#confluence technology

[confluence-of-consciousness]

🧠 What secrets does your mind hold?

Unlock the mysteries of neural interfaces and telepathic communication. 🔓✨

Start your journey today! 🚀🌌https://www.confluenceofconsciousness.com

[jcmarchi]

MIT launches new Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-launches-new-music-technology-and-computation-graduate-program/

MIT launches new Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program

A new, multidisciplinary MIT graduate program in music technology and computation will feature faculty, labs, and curricula from across the Institute.

The program is a collaboration between the Music and Theater Arts Section in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS); Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in the School of Engineering; and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

“The launch of a new graduate program in music technology strikes me as both a necessary and a provocative gesture — an important leap in an era being rapidly redefined by exponential growth in computation, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interactions of every conceivable kind,” says Jay Scheib,​​ head of the MIT Music and Theater Arts Section and the Class of 1949 Professor.

“Music plays an elegant role at the fore of a remarkable convergence of art and technology,” adds Scheib. “It’s the right time to launch this program and if not at MIT, then where?”

MIT’s practitioners define music technology as the field of scientific inquiry where they study, discover, and develop new computational approaches to music that include music information retrieval; artificial intelligence; machine learning; generative algorithms; interaction and performance systems; digital instrument design; conceptual and perceptual modeling of music; acoustics; audio signal processing; and software development for creative expression and music applications.

Eran Egozy, professor of the practice in music technology and one of the program leads, says MIT’s focus is technical research in music technology that always centers the humanistic and artistic aspects of making music.

“There are so many MIT students who are fabulous musicians,” says Egozy. “We’ll approach music technology as computer scientists, mathematicians, and musicians.”

With the launch of this new program — an offering alongside those available in MIT’s Media Lab and elsewhere — Egozy sees MIT becoming the obvious destination for students interested in music and computation study, preparing high-impact graduates for roles in academia and industry, while also helping mold creative, big-picture thinkers who can tackle large challenges.

Investigating big ideas

The program will encompass two master’s degrees and a PhD:

The Master of Science (MS) is a two-semester, thesis-based program available only to MIT undergraduates. One semester of fellowship is automatically awarded to all admitted students. The first class will enroll in fall 2025.

The Master of Applied Science (MAS) is a two-semester, coursework-based program available to all students. One semester of fellowship funding is automatically awarded to all admitted students. Applications for this program will open in fall 2025.

The PhD program is available to all students, who would apply to MIT’s School of Engineering.

Anna Huang, a new MIT assistant professor who holds a shared faculty position between the MIT Music and Theater Arts Section and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, is collaborating with Egozy to develop and launch the program. Huang arrived at MIT this fall after spending eight years with Magenta at Google Brain and DeepMind, spearheading efforts in generative modeling, reinforcement learning, and human-computer interaction to support human-AI partnerships in music-making.

“As a composer turned AI researcher who specializes in generative music technology, my long-term goal is to develop AI systems that can shed new light on how we understand, learn, and create music, and to learn from interactions between musicians in order to transform how we approach human-AI collaboration,” says Huang. “This new program will let us further investigate how musical applications can illuminate problems in understanding neural networks, for example.”

MIT’s new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, featuring enhanced music technology spaces, will also help transform music education with versatile performance venues and optimized rehearsal facilities.

A natural home for music technology

MIT’s world-class, top-ranked engineering program, combined with its focus on computation and its conservatory-level music education offerings, makes the Institute a natural home for the continued expansion of music technology education.

The collaborative nature of the new program is the latest example of interdisciplinary work happening across the Institute.

“I am thrilled that the School of Engineering is partnering with the MIT Music and Theater Arts Section on this important initiative, which represents the convergence of various engineering areas — such as AI and design — with music,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering, chief innovation and strategy officer, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of EECS. “I can’t wait to see the innovative projects the students will create and how they will drive this new field forward.”

“Everyone on campus knows that MIT is a great place to do music. But I want people to come to MIT because of what we do in music,” says Agustin Rayo, the Kenan Sahin Dean of SHASS. “This outstanding collaboration with the Schwarzman College of Computing and the School of Engineering will make that dream a reality, by bringing together the world’s best engineers with our extraordinary musicians to create the next generation of music technologies.”

“The new master’s program offers students an unparalleled opportunity to explore the intersection of music and technology,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of EECS. “It equips them with a deep understanding of this confluence, preparing them to advance new approaches to computational models of music and be at the forefront of an evolving area.” 

