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The Rise Of The LitBots

Liam O’Brien entertainingly surveys the history of computer-generated literature:

Vonnegut made up a computer that wrote love poems in 1950 – and the Brits did the same thing, but IRL. The reason why you don’t have a bunch of computer-written books on your shelf is because they’re traditionally looked on as novelties. A few years back a Russian computer wrote a Tolstoy homage in the style of Murakami, but unless McSweeney’s has hired this program on the sly, this is the first and last we’ve heard of it. And this isn’t new – over thirty years ago, a program called “Racter” allegedly composed an entire book called The Policeman’s Beard Is Half Constructed. A decade later, another programmer and his creation composed a apparently-not-bad Jacqueline Susann knockoff. Seven years later, someone managed to create the automated equivalent of a tiresome MFA student.

Zooming out, O’Brien suggests contemporary novelists have little to fear:

[A]lgorithms are fairly good at making and collating content, but not literature. The Associated Press and Forbes uses bots to author articles; Penguin Random House doesn’t have the same option. (Though I do have a very convincing theory that James Michener was in fact a clockwork automaton.) Which brings us to the story of Philip Parker, who created a program that’s effectively allowed him to “write” over 100,000 books – granted, they’re books that nobody would ever buy, esoteric (and expensive) market research and industry study titles like The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats. The program is a content compiler rather than a composer – though Parker claims to be able to write poetry and fiction with it – and Parker has posed it as a crucial element in getting textbooks and other types of educational content to poor areas, all because it cuts out the author.

But in a review of Peter Swirski’s From Literature to Biterature, Jennifer Howard notes that not everyone is confident that humans have a definite literary advantage:

Inspired in part by the work of Stanisław Lem, Swirski analyses the prospects for “computhors” as he calls these imagined but (he believes) soon-to-be-real machine entities. His focus zigzags across the fields of artificial intelligence, computing history, cognitive science, narrative theory, the evolution of men and machines, and post-Turing attempts to figure out how to identify computer intelligence if (Swirski would say when) it arises. “Underlying my explorations is the premise that, at a certain point in the already foreseeable future, computers will be able to create works of literature in and of themselves”, he writes.

The trick will be recognizing that we have arrived at that point: “There will never be a moment of epiphany, a discontinuous rupture, a sudden awakening” – no “equivalent of a burning bush”, Swirski writes. It might not even matter whether humans will be able to recognize true autonomous intelligence in a machine. More important is whether we are ready to believe it’s possible. … The “computhors” themselves may well not care whether we fully appreciate what they create, Swirski speculates. They’ll be too busy doing their own thing.

Map Of The Day

Leaf peepers, rejoice – above is a chronological data map that shows when and where fall brings peak foliage. Click here for the interactive version.

Nobel? No Thanks

Stefany Anne Golberg considers why Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize in Literature:

Written words are a compact between writer and reader. “A writer should never say to himself,” wrote Sartre in What Is Literature?, “‘Bah! I’ll be lucky if I have three thousand readers, but rather, ‘What would happen if everybody read what I wrote?’” A writer can ignore this compact or take responsibility for it. The imperative remains.

It matters, therefore, what institutions a writer allies with, what her political sympathies are, what prizes she accepts. This is to say, Sartre’s rejection of the Nobel Prize was not personal. It was metaphysical. Every act I take as a writer, Sartre was saying, affects the existence of my readers. Accepting the Nobel Prize would have been, for Sartre, to compromise the freedom of his readers. Indeed, it would have compromised the freedom of all mankind.

Golberg goes on to contemplate why, for Camus, accepting the Nobel posed less of an existential conflict:

The difference lay, perhaps, in Camus’ understanding of freedom. The human condition, for Camus, was fundamentally absurd. Man desires reason, meaning, happiness. And yet he lives in a world that is irrational, cold, and silent. Such a confrontation of life’s absurdity could drive a man to despair, possibly to suicide. But despair is only a negation of the Absurd. When one truly embraces the Absurd — i.e., embraces life with all its unreason and messy contradictions — there is an imperative to live. Only in the full acceptance of the absurdity of life can man become free. True freedom is found not just in action — in existing — but in coming to terms with existence. In acceptance.

(Image: 1965 sketch of Sartre for the New York Times by Reginald Gray via Wikimedia Commons)

Marriage Equality Update

Wyoming just joined the 31 states with marriage equality, now only 18 to go http://t.co/pP40qnDpfZ pic.twitter.com/QOOowrIGWd

— ⒜⒧⒧⒤⒮⒪⒩ ⒨⒞⒞⒜⒩⒩ (@atmccann) October 18, 2014

Again, a reader flags the latest – this time from Cheney-country:

Wyoming will be granting same-sex marriage licenses next week barring any appeals, which the governor has indicated he will not pursue. Fantastic, if not overdue, in the Equality State.

