“Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data. This novel creed may be called “Dataism”. In its extreme form, proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system — and then merge into it.”
Tag: 08.26.16
Earthquake Exposes Fragility Of Italy’s Architectural Treasures
“Many experts maintain that Italy has among the world’s best anti-seismic standards already — at least on paper. But the problems in executing them are legion: money, corruption, tangled bureaucracy, shoddy construction and a lack of enforcement of national regulations at the local level.”
Ai Weiwei Removed From Major Chinese Bienniale
“Ai tweeted that he received a ‘vague letter’ from Yinchuan MoCA’s artistic director Hsieh Suchen that ‘the decision is made by higher officials’ due to the show’s status as part of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative to build a new Silk Road of overland economic and cultural exchange with countries to China’s west.”
The Books A New Author Reads On Book Tour Can Make Or Break Them
“I’d pick up others along the way. All would be serendipitous. I’m going to learn from them not only how to handle a book tour better, but how to *be* better, fully stop.”
What Is The Public Art In City Hall Park Saying?
“The Language of Things is a bit cerebral for a public art exhibition (the description does begin with a Walter Benjamin quote, which inspired the title); like the four speakers pointing inward in Watson’s sound installation, it can feel somewhat insular, even for art about codes.”
How A Writer Of Gay (And Wildly Silly) Erotica Became The Standard Bearer For What’s Good In Science Fiction
“If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?”
Reinventing Ballet’s Long Form
“Binet gave a killer speech on what he wants the ballet of his generation to look like: non-hierarchical, non-heteronormative and non-subscribing to gender stereotypes.”
The Venice Film Fest Provides A Superb Showcase For Awards Bait
“It’s back on top after a scorecard that saw successful Oscar wins for Venice premieres three years in a row: Gravity, Birdman and, last year, Spotlight. Hollywood has taken notice.”
What It’s Like To Try To Play – But Not Caricature – The First Lady Of The United States
“The film is not campy and it’s not winking at the audience going, ‘Look! It’s the future president and first lady.’ It is rooted in authenticity.”
Max Ritvo Took The Poetry World By Storm, All While He Dealt With Terminal Cancer
“Over time, he said, his work had shifted ‘away from sort of ebullient death poetry and fighting poetry and poetry of, sort of, the bloods and the squirmies and the guts, and more toward trying to figure out what death is, and what my place in the world is.'”