[confluence-01]

Consciousness Explored: Uniting Minds at the Confluence

The study of consciousness remains one of the most profound and elusive pursuits of human inquiry. Across disciplines, from neuroscience to psychology and philosophy, scholars are drawn to unravel the mystery of what makes us aware, how thoughts flow, and how creativity emerges. The confluence of these fields has brought us closer to understanding individual consciousness, the psychology behind it, and its role in human progress.

In recent years, this inquiry has seen a renewed focus, thanks to advancements in neural interface technology and deeper exploration into the confluence of thought, which merges science, psychology, and creativity. Theories of consciousness are evolving, offering new frameworks for how our minds work and what that means for the future of humanity. In this blog, we will explore the significance of consciousness, the interplay between psychology and creativity, and the role modern technology plays in helping us map this territory.

The Significance of Consciousness in Human Development

At the heart of human experience is consciousness, a complex web of thoughts, emotions, and awareness that defines who we are. Psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists have all tried to articulate what consciousness is and why it matters. The psychology of consciousness delves into how individuals process information, perceive reality, and make decisions.

As philosopher David Chalmers has pointed out, consciousness presents a "hard problem" in that it eludes strict definitions or purely material explanations. While we can describe neural correlates of consciousness, the subjective experience—what it's like to be aware, to have thoughts and feelings—remains deeply enigmatic.

In the last century, thinkers like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung contributed foundational ideas, suggesting that consciousness represents only the tip of the iceberg, with much of our cognition occurring subconsciously. Freud’s theories about the unconscious mind influenced both psychology and culture, offering insights into how unacknowledged thoughts and desires shape behavior. Jung extended this idea, introducing concepts like the collective unconscious, where individual consciousness taps into a shared well of human experience.

Theories of Consciousness: Mapping the Mind

As the field has advanced, newer theories of consciousness have emerged, attempting to explain how neural activity gives rise to the rich tapestry of subjective experience. Two major theories have garnered attention: Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT).

Global Workspace Theory, introduced by Bernard Baars, suggests that consciousness works as a stage or a "workspace" in the brain, where information from various neural modules comes together to be broadcasted for higher-order cognitive tasks. Essentially, this theory proposes that consciousness is the result of different brain systems communicating and sharing information. It views consciousness as the brain's way of managing vast amounts of data, ensuring that only relevant information is brought to the forefront of our awareness.

On the other hand, Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi, provides a mathematical framework for measuring consciousness based on how well information is integrated within a system. According to IIT, consciousness arises from the brain’s ability to integrate a large amount of information into a unified whole. This theory focuses more on the complexity of connections between neurons and how they contribute to conscious experience. IIT posits that even simple systems—like a thermostat—may have a rudimentary form of consciousness if they integrate information, though at a very low level compared to humans.

While these theories differ in their approach, they share a common goal: to explain how brain processes give rise to conscious awareness and experience. And yet, despite these advances, the question of "why" remains elusive. Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, "What is it like to be a bat?" to highlight the challenges in understanding subjective experience from an external perspective. Theories may explain how consciousness functions, but the value of consciousness and its subjective quality remain profound mysteries.

Creativity and Consciousness: The Confluence of Thought

The creative process is one of the most fascinating manifestations of consciousness. Creativity confluence, or the intersection of diverse thoughts and experiences, is often the breeding ground for groundbreaking ideas. Psychologists like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have explored how consciousness enters a state of flow, a deeply immersive experience where a person’s thoughts, actions, and emotions harmonize. This “flow of consciousness” is not only crucial for creativity but is also a hallmark of optimal human functioning.

Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory suggests that when people engage in meaningful, challenging activities, they often experience this heightened state of consciousness. Whether it's an artist at the easel or a scientist in the lab, flow represents the confluence of individual consciousness and creativity. When in flow, time seems to disappear, and the boundaries between thought and action blur. This experience is one of the most rewarding aspects of human consciousness, one that drives progress and innovation across domains.

In his book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience," Csikszentmihalyi writes: “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...The best moments usually occur if a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” This exploration of the psychology of consciousness reveals how deeply interconnected creativity and cognition are, underscoring the value of consciousness in human evolution.

The Confluence of Factors Shaping Consciousness

The richness of consciousness doesn't emerge from a single source. Rather, it is shaped by a confluence of factors, including biological, psychological, and environmental influences. Human consciousness evolves not only through individual experiences but also through interactions with others and the environment.

