Colin Wright's Blog, page 6

Boxes and Tools

One way to assess the settings on our creative endeavors (professional, hobbyist, experimental, or any other commitment level) is to think in terms of boxes and tools.

In this context, our boxes are the containers in which we put the stuff we make and in which we create.

In some cases these boxes will be literal spaces in which we work, in which we put our work when it’s done, and in which we display or sell our work.

In others, the metaphorical boxes will be the publications, websites,...

Sharp Tools

It’s been a really wild year in the AI world, and I have some thoughts on this category of technologies and their potential, alongside some heuristics I use when learning and thinking about them.

What we’re talking about here is not artificial general intelligence (AGI): it’s unlikely to become conscious, do anything it wasn’t programmed to do, or go Terminator on us. It’s often convincingly lifelike, but so are a lot of things that aren’t “thinking” in the human sense of the term.There are a...

Depth and Accessibility

I struggle sometimes—especially when starting a new project—at intuitively sussing the proper balance between depth and accessibility for whatever it is I’m presenting.

These two attributes aren’t inherently in opposition: it’s possible to present complex concepts and topics in a concise, casually attainable fashion so that most of what you want to convey translates well to anyone who might even superficially engage with it.

Often, though, that engagement is limited by other factors, like ...

Gratitude

It’s relatively well-known, at this point, that allowing ourselves to feel gratitude is a calming, anxiety-reducing, happiness-inducing, overall psychologically healthful exercise.

Reflecting, meditating, praying, journaling—anything we do to remind ourselves of the wonderful people and things and experiences from which we’ve benefited can be a profitable use of time, even if just for a few minutes a day or periodically throughout the week.

Just as important, though, is what we do with tha...

Resculpting

I’m in the process of rethinking my platform use, moving things around, and reconfiguring various projects and online presences.

This process is partly the consequence of a semi-regular desire to shuffle the components of my life and try out new arrangements, new approaches, new projects and options and tools.

But it’s also the consequence of forces beyond my control: a sort of economic and digital weather composed of recessionary animal spirits, political hubbub, inflationary concerns, an...

Pragmatism

I believe that looking for commonalities and shared concerns will typically lead to better outcomes than creating and reinforcing tribal (in the sociological sense of the word) labels, reflexively opposing anyone not of Our tribe and attempting to claim more power for Our side so They cannot stop us from doing what We want.

In politics, this type of thinking fuels some pretty cynical strategies, including but not limited to the full-scale blocking of any legislation that might conceivably mak...

Living Off the Land

We are (alarmingly but maybe predictably) tumbling into holiday shopping season early this year.

Tidal waves of deals are flooding the market as not-good back-to-school sales figures alarm analysts, and as a looming potential global recession triggered by a slurry of sky-high inflation, upwardly careening interest rates, supply chain hangovers (and mismatches) from the pandemic, and a land war in Europe threatens to upend balance sheets for the next year or two.

All of which means it’s eve...

Killing and Composting

A few weeks ago I decided to kill one of my projects.

I’ve been running a little podcast called I Will Read To You since September of 2021, and in the past little-over-a-year I’ve recorded and published nearly 200 poems and essays (but mostly poems) from the public domain.

Killing a project, I’ve learned, can be almost as difficult as starting one.

It’s not easy to tell, for instance, if you’re getting rid of it for good, justifiable reasons or due to a failure of fortitude and resilien...

Sick and Tired

I’ve been in Seattle, visiting family and pet-sitting, for a week.

I’ve been sick for nearly the same duration.

I had a few days of relative normalcy and then—immediately after driving back from the dock where I dropped my sister, brother-in-law, baby nephew, and parents off to board a sideways skyscraper-scale ship for a seven-day cruise—WHAM, I nearly collapsed with exhaustion.

My brain was cloudy, my focus nonexistent.

I was congested, it hurt to swallow. I could barely grunt, muc...

Centaurs

One of my favorite myth-related conceptual labels is that of chess tournament centaurs: a human who plays with computer assistance.

Centaur players tend to outperform both software and human players, though sometimes straight-up AI will have the advantage and some tournament rules favor humans.

I like the premise, though, because I believe it points at a (generally applicable) truth that we’re augmented by technology more frequently than we’re replaced by it. And even in cases when we’re r...