In just under one generation, we moved from appreciating albums as cohesive works to consuming individual tracks, and then to music becoming reduced to muzak: background noise for gaming, viral videos, or endless scrolling. Disappearing is music as an art in its own right, which commands sustained attention and deep engagement. A song’s success is... See more

Second, because we can mass-produce “flawless” content, “flawless” content now feels cheap. It’s supply and demand: when you can generate 100s of blemish-free photos, podcast “recordings” without a single grammatical error, and detailed “research reports” in seconds, the value of these outputs drop to zero. AI made efficiency so simple that... See more

In the digital era, when everything seems to be a single click away, it’s easy to forget that we have long had physical relationships with the pieces of culture we consume. We store books on bookshelves, mount art on our living-room walls, and keep stacks of vinyl records. When we want to experience something, we seek it out, finding a book by its... See more