For instance, cultural narratives play a significant role in shaping how we perceive the world. The confluence book of modern psychology could be thought of as a series of chapters exploring how individual consciousness is influenced by broader societal structures. Books like "The Conscious Mind" by David Chalmers or "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett delve into the scientific and philosophical dimensions of this interplay. These are often regarded as some of the best books about human consciousness, offering insights into how we experience the world and how our thoughts shape it.

Mind Explorations and the Partnering of Thoughts

Consciousness is not just an individual experience. We often share our thoughts, collaborating and partnering with others to achieve common goals. In doing so, we experience a confluence of thought, where ideas from multiple minds come together to form something greater than the sum of their parts. This process of collaboration drives innovation and progress, especially in fields like technology, art, and philosophy.

Historically, the partnering of thoughts has led to some of humanity’s greatest achievements. From the dialogues of Socrates and Plato to the collaborative research of Watson and Crick, the fusion of minds has fueled progress. This shared experience highlights the importance of consciousness not only as a personal asset but as a tool for collective growth.

Inspirational Consciousness Quotes for Reflection

To better understand the profound nature of consciousness, it's helpful to reflect on the words of great thinkers. Here are a few quotes that capture the essence of consciousness:

“Consciousness is the gift of seeing oneself through the eyes of the universe. We are not just observers, but participants in this vast confluence of thoughts and matter.” — Carl Sagan

“Our thoughts shape our world. Consciousness is the force that binds us, the thread connecting all of humanity.” — Albert Einstein

“The brain is wider than the sky, for, put them side by side, the one the other will contain with ease, and you beside.” — Emily Dickinson

These quotes remind us of the depth and power of human consciousness, inviting reflection on how our thoughts influence not only our own lives but the broader fabric of existence.

The Role of Technology: Confluence Meets Innovation

In the modern era, neural interface technology offers new ways to explore and enhance human consciousness. By connecting the brain directly to machines, researchers are unlocking the potential to enhance memory, cognitive abilities, and even creativity. Companies like Neuralink are leading the charge, aiming to use technology to tap into the deepest recesses of the mind.

This merging of confluence technology and consciousness psychology represents the next frontier in human evolution. As we continue to understand the mind’s complexities, technology may offer new tools to unlock its full potential.

Conclusion: Embracing the Flow of Consciousness

As we move forward into an era where the confluence of factors—technology, psychology, and creativity—continue to shape human consciousness, we are reminded of the profound mystery that lies at the heart of our awareness. From the theories of consciousness to the experiences of flow and creativity, the journey of understanding the mind is far from over. Through collaboration, innovation, and reflection, we can continue to explore the depths of human consciousness, empowering both individuals and societies to reach new heights.

[saynaija]

All Remaining Abducted Confluence University Students Rescued – Governor Usman Ododo

All Remaining Abducted Confluence University Students Rescued – Governor Usman Ododo All the kidnapped students of the Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH), Osara, Kogi State have been rescued. This is according to state’s Commissioner for Information and Communications, Kingsley Fanwo, who said the government is making efforts in making Kogi safe for all residents of the…

[crowdusk]

it’s so interesting to me that vegapunk called joyboy the first pirate if we think about what that actually means.

it would make sense that in this case piracy is defined by what seems to be the “true meaning” in one piece — being free, and being on the sea. luffy becomes a pirate to be free, he defines the king of the pirates as the freest person in the world, joyboy is of course linked to complete freedom and liberation.

so joyboy took to the sea, which seems to have been something no one before him did (at least not as a lifestyle, maybe for trade and stuff), and did it in order to be free. we also know he was affiliated with (and potentially came from) the ancient kingdom, but probably decided to stop living there to become a pirate. so, to him, living on land/in the ancient kingdom was also restrictive.

we know the ancient kingdom had highly advanced technology (with a sustainable fire/solar source), and was essentially already living in the future (something maybe similar to egghead, but even more advanced because of the lack of resource constraints). but clearly, it had rules and maybe roles that someone like joyboy and luffy would have still found stifling.

the other thing that’s itching my brain is the relationship to the sea. we know that the sun/sea dynamic is important and symbolic in one piece in many different ways. the sun represents freedom, but so does the sea in some ways (at least living on it in the way pirates do). pirates (in the true/joyboy sense) live at the confluence of that freedom of sun and sea — you have to have both. not be trapped under the sea like fishmen, where certain resources are scarce, and not be bound to land where there are rules, structures, responsibilities and duties. even when those structures aren’t oppressive (like they currently are under the tenryuubito) they’re not what some people would consider freedom either.

