Cultural works aren’t hedonic appliances dispensing experiences with greater and greater efficiency for audiences to passively consume. Creators and audiences are always engaged in an active process of outmaneuvering each other. Yes, I want more of what I already like, but I also want to be surprised. New patterns are discovered, repeated, become t... See more

We have been co-evolving with ravenous attention predators forever. This is not a fight we can, or should want to, opt out of. We already live in a universe with church, slot machines, and Rhianna. The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Beatles. The bigger and more successful they get, the more boring they become, and the easier they are to ignore.

Aesthetics is the domain in which we pay attention to attention. Art matters. Taste matters. They are, in the dawn of the AI era, more crucial than ever for understanding and shaping the world. What is this new thing? This play that writes itself? This hallucinating hallucination? This science fiction made real? What do we want from it? And how wil... See more