we first brought down a large animal and devoured it. A prey species, we have become the greatest predators of all. Is it time that we should give up being predators altogether?
China’s One Child Policy
Much of the reaction to the recent change in China’s ‘one child policy’ seemed to focus on human rights: specifically the right of a woman to have as many children as she wants. A woman’s control of her own fertility has been dearly bought – for most of history women’s bodies have been controlled by men. In many places today they still are. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this issue has another side that needs …
do we need a Butlerian Jihad?
Increasingly I have begun to appreciate the wisdom that there may be in Frank Herbert’s Butlerian Jihad. What is the point of allowing – or, more accurately working to bring about – a way of being that is going to be disastrous for us?
false dawns
To anyone worried about climate change the announcement by Lockheed Martin that it is developing a fusion reactor that will be ready for market within ten years could be seen as a cause for hope. Though I’ve yearned for this development for years, now I’m not so sure. Our technologies are causing ecological degradation and climate change. But what is technology except an amplifier of the effects that our minds have on the world? It …
Daoism’s Uncarved Block and the state of our world
The Dao De Jing, the ‘bible’ of Daoism, in various places refers to the Uncarved Block that loses something essential when it is carved. The Uncarved Block could be a baby free to become any version of themselves before their upbringing, their experiences and the culture they are raised in ‘carve’ them into the person that they grow up to be. (This interpretation resonates with a previous exploration of how a thought remains fluid until …