so!! we know the sea is important. we know it’s likely only this planet has a sea/oceans (for example the moon doesn’t). the sea represents mother nature to some extent. we also know the sea is deadly to/hates devil fruit users, because they are unnatural (as material representations of people’s dreams). the sea, mother nature, is to some extent the material reality of the world — dreams can the impossible possible, can make almost anything real, are so so powerful, but they still have their limits in nature and the tangible world. there has to be balance.

this is also where we see the difference between luffy and blackbeard — blackbeard says there is no end to people’s dreams, luffy talks clearly about the end of his dream and what that looks like. freedom doesn’t mean constant accumulation and infinity and hunger to luffy, it is actually something material, collective and shared with everyone in the world. freedom is something everyone chooses for themselves in their own way, but freedom requires material conditions to be met (food, safety, companionship etc). and it is for everyone, not just the strong or the few lucky ones.

this is where i have been thinking about imu and the gorosei, and the theories around them. i know the main theory is that imu is linked to the sea somehow, and probably a/the sea devil. i don’t fully disagree, but i don’t think a) imu is the sea itself, more likely has managed to harness its power somehow. because to me the sea in one piece has to be a neutral, natural balancing force. and b) i think that if imu is closely linked to the sea, they can’t have made the devil fruits (ive seen that theory too). that wouldn’t make sense, since those two things are naturally enemies/opposed. and if vegapunk’s theory is right, devil fruits are unnaturally evolved from people’s dreams, which again contradicts the laws of nature/the sea. also, just in naming, the enemies of the gorosei are always called “devils” (of ohara, potentially the will of D), so it wouldn’t make sense for imu to have made the devil fruits (unless they did make them/their initial aspects but they were stolen or turned against them somehow). it still makes more sense to me that devil fruits came out of the ancient kingdom.

i do think imu is linked to the sea in that they want to use it for their purposes, i.e. flooding the world, and it’s strongly hinted they’ve done so before during the void century. they have some level of connection to it and maybe power over it (via the island-destroying weapon which is probably uranus). their preferred way of “cleansing the world” is through using the sea. but it’s also interesting that they want to be as far from it as possible, with marie geoise being high up and well-protected from the sea. to me imu is a “sea devil” (even in the imagery it’s clearly similar to an umiboshi) in the sense that it can use the sea to its purposes of control and destruction of freedom and dreams. i’m dubious that imu has a particular magical/power connection to the sea, but i could be very wrong on that.

to me pirates’ and joyboy’s connection to the sea, including their affiliations with the people of the sea (fishpeople, merpeople, etc) is actually much better stronger and deeper, even if it isn’t always a harmonious one. pirates and devil fruit users fear the sea to some extent because they respect it, and still they choose to be in relationship to it, just as they choose to be in relationship to risk, danger and death. they know it’s something that can check them, something that can take everything away. and that’s a much healthier, balanced relationship to something that is a pure, immense force of nature. nature humbles us, nature isn’t always nice, nature takes as much as it gives. that’s important, i think.

i would really love to see that last part play out somehow, in showing that people like joyboy, luffy etc can work with the sea and adapt to it. we’ve had hints of that with noah, and wano. the answer isn’t to isolate/save yourself and kill everyone else by keeping them down, it’s to work together to adapt. and i would love to see imu and the gorosei’s use of the sea for control and oppression fail in their world-flooding/cleansing plan because they haven’t accounted for people’s ability to do that.

the sea isn’t something you can escape or fight or fully control, it’s something you can only try and shape your own relationship to. you can’t fuck with the rules and cycles of the elemental force that is the sea, as we see with devil fruits. it is unimpressed with pure imagination/desire/dreaming. it says “ok, sure, cool dream. now what are you willing to risk and suffer because you are a part of this dirt-bound, salt-soaked world.” the sea requires body, flesh, blood, bone. the sea is the sacrifice made for the dream, the price you will pay if you reach the hubris of thinking you are beyond human and humanity. if the sun is the flame of hope and desire living in the heart, the sea is the muscle and sinew that has to carry the dream, and pay for it too.