Generation Sext

In the latest Atlantic cover-story, Hanna Rosin explores the ubiquity of teen sexting:

A consistent finding is that sexting is a pretty good indicator of actual sexual activity. This year, researchers in Los Angeles published a study of middle-schoolers showing that those who sent sexts were 3.2 times more likely to be sexually active than those who didn’t. A story in the Los Angeles Times described the study as proof that “sexting is not a harmless activity.” But in fact the findings seem a little obvious. Since most kids who sext report doing so in the context of a relationship, it makes sense that sex and sexting would go together. As Amy Hasinoff, the author of the forthcoming book Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent, points out, “Sexting is a form of sexual activity,” not a gateway to it.

But kids also sext, or ask for a sext, or gossip about sexting, for reasons only loosely related to sex. A recent New York Times story explored the practice of “vamping,” or staying up after midnight to check in with friends online. The kids in Louisa County, like kids everywhere, are chronically overscheduled. They stay late at school to play sports or to take part in other after-school activities, then go home and do their homework. Nighttime is the only time teens get to have intimate conversations and freely navigate their social world, argues Danah Boyd, the author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. For the Louisa County kids, that means checking up on the latest drama on Twitter—“Anyone still awake?” is a common post-midnight tweet—and filling up their Instagram accounts, or asking a girl for a pic.

Amanda Hess defines a loaded slang term Rosin encounters in her reporting:

A thot, for the uninitiated, is shorthand for a constellation of riffs on a central theme:

“that ho over there,” “that ho out there,” “thirsty hoes out there.” On the surface, it appears to be a synonym for slut. (And for rappers and Internet meme producers, it is conveniently both easy to rhyme and effortless to pun.) But the thot label is wielded to indicate class status as much as it refers to sexual activity. Thots are criticized based on sexual behavior, yes, but they’re more broadly identified via their consumption habits; this makes it possible to denounce them on sight even when their sexual histories remain private. …

The archetypical thot, as constructed through memes circulated on Instagram and Twitter, drinks cheap alcohol, eats Chipotle, uses a Metro PCS phone card, and shops at mall staple Aeropostale. She has a beauty mark piercing on her upper lip, just as the “tramps” who came before her sported tattoos on their lower backs. She is“grocery shopping in heels looking like” she’s “going to the EBT awards.” In their most absurd forms, thot memes position thotness as a quality that’s predestined from birth: A thot is named “Jasmine” or “Sasha,” and she stands 5-foot-1 to 5-foot-5. Most of the time, she’s black.

(Screenshot via Matt Stopera)

The Story Of Citizenfour

Fred Kaplan reviews Laura Poitras’ new Snowden documentary:

At one very interesting point in the film, Snowden tells Poitras and Greenwald, “Some of these documents are legitimately classified,” and their release “could do great harm” to intelligence sources and methods. He adds, “I trust you’ll be responsible” in handling them.

This is what most baffles me about the whole Snowden case. What kind of whistleblower hands over a digital library of extremely classified documents on a vast range of topics, shrugs his shoulders, and says, I’ll let you decide what to publish? He tells the two journalists that he’s “too biased” to pick and choose himself. What does that mean? These are esoteric, in some cases highly technical documents; he’s in a better position to know their implications than Poitras and Greenwald; certainly he could warn them, “Oops, I shouldn’t have included this one. It’s really sensitive.”

During a profile of Poitras, George Packer provides his take on the film:

Among the leaked documents are details of foreign-intelligence gathering that do not fall under the heading of unlawful threats to American democracy—what Snowden described as his only concern. [N.S.A. whistle-blower William] Binney, generally a fervent Snowden supporter, told USA Today that Snowden’s references to “hacking into China” went too far: “So he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor.” This is a distinction that Poitras might have induced Binney to pursue. Similarly, the tensions between Greenwald and Assange—their struggle over Snowden’s legacy and the rights to his archive, and its ideological implications—aren’t depicted onscreen. Because Poitras is so close to her subject, politically and psychologically, “Citizenfour” is not the tour de force it might have been.

Regardless, Friedersdorf recommends the documentary:

“I feel good in my human experience to know that I can contribute to the good of others,” Snowden says in one scene. In another, Greenwald delights in a righteous “fuck you” to a spying government he regards as criminal and officials he sees as betraying core liberal principles. At film’s end, we learn that Snowden is living with his longtime girlfriend in Moscow in circumstances far more pleasant than a Supermax prison, though how long he’ll be permitted to remain there is anyone’s guess.

History is rife with dissidents who took satisfaction in various causes—some worthy, others abominable. Snowden’s critics will continue to insist that his actions were unjustified, no matter how earnest he appears to be about the nobility of his purpose. Yet I suspect that even they will find some merit in this film, if only for its footage. Seldom has the public gotten so intimate a glimpse at how a key figure felt and acted in private moments of profound historic consequence.

Wired talked to Poitras about the encryption tools she uses:

In the closing credits of Citizenfour, Poitras took the unusual step of adding an acknowledgment of the free software projects that made the film possible: The roll call includes the anonymity software Tor, the Tor-based operating system Tails, GPG encryption, Off-The-Record (OTR) encrypted instant messaging, hard disk encryption software Truecrypt, and Linux. All of that describes a technical setup that goes well beyond the precautions taken by most national security reporters, not to mention documentary filmmakers.

