Alex Dobrenko

When I hear artists and AI evangelists argue about whether people who generate text using ChatGPT or images using Midjourney are truly creative, I wonder about the question behind the question.

French translator Norman Shapiro describes the work of translation as “the attempt to produce a text so transparent that it does not seem to be translated. A good translation is like a pane of glass. You only notice that it’s there when there are little imperfections— scratches, bubbles. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any. It should never call... See more

Inter-viewer: are.na sometimes feels like a conversation, isn't it?

Polinsski: totally, I sometimes envision Are.na as a reincarnation of those 20th-century cafés where artists, poets, thinkers, and other creative individuals would gather. There, they discussed the latest books they'd read, shared their deepest thoughts, or simply enjoyed each... See more

Firstly it is not only convergent. It is a series of divergent and convergent steps. During divergence we are creating choices and during convergence we are making choices. For people who are looking to have a good sense of the answer, or at least a previous example of one, before they start divergence is frustrating. It almost feels like you are... See more

I am going to make the argument that the predominant form of the social web — that amalgam of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, forums, Reddit, Instagram — is an impoverished model for learning and research and that our survival as a species depends on us getting past the sweet, salty fat of “the web as conversation” and on to something more timeless,... See more

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