(incidentally, this is also why i feel very sure the gorosei and imu actually are shit scared of the sea. we know the gorosei af least would be vulnerable to it too so i hope it gets them somehow lol).

there’s something perverse and twisted in imu’s use of the mother flame (something derived from the sun) for destruction, and i think their use of the sea parallels that to some extent. the sea, just as much as the sun, should not be controlled/used for those purposes. the sea represents a form of freedom too — what is, and changes, and supports the world like a shifting foundation. the sun is the freedom of what could be, what’s unreachable and intangible but consistently shining.

anyways it might be that the flooding just doesn’t come to fruition because luffy kills imu and the gorosei, which would make part of my theory moot (i wouldn’t be mad about it). but i also wouldn’t be surprised if we at least get some more sea level rise before that, to the point where it seriously starts to harm and endanger people.

just my insane rambling braindump after chapter 1114!! idk if it makes any sense but if you’ve actually read this far i am sending you flowers ✨

[dailyadventureprompts]

Due to a unique confluence of dashboard alchemy this March 15th (A Merry Ides to those that celebrate 🗡️🗡️🗡️) I had an interesting thought regarding fallout new vegas:

If you strip away the rhetoric and the goofy football pads, you'll find that the fundamental motivating factor of Caesar's Legion is male insecurity, with everything from how they treat women to their primitivist view of technology drawing from the same fear of immasculization that fuels all "redpill" movements.

(This is to say nothing of the use of roman iconography and the "retvrn" dogwhistle about abandoning modern "decadence" and harkening back to the rigour of an imaginary past)

This casts Caesar as our Andrew Tate figure, a charismatic ideologue who pitches a worldview that promises to impose order on the frightening chaos of reality. His philosophy is a salespitch targeted directly at his listener's insecurities but meant only to benefit him: " you are afraid of being weak. I know what strength is, listen to me. by internalizing my words and spreading my message you will become strong." Of course the difference is that Caesar's empire is built on expansionist violence where Tate's is built on insecure teenagers feeding misogyny into the algorithm for the sake of engagement. Either way it creates a hierarchy that doubles as an information bubble, where position within the hierarchy is determined by who best can adhere to/rebroadcast the leader's message, identical to how an mlm ships product.

This quite fits with a watsonian reading of fallout: the wasteland is a hostile and terrifying place formed in the shadow of an objectively failed 50s (styled) traditionalist patriarchy. Though society may have collapsed, the people who survived inherited that society's rigid view of what a man should be like (strong and driven by the acquisition of material and status) a view largely incomparable with the new environment (starvation, radiation, and mutant dinosaurs will kill you no matter who you are or how much stuff you have). Since institutionalized masculinity had failed, people in the wasteland were forced to look for new paradigms of what masculinity (read: strength) looked like, a void into which Caesar's ultraregresive worldview fit perfectly.

From a doylist perspective however, I'm not sure the writers were really thinking about gender all that much during the rushed development of FNV. Like just about every other aspect of legion society that wasn't cut for time, everything about them seems to be evil for the sake of evil. However If there's one thing you can say about the underbaked concept it was a real hit with social regressives incapable of reading deeper. Unironic pro-legion discussion of Caesar's ideology has been an on ramp to turn insecure nerds into fascists the same way that ideologies like Caesar's have been turning insecure jocks for decades. It's poe's law in action: the developers gestured at fachism but failed to do enough with it to prevent a portion of their player base from becoming radicalized.

[cyberpunkonline]

What is a Cypherpunk?

The term "cypherpunk" refers to a movement and a community of activists advocating for the widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Emerging in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the cypherpunk movement is a confluence of libertarian political philosophy, hacker ethos, and cryptographic science.

The Core Traits of Cypherpunks

1. Advocacy for Privacy and Anonymity: Cypherpunks champion the right to privacy, emphasizing that individuals should have control over their personal information and digital footprints. This advocacy is often in direct opposition to government surveillance and corporate data collection practices.

2. Use of Cryptography: The cornerstone of the cypherpunk movement is the use of strong cryptography to secure communications and transactions. Cypherpunks believe that through cryptographic techniques, individuals can protect their privacy in the digital world.

3. Open Source and Decentralization: A significant trait among cypherpunks is the belief in open-source software and decentralized systems. This ethos promotes transparency, security, and resistance to censorship and control by central authorities.

Who are the Cypherpunks?

The cypherpunk community consists of programmers, activists, academics, and technologists. Notable figures include Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks; Jacob Appelbaum, a former spokesperson for the Tor Project; and Hal Finney, a pioneer in digital cash systems. The manifesto "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" by Eric Hughes (1993) [https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html] eloquently encapsulates the philosophy and ideals of this movement.

The Cypherpunk Movement

Cypherpunks are not a formal organization but rather a loosely associated group sharing common interests in cryptography and privacy. The movement's origins can be traced to the “Cypherpunks” mailing list, started in 1992 by Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May, and John Gilmore. This list served as a platform for discussing privacy, cryptography, and related political issues.

