Alan Jacobs's Blog, page 58

my proposed law

“Any online platform and/or application that delivers content to users may deliver only content explicitly requested by said users.” 

That’s it. No algorithms, no autoplay, no “You may also like,” no “Up next.” Only what human beings (AKA “consumers”) choose. Now you don’t have to ban TikTok, and you will reduce the power that Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social-media platforms have over the minds and emotions of their users. It will even reduce, though not eliminate, the ability of Spotify and other streaming platforms to ruin music. 

(I’m sure many other people have made this suggestion.) 

libraries vs. publishers

Dan Cohen:

Libraries have dramatically increased their spending on e-books but still cannot come close to meeting demand, which unsurprisingly rose during the pandemic. Because publishers view each circulation of a library e-book as a potential missed sale, they have little incentive to reduce costs for libraries or make it easier for libraries to lend digital copies.

All digital transitions have had losers, some of whom we may care about more than others. Musicians seem to have a raw deal in the streaming age, receiving fractions of pennies for streams when they used to get dollars for the sales of physical media. Countless regional newspapers went out of business in the move to the web and the disappearance of lucrative classified advertising. The question before society, with even a partial transition to digital books, is: Do we want libraries to be the losers? 

The answer certainly appears to be Yes. But, as Dan writes later in the essay, 

libraries are where the love of reading is inculcated, and hurting libraries diminishes the growth of new readers, which in turn may reverse the recent upward trend in book sales. This will be particularly true for communities with fewer resources to devote to equitable access. Ultimately, we should all seek to maximize the availability of books, through as many reasonable methods as we can find. The library patron who is today checking out an e-book, or a digitized book through Controlled Digital Lending — should the practice be upheld on appeal — will be the enthusiastic customer at the bookstore tomorrow. 

Dan does’t emphasize this point in his essay, but one of the fruits of the last few decades’ Merger Madness in publishing is that the industry — a telling word, that — is now controlled by international mega-conglomerates who have the financial muscle to bring massive legal pressure to bear against libraries, whom they obviously consider their enemies. And then when our political representatives try to take action to protect libraries and readers, that same financial muscle is used to throw angry lobbyists at those representatives. Nice elected office you have there, shame if something happened to it.

Whatever forces are arrayed against libraries are also arrayed against readers. But publishing conglomerates don’t care about readers; they only care about customers. If they had their way reading would be 100% digital, because they continue to own and have complete control over digital books, which cannot therefore be sold or given to others. They are the enemies of circulation in all its forms, and circulation is the lifeblood of reading. 

beseball revisited

Five years ago I wrote about giving up on baseball — after a lifetime of fandom. Should the new pitch clock bring me back? I’m not sure it will. A speedier game — which is to say, a return to the pace of the past — will certainly be an improvement, but it won’t change the fact that running has largely disappeared from baseball, as pitchers go for strikeouts and batters are happy to oblige them if they can just increase their chances of hitting dingers. It’s a very static game now, and that seems unlikely to change. 

learning from Hume

Last week I gave you David Hume’s Guide to Social Media; today I give you David Hume’s Guide to Today’s Politics. He’s a very useful guy, Mr. Hume. 

Technoteachers

Lorna Finlayson · Diary: Everyone Hates Marking:

Students want – or think they want – more and faster feedback. So tutors write more and more, faster and faster, producing paragraph on paragraph that students, in moments of sheepish honesty, sometimes admit they don’t read. However infuriating, it’s understandable. This material is far from our best work. Much of it is vague, rushed or cribbed. In order to bridge the gap between staff capacity and student ‘demand’, some universities are outsourcing basic feedback to private providers. One company, Studiosity, lists thirty institutions among its ‘partners’, including Birkbeck and SOAS.

Managers often seem to assume that marking is a quasi-mechanical process whereby students are told what is good and bad about their work, and what they need to do to improve. But students don’t improve by being told how to improve, any more than a person learns to ride a bicycle by being told what to do – keep steady, don’t fall off. There’s a role for verbal feedback, but the main way that learning happens is through practice: long, supported, unhurried practice, opportunities for which are limited in the contemporary university. 

Of course universities are going to outsource commentary on essays to AI — just as students will outsource the writing of essays to AI. And maybe that’s a good thing! Let the AI do the bullshit work and we students and teachers can get about the business of learning. It’ll be like that moment in The Wrong Trousers when Wallace ties Gromit’s leash to the Technotrousers, to automate Gromit’s daily walk. Gromit merely removes his collar and leash, attaches them to a toy dog on a wheeled cart, and plays in the playground while the Technotrousers march about. 

