Anonymity
“We” who have names and personalities — and, not incidentally, bodies — are expressing strong views about ai. We speak or write of “it”, a noun with no other name, as something anonymous —...
AI can’t Lie
It could be a poem. Yesterday a friend sent me a short text and a question about whether “my” writer had written it. He was asking about a writer I admire a lot —...
Creative Writing
Remember the phrase, “creative writing”? Did it annoy you? It did me. Now that we’re getting more familiar with ai, I think I know why. And I’m even more annoyed. It goes beyond writing,...
Essayism Review: Towards a Definition
Brian Dillon, Essayism, London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017 I’ll start with the conclusion so there’s no chance of wandering off and reaching a different one: the book led me to understand “essayism” to be...
Book Review: Amos Morris-Reich, “Nazi Fantasy”: Vilém Flusser and History as Site of Experiment
The Czech writer Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) is slowly becoming better known among English-speakers, emerging from a constricting isolation as a “theorist of new media,” particularly in Germany in the 1990s, into more diverse exchanges...
Reading for Pleasure
I read somewhere recently (irresponsible, irresistible phrase!) that the proportion of us who read for pleasure is dropping, and has been for some time. The implication was that most of us, most of the...