Jeong Seon (1676-1759), Clearing after rain on Mount Inwang. Ink on paper, Joseon dynasty, 1751.
A Day Like Any Other: The Life of James Schuyler by Nathan Kernan is a very good biography, but it (inadvertently I think) raises an interesting question. Late in life Schuyler (a) achieved stability of mind and daily life and (b) became a regular churchgoer. The unasked question is whether those two developments were related, and if so, how. 📚
So strange that the Sagrada Familia is nearing completion — unfinishedness seems so integral to its identity. Much larger version of the photo here.
Freeman Dyson (1997):
It often happens that a scientific revolution is accompanied by a change in style. I like to use the names of Napoleon and Tolstoy to symbolize two contrasting styles: rigid organization and discipline represented by Napoleon, creative chaos and freedom represented by Tolstoy. In the world of computers, Napoleon is the massive IBM main-frame; Tolstoy is the humble Macintosh. The computer revolution was an escape from the Napoleonic ambitions of von Neumann to the Tolstoyan anarchy of the Internet. Future revolutions will bring more such escapes.
The big AI companies are the apotheosis — literally, in the view of many who work for them — of Napoleonic science. The open web and the world of hobbyist and small-scale devices (often built on the Raspberry Pi) are our remaining refuges of Tolstoyan computing. See also: Erik Larson reflecting on Dyson in 2022.
Update on my use of Claude — lotsa good links in this one.
Tikkun Olam, One Prompt at a Time | Sara Wolkenfeld and Samuel Arbesman:
If the Jewish approach to AI does not revolve around the imposition of a single utopian vision, then the focus should be on how AI technologies can act as enabling tools: ones that allow each of us to build the kind of world we might want, enabled by personalized and bespoke software, and interact with information in ways that fit each of us, rather than having to settle for a one-size-fits-all solution. The novelist Robin Sloan has written of the beauty of an “app [that] can be a home-cooked meal.” And now AI provides the ability to prompt new software into existence, whether you are an expert programmer or not. A home-cooked meal, by definition, may never be as perfectly crafted and as beautifully presented as the one you buy in a restaurant, but it holds all the authenticity of human investment. There is an open-ended potential with this tech, allowing each of us to make apps for our own family and communities, using AI to chip away at obstacles and create the world as we might each want it to be.
Maybe the right way to make these home-cooked apps is to reject datacenters in favor of good old muscle power. (Via Robin Sloan — that guy again!)
Currently listening: John Hiatt, Crossing Muddy Waters. Haven’t listened to this in years, and am glad to be reconnected with it. Almost every song a banger. ♫