Relation to Cyberpunk Principles

While cypherpunks share some overlap with the cyberpunk genre of science fiction, they are distinct in their real-world activism. Cyberpunk literature, like William Gibson's "Neuromancer" (1984) [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6088006-neuromancer], often presents a dystopian future where technology is pervasive and oppressive. In contrast, cypherpunks aim to use technology, specifically cryptography, as a tool for empowerment and resistance against such dystopian futures.

Notable Contributions and Technologies

The cypherpunk movement has been instrumental in the development of technologies that emphasize privacy and security:

Tor (The Onion Router): A free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication [https://www.torproject.org/].

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP): A data encryption and decryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication [https://www.openpgp.org/].

Bitcoin: The creation of Bitcoin by an individual or group under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto was heavily influenced by the ideas of the cypherpunk movement. It embodies principles of decentralization and financial privacy [https://bitcoin.org/en/].

Wikileaks: Founded by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is a multinational media organization that publishes news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources [https://wikileaks.org/].

Conclusion

The cypherpunk movement is a critical lens through which to view the ongoing dialogue about privacy, security, and freedom in the digital age. While not an organized group, the collective impact of cypherpunks on modern cryptography, internet privacy, and digital rights is profound. As digital technology continues to permeate every facet of our lives, the principles and contributions of the cypherpunk community remain more relevant than ever. - REV1.

[publishinggoblin]

Live now on Backerit, Confluence: The Living Archive is the capstone of the Publishing Goblin journey. In the world of Ajurea, you can play any game you want. Horror, sci fi, fantasy, slice of life, drama, intrigue-- Confluxes bring people, objects, buildings, ideas, technologies, magics from other times present, past, and future, as well as from other worlds entirely.

As a result, you can have swashbuckling adventures, play sports in the Gravity Isles where contestants float through the air, start a crime ring in Motley Coast City, form a union in Crop Circle Junction, or take part in a chili cooking contest!

Pledge for a set of the 6 books that make up this game now and you'll receive the Atlas for Motley Coast, one of three regions on the continent of Wemrel, itself just 1 of 6 continents in Ajurea. The Atlas is an in-world artifact that shows you the world, with mechanics, handwritten marginalia and notes that give story hooks, and so much more!

Sujatha's Journal will be your guide to the lore of the world, all the unique new lineages to meet and play as, and the new forms of magic and technology to be found here!

The core game system for players and Story Leaders alike can be found in the Confluence Guide to the Living Archive!

A list of your unique character traits and abilities can be spotted in the Catalog of Lists!

The Calibration zine will guide you through session 0 to setup a game, as well as help you re-set your game if you need to recheck in on your themes and safety tools.

Then the So You Want to Build It? zine will teach you how to make your own tools for the game system, including new Facets to customize your characters with new mechanics, as well as Focuses to give new area mechanics and NPC abilities!

You can get the whole game in PDFs (well over 1000 pages of material!) for $40, or the whole hardcopy set for $85!

So come visit the Backerkit page today and check out all that Ajurea has to offer, from a huge living world to expansive bonus materials to all the Publishing Goblin projects connecting back to it one way or another. The Alleyman visits here often, as does the Publishing Goblin, and time agents from ZOETROPE, and ghosts from WHAT WE POSSESS, and the Koukyla from NEW AVERNUS.

[confluence-of-consciousness]

neural interface technology

Dreams converge and awaken in a shared reality. 🌌💭 What mysteries lie in the collective mindscape? Dive into the enigma—visit the website to uncover the truth.

Visit the website: https://www.confluenceofconsciousness.com/quotes

[mariacallous]

This year marks 30 years since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when a Hutu-majority government and a privately owned radio station with close ties to the government colluded to murder 800,000 people.

The year 1994 may seem recent, but for a continent as young as Africa (where the median age is 19), it’s more like a distant past.

Suppose this had happened today, in the age of the algorithm. How much more chaos and murder would ensue if doctored images and deepfakes were proliferating on social media rather than radio, and radicalizing even more of the public? None of this is beyond reach, and countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Niger are at risk—owing to their confluence of ethno-religious tensions, political instability, and the presence of foreign adversaries.

Over the last few years, social media companies have culled their trust and safety units, reversing the gains made in the wake of the Myanmar genocide and the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. elections. Nowhere else are these reductions more consequential than in Africa. Low levels of digital literacy, fragile politics, and limited online safety systems render the continent ripe for hate speech and violence.

Last year, a Kenyan court held Facebook parent company Meta liable for the unlawful dismissal of 184 content moderators, after the company invested in only one content moderator for every 64,000 users in neighboring Ethiopia.

