Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Criticism

  • intellectual fracking / notes toward the declaration of the Butlerian jihad

    Friend-of-the-show Jay Springett talks a lot about “cultural fracking”, and is back on that beat this weekend. I’m feeling it; the big cultural events I’ve seen discussed this morning in the various feeds I follow have included another Star Wars prequel, another Indiana Jones movie, a “dark” Pinocchio remake. (Lest you think I’m pretending not…

  • artificial intelligence and the (post-)apocalyptic imaginary

    An interesting and strident talk last night from academic AI critic Teresa Heffernan at the wonderfully zeitgeisty Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic Studies at Heidelburg: Veterans of AI discourse may not find much that’s new to them in here, but I found her points regarding the necessity of maintaining and reinforcing the distinction…

  • the dulling sameness of a world of infinite but meaningless variety

    Via Andrew Curry’s ever-reliable Just Two Things newsletter—where does he find the time?!—here’s Annie Dorsen on AI “art” at [checks notes]… ah, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists? When people’s imaginative energy is replaced by the drop-down menu “creativity” of big tech platforms, on a mass scale, we are facing a particularly dire form of…

  • platforms shape desire through the frustration that they deliver

    Some typically nuanced and insightful thinking from Rob Horning, on the matter of social media, a topic whose omnipresence this last week has been much easier to bear thanks to not actually being present on any social media, and particularly not That One Site. But Horning’s point is that one need not be on social…

  • stories and possibilities are always multiple, infinite

    Wonderful essay here at LitHub by Ellie Robins. I was sold from this moment: The truth is, there can be no such thing as a monomyth. Stories are alive, and like all living beings, they exist in ecosystems. In the living world, a monoculture always spells death. Ellie Robins https://lithub.com/how-to-go-home-on-resisting-a-very-english-heros-journey/ TFW someone totally nails, with…