March 23rds
3/23/1995
(Brian Eno Diary)
A comment on the diminishing returns of technology at the advent of the internet: “But something struck me quite forcefully. On the one hand there was Kevin [Kelly] eulogizing the technological revolution, and what it meant in terms of empowerment and freedom. Yet at 9.00, straight after the programme, was the news: that a small bunch of nutters in Tokyo had put 3,000 people in hospital. It struck me forcefully (again) that the more ‘richly connected’ we make our world the more vulnerable we make it...”
[3/23/2025: And here we are. Many of us tech-oriented people always sing the praises of new technologies, but they always go off the rails. The internet went off the rails probably within five or six years. But AI is already going off the rails because there are no guardrails. At least in 1995 we had a government that was concerned about ethics, but the majority of members probably knew very little about computers and perhaps didn’t even own a PC. Some desks didn’t have a computer on them. Members of Congress were mostly from the Silent and GI generations. Gen X was just getting into politics].
[3/23/2026: I'm reminded of David Pearce, whose theory is that humans are naturally inclined to be pessimistic and depressed and see the negative side of everything because perhaps it makes us less complacent. I don't think there could ever be a golden age that lasted very long].
There was a photo exhibition at the Art Institute about 10 years ago that primarily featured Polaroids. In one of the works, the photos were flipped so that it showed just the backs of the photos with writing on them. As you read them, an image would appear in your imagination. In many ways, this is how we are generating images (and songs) now using natural language and AI. But it's not us doing the imagining.
Songday Riff:
The AI-generated version:
3/23/2021
Most of the time, people improvise with language. If you’re in the moment and under stress, and you try to remember something while thinking on your feet, you’re more likely to make mistakes about facts. But sometimes the facts do matter. They don’t matter so much in normal everyday conversation, but do at the higher levels. This is why things need to be factual in some cases, but not in others.
***
Back in the 90s, I collaborated on a song that had the lyric, “Just use it up, There's so much to use, It's not what we'll save, it's what we'll lose”. That's a pretty good lyric because that's the whole idea of individual freedom thinking that the earth is here for us to use, yet we understand that it's limited. So we better use it up before it's gone.
3/23/2024
The problem with a forced metamodernism is that it looks insincere or contrived. If everyone is thinking, “I have to make something traditional and “normal” you’ll have mountains of bad art in 20 years because at that point you’ll have sufficient distance to see the work of the period that was the 2020s. (Younger generations are always trying to resurrect a new culture but end up crucifying it. Killing postmodernism is akin to waging wars against ideologies).
With AI music no one is saying, “That’s a great idea”, because they know you didn’t have it.
[3/23/2025: Actually the music I’ve generated with AI is “co-authored, as I’ve written the lyrics].
3/23/2025
My grandfather’s Papal Army Sword.
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