Let the automated system of papers and grading march mindlessly; meanwhile, my students and I are are gonna play on the slide. 

If an AI can write it, and an AI can read it and respond to it, then does it need to be done at all? 

The Decline of Liberal Arts and Humanities – WSJ:The libe...

The Decline of Liberal Arts and Humanities – WSJ:

The liberal arts are dead. The number of students majoring in liberal arts has fallen precipitously with data from the National Center for Education Statistics showing the number of graduates in the humanities declined by 29.6% from 2012 to 2020. This decline has worsened in the years since. Notre Dame has seen 50% fewer graduates in the humanities over the same period, while other schools have made headlines recently for cutting liberal-arts majors and minors including Marymount University and St. John’s University. The shuttering of liberal-arts programs has even led to Catholic colleges and universities ending theology programs. 

That’s Danielle Zito, one of several participants in this conversation. I’ll just say once more what I always say: The liberal arts, and the humanities, do not live only or even primarily in universities. They can, and they do, flourish elsewhere, among people who ain’t got time for academic bullshit. 

Forthcoming from my friend and colleague Philip Jenkins. ...

Forthcoming from my friend and colleague Philip Jenkins. A kind of intro or overview here. I’m excited that this is coming. 

Fear of a Female Body – Jill Filipovic:I am increasingly ...

Fear of a Female Body – Jill Filipovic:

I am increasingly convinced that there are tremendously negative long-term consequences, especially to young people, coming from this reliance on the language of harm and accusations that things one finds offensive are “deeply problematic” or event violent. Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. That isn’t to say that people who experience victimization or trauma should just muscle through it, or that any individual can bootstraps their way into wellbeing. It is to say, though, that in some circumstances, it is a choice to process feelings of discomfort or even offense through the language of deep emotional, spiritual, or even physical wound, and choosing to do so may make you worse off. Leaning into the language of “harm” creates and reinforces feelings of harm, and while using that language may give a person some short-term power in progressive spaces, it’s pretty bad for most people’s long-term ability to regulate their emotions, to manage inevitable adversity, and to navigate a complicated world. 

Two thoughts about this: 

Cf. Matt Yglesias’s comment: “Our educational institutions have increasingly created an environment where students are objectively incentivized to cultivate their own fragility as a power move.” This is especially true in elite institutions, and I wonder if we are approaching the point — think for instance about the recent behavior of students at Stanford’s law school — at which some organizations will begin to see a degree from an elite institution as prima facie evidence of unemployability. 

I also wonder if some on the left are beginning to perceive the problem with this power move of claiming “harm” now that — as in the situation Filipovic is commenting on — religious and social conservatives are learning how to use the same language. It’s like that moment in the Harry Potter books when Cornelius Fudge has to explain to the Prime Minister that both sides in the wizarding war can use magic. 

Zena Hitz:The traditional monastic rule against particula...

Zena Hitz:

The traditional monastic rule against particular friendship is the great bogeyman of the cinematic representation of religious life. Who can forget, once seen, the dreadful episode in The Nun’s Story (1959), where the nun befriended by the protagonist confesses their attachment in the chapter of faults, and both are asked to scrub the floor in atonement?  

[Dumb comment deleted. I misread this! I am so accustomed now to seeing singular “they” and “their” that I read it here when it didn’t exist. It’s not “the nun’s attachment” but “the attachment of the two women.” Duh. I do think, though, that while this certainly bears witness to my dim-wittedness it also bears witness to the ways that the overuse of singular “they” and “their” — overuse, I say, because it’s perfectly appropriate in many circumstances and always has been — sows confusion among readers.] 

Retro

Description of the first-year seminar I’ll be teaching in the fall. 

RETRO: How and Why the Past Comes Back

In this course we will explore retro culture – our persistent tendency to become infatuated with cultural modes and artifacts of the past, often in ways that idealize that past. We’ll look at retro movements in music, movies, television, gaming, fashion, and especially technology – because using technologies from the past is one of the most common ways we express our fascination with it. We’ll explore the phenomenon of nostalgia. And we’ll try to understand how retro culture differs from the preservation of a living past – a past that still thrives in the present.

Readings for this class will be in the form of PDFs that you will be asked to download and print out; you will sometimes be asked to watch videos and listen to music; and we will bring objects to class that in some way exemplify retro culture.