This was while Ethiopia spiraled into one of the world’s deadliest wars this century. During this time, Facebook was awash with content inciting ethnic violence and genocide. Its algorithms couldn’t detect hate speech in local languages while its engagement-based ranking systems continued to provide a platform for violent content. The scale of disinformation meant that the website’s remaining content moderators were no match for the moment.

The advent of adversarial artificial intelligence—which involves algorithms that seek to dodge content moderation tools—could light the match of the continent’s next war, and most social media companies are woefully underprepared.

And even if safety systems were to be put in place, hateful posts will spread at a far greater pace and scale, which would undermine the algorithms used to detect incendiary content. Sophisticated new AI systems could also analyze the most effective forms of disinformation messaging, produce them at scale, and effectively tailor them according to the targeted audience.

With limited oversight, this can easily tip some communities—ones that are already fraught with tensions—toward conflict and collapse.

Facebook has drawn criticism from human rights organizations for its perceived role in enabling and disseminating content intended to incite violence during the war centered in Ethiopia’s Tigray region from 2020-2022, a conflict which is estimated to have killed more than 600,000 people.

“Meta has yet again repeated its pattern of waiting until violence begins to support even rudimentary safety systems in Ethiopia,” Frances Haugen, the most prominent whistleblower to testify against Meta, told Foreign Policy.

In 2021, Haugen testified before the U.S Congress, exposing Facebook’s internal practices and sparking a global reckoning about social media’s influence over the communities that use it. Her disclosures suggested that Facebook knew that its systems fanned the flames of ethnic violence in Ethiopia and did little to stop it.

It did so because it knew it could. Far from the spotlight of a congressional hearing, most technology companies attract less scrutiny for operations abroad.

“It just doesn’t make the news cycle” according to Peter Cunliffe-Jones, the founder of Africa Check, the continent’s first independent fact-checking organization.

Most technology companies do not share basic data that would allow third-party organizations to effectively monitor and halt dangerous influence operations. As a result, most countries are left to outsource this critical task of maintaining social cohesion to the companies themselves. In other words, the very companies that profit the most from disinformation are now the arbiters of social order. This becomes dangerous when the companies slash safety resources in both wealthy nations and more peripheral markets beyond North America and Europe.

“One of the great misfortunes is that the war in Tigray [took place] in Africa. There was less oversight and unverified claims ran rampant” Cunliffe-Jones told Foreign Policy.

In leaked files, Meta found that its own algorithm to detect hate speech was unable to perform adequately in either of Ethiopia’s most widely used languages, Amharic and Oromo. Furthermore, the organization fell short on investing in enough content moderators.

While Meta has made significant strides elsewhere to counter disinformation, its strategy in Africa remains opaque and often involves the mobilization of response teams after a crisis becomes dire. The measures taken and their impact are not made public, leaving experts in the dark. This includes Meta’s own Oversight Board, whose requests for independent impact assessments in crisis zones were effectively ignored.

The war in Tigray is by no means an anomaly, nor should it be treated as such. In fact, across much of the continent, identity is still largely delineated by ethnicity, or along clan or religious lines—some of them a remnant of European imperialism.

With the advent of adversarial AI, Rwanda and Ethiopia could pale in comparison to an even more deadly future conflict. This is because these new algorithms don’t just spread disinformation—they also attack the very systems tasked with reviewing and removing incendiary content. For example, an adversarial AI program might slightly change the video frames of a deepfake, such that it’s still recognizable to the human eye but the slight alteration (technically known as noise) causes the algorithm to misclassify it, thereby dodging content moderation tools.

“We have been told by Big Tech that the path to safety is dependent on content moderation. Adversarial AI blows up this paradigm by allowing attackers to side-step safety systems based on content,” Haugen told Foreign Policy. “We may see the consequences first in conflicts in Africa, but no one is safe.”

Africa is at a crossroads. It is rich in critical minerals—such as cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements, which make up essential components of the technology driving the green energy transition—and has a young workforce that could turbocharge its economic growth. But it could fall prey to yet another resource curse driven by proxy wars between large powers seeking to dominate the supply chains of those critical minerals.

In this context, it’s not hard to imagine foreign mercenaries and insurgent groups leveraging adversarial AI to sow chaos and disorder. One of the greatest threats is in the eastern regions of Congo, home to an estimated 50 percent of the world’s cobalt reserves.

