In The Age Of Personalized AI, Are Teachers Becoming Obsolete?

“Developments in education technology promise to assist teachers and school systems in supporting struggling students by providing individualized instruction. But at what cost? As a teacher, it’s difficult to adapt to and embrace a machine that—at least for part of the time—takes over for me. The processes of teaching and learning are complex and innately human; I value the time I take to develop relationships with my students. But it’s hard not to wonder if that time could better be spent with adaptive learning technology.”

Microsoft Calls For A Geneva Convention For Digital Protections

“Just as the Fourth Geneva Convention has long protected civilians in times of war, we now need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to protecting civilians from nation-state attacks in times of peace.  And just as the Fourth Geneva Convention recognized that the protection of civilians required the active involvement of the Red Cross, protection against nation-state cyberattacks requires the active assistance of technology companies.”

Exploring The Guggenheim Building As A Stage And Musical Instrument

“For this piece, the first that the Works & Process series at the Guggenheim has commissioned for the rotunda (as opposed to the museum’s theater), the interior architecture serves not just as a stage for movement but also as a musical instrument. Those sticks were tuned plastic tubes known as Boomwhackers. The performers were drumming a melody.”

Grammys Boss: We Don’t Have A Racism Problem

“I don’t think there’s a race problem at all. Remember, this is a peer-voted award. So when we say the Grammys, it’s not a corporate entity—it’s the 14,000 members of the Academy. They have to qualify in order to be members, which means they have to have recorded and released music, and so they are sort of the experts and the highest level of professionals in the industry. It’s always hard to create objectivity out of something that’s inherently subjective, which is what art and music is about. We do the best we can. We have 84 categories where we recognize all kinds of music, from across all spectrums. We don’t, as musicians, in my humble opinion, listen to music based on gender or race or ethnicity.”

Ann Powers: Why (And How) The Grammys Are Racist

“Here’s the hard part when it comes to popular music. Pop is fun — it helps people relax and temporarily abandon their inhibitions, to express hidden parts of themselves and to open themselves up to others, including others fundamentally different from themselves. The music industry relies on the fantasy that pop is welcoming to all — to anyone who’s willing to buy a record (now a download or a streaming service subscription) or a concert ticket. Yet this is, in fact, a dream that’s often contradicted by reality.”

A ‘Handsome Valentine’ To George Bernard Shaw From An Unrequited Love

“The hand-painted card he had received showed a procession of pre-Raphaelite maidens worshipping at his shrine, his noble profile floating on a banner among the trees over their heads. It had been sent anonymously, but he knew instantly who it was from: May Morris, the daughter of his great friend William Morris, the socialist author, artist and designer.”

The 1950s Computer That Generated Love Letters

In the summer of 1953, Christopher Strachey, a colleague of Alan Turing at the University of Manchester computer lab, wrote a program that made the lab’s Ferranti Mark 1 mainframe churn out love letters according to a template (e.g., “you are my [adjective] [noun]“). Beginning eight years ago, artist David Link constructed a model of the old computer and started running Strachey’s software (if that’s the word) once more.