Poitras argues that without those technologies, neither her reporting on the Snowden leaks nor her film itself would have been possible.

And T.C. at the Economist reveals the film’s ending:

Ms Poitras has one surprise left to spring, and it may turn out to be a big one. Mr Snowden now lives in Moscow, where he claimed asylum after the American government cancelled his passport while he was travelling to South America. The film finishes with a visit from Mr Greenwald, in which he and Mr Snowden discuss the existence of a second leaker inside the NSA—something that has been rumoured for months in the press and on computer-security blogs. When Mr Greenwald shows Mr Snowden what his new source is offering, his eyebrows almost climb off the top of his head. Like an action film setting up a plot hook for a sequel, viewers are told in no uncertain terms to expect more leaks—and soon.

The Whiteness Project

It is conducting “1,000 interviews with white people from all walks of life and localities in which they are asked about their relationship to, and their understanding of, their own whiteness.” The trailer:

The project got ridiculed on Twitter last week. Jessica Roy interviewed filmmaker Whitney Dow about the response:

The level of reaction I got [online] was, This is outrageous, what you’re doing. My response to it is:

What is outrageous about speaking the truth? The one video about the woman talking about the woman being afraid of black men and the statistics saying 40 percent of whites think black men are inherently violent: It’s a real fact. It’s an uncomfortable fact; it’s a strange, terrible fact; but why is saying that out loud so outrageous? I think that my goal is to get white people to sort of confront the disconnect between how they experience the world and the reality of the place they hold in the world. So far, I think it’s done a good job of creating these conversations.

Carla Murphy also spoke with Dow:

[Q.] I’m going to be frank. I’m not really interested in hearing white folks talk about race or whiteness. I’ve been a minority in majority-white spaces since I was 12 years old. I feel like I know what your subjects are going to say. Why should I take the time to watch?

[A.] I would say that people like you and me who have thought about race a lot and have been around and processed it, maybe that’s not who this project is for. But, again, I go back to all these women of color who’ve written me from Albuquerque to Australia, who’ve said it was really painful but incredibly cathartic to hear what white people say when they’re not in the room. That’s all I can say.

Interviews from the series can be viewed here.

Our War Against Nuclear War

We’ve been winning it, according to Nick Miller. His research “suggests that nuclear domino effects are real and that U.S. policy has been crucial in preventing them from reaching fruition“:

In the wake of the Chinese nuclear test, for example, India, Japan, Taiwan, and Australia all began moving toward developing a nuclear arsenal. U.S. efforts were important in preventing Japan, Taiwan, and Australia from following through. Moreover, while the U.S. failed to prevent India from testing in 1974, it responded by strengthening its nonproliferation policy further, instituting automatic sanctions policies that I argue have deterred states that are dependent on the United States from pursuing nuclear weapons. The policy has helped decrease the rate at which states begin to develop nuclear weapons programs. It also explains why recent proliferators have exclusively been “rogue” states outside the U.S. sphere of influence like Iran, North Korea, Iraq, and Libya. This stands in stark contrast to the roster of U.S. friends and allies that pursued nuclear weapons before the strengthening of U.S. policy, i.e. South Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan, Israel, and France.

Face Of The Day

A cameraman collapses after being hit with pepper spray by police during clashes between pro-democracy supporters and police in the Mongkok district of Hong Kong on October 17, 2014. By Alex Ogle/AFP/Getty Images

A Glass Habit

Jordan Pearson flags a first-of-its-kind “addiction”:

San Diego doctors recently identified the first case of “internet addiction” involving Google Glass in a 31 year-old Navy serviceman who checked himself into rehab for alcohol abuse. His symptoms included involuntary temple tapping and seeing his dreams through Glass’ tiny gray box. He used Glass 18 hours a day for work, only taking it off to sleep and bathe. Why? Because it made him very, very good at his job.

According to a paper published yesterday in Addictive Behaviours, the patient used Glass to quickly take photos of convoy trucks and tag them with identifying numbers and equipment lists (his exact job title is not specified), boosting his workplace productivity. He became so dependent on his newfound abilities at work that an addiction began to form, according to the doctors. But, really, what was he addicted to? The internet? Google Glass itself? No—he was hooked on work, and Glass merely made it possible.

Jesse Singal can relate:

This is consistent with “game transfer phenomena,” or GTP, a weird cognitive quirk that I’ve written about for the Boston Globe here and here. It’s when you’re playing a game that involves some repetitive sensory elements — images or sounds or button combinations — and aspects of them start to seep into the real world and/or your dreams after you turn the game off.

It’s happened to me in the past, and when it has, it’s always been worst around bedtime — I remember trying to sleep after playing a first-person shooter game and, upon closing my eyes, feeling the sensation of traveling through the game’s hallways and seeing slight hallucinations of walls racing past. Another time, during the height of my GTA III–playing days, I was wandering around near my parents’ house and wanted to look behind me, and I could feel the part of my brain responsible for getting me to press the middle mouse button — that is, the command to look behind you in the game — go off. (No, these are not stories I will be telling on first dates anytime soon.)