The region is also plagued by roughly 120 warring factions vying for control. These include, for example, the March 23 Movement (M23) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The FDLR, an offshoot of the former Hutu extremist government in Rwanda, is in a heated contest against the Tutsi-majority M23, which argues that the FDLR poses a threat to local Tutsis as well as neighboring Rwanda.

According to U.N. experts, the current Rwandan government supports M23, though Kigali denies it. Through targeted information warfare, M23 argued that a genocide was looming against the Tutsi population. The Congolese army, along with the FDLR, argued that the M23 is yet another example of foreign interference and warfare intended to sow chaos and seize Congolese assets. But both sides have been accused of manufacturing news stories about violence through manipulated images and inflated death tolls, which are widely shared on social media.

The advent of adversarial AI could prove particularly dangerous here, given the ethnic tensions, foreign interference, lucrative critical mineral reserves, and a provocative online discourse that tends to fly without many strategic guardrails. Different factions could easily deploy deepfakes that mimic the casualties of past massacres or declare war from seemingly official sources.

Given the market value of critical minerals and the role of foreign adversaries, this could quickly spiral into mass violence that destabilizes Congo and neighboring countries.

Faced with such a risk, Africa cannot afford to wait for Western tech companies to act. African governments must take the lead.

As the tools of disinformation grow more sophisticated, old safety systems are becoming defunct. Faced with such a threat, the solution cannot be to invest exclusively in content moderation.

An alliance between Africa and South Asia could prove crucial. These two regions alone account for the largest anticipated growth in internet users over the coming decade as well as a growing share of market revenue. Many middle-income powers—such as Nigeria, South Africa, Bangladesh, and Pakistan—command a growing influence in global affairs.

A coordinated effort among these nations, focused on auditing tech platforms, muting destructive algorithms, and ensuring corporate accountability for social media-driven violence, could help set new standards against disinformation and adversarial AI.

Leaders in the global south should first turn to experts on disinformation. Nations threatened by the technology should demand the appointment of an independent board of experts who can request independent audits into the nature of algorithms used, co-sign on content moderation decisions in crisis zones, and measure the efficacy of new interventions. Such a board would need the accountability powers currently vested in U.S.- and EU-based agencies to ensure that there are consequences when standards aren’t adhered to.

When the independent board deems a country high risk, tech companies would be required to effectively mute algorithms that rank content based on engagement—that is, the numbers that track how many people have seen, liked, and shared it. As such, users would only see information chronologically (regardless of how much engagement it gets), thereby drastically reducing the likelihood of traffic gravitating toward incendiary content. In the age of adversarial AI, this would give an expanded team of human moderators a far better shot at removing dangerous content.

And if the board determines that an algorithm platformed incendiary content that consequently led to offline violence, the tech companies responsible for those algorithms should be pressured to contribute to a dedicated victims fund for families that bear the deadly consequences of those calls for violence.

African governments must also spearhead digital literacy efforts. In 2011, South African politician Lindiwe Mazibuko made history as the first Black woman elected as opposition leader in the South African Parliament. Today, she runs Futureelect, an organization aimed at training the next generation of ethical public leaders.

“There are 19 elections taking place this year across Africa. We’re lagging on digital literacy globally and so I worry that deep fakes and disinformation warfare could be more consequential here,” she said. “It’s why we are actively training the next cycle of ethical leaders to be cognizant of this threat.”

Ahmed Kaballo, who co-founded the pan-African media house African Stream, is focused on building more independent media. “There is virtually no way to effectively fact-check rival claims without a flourishing independent media landscape. Otherwise, the public is left to accept disinformation as the truth,” he argues.

Meanwhile, technology companies should, in the near term, invest in algorithms that can detect hate speech in local languages; build a more expansive network of content moderators and research experts; and prioritize far greater transparency and collaboration that would allow independent experts to conduct audits, design policy interventions, and ultimately measure progress.

For Haugen, it comes down to advertisers, investors, and the public demanding more oversight.

“Investors need to understand that allowing social media companies to continue to operate without oversight places systemic risk across their portfolios. Social stability and rule of law are the foundation of long-term returns, and Ethiopia demonstrates how when basic guardrails are lacking, social media can fan the flames of chaos,” she said.

In Africa, the confluence of political tensions, critical mineral reserves, and superpower competition make the continent ripe for targeting by new technologies designed to evade detection and spread chaos. Rather than just becoming a testing ground, Africa must take proactive steps to leverage its growing global weight (alongside South Asia) to demand greater government action against new forms of AI-driven disinformation that have the potential to upend societies across the world.

[azspot]

As one of the country’s biggest defense contractors, Musk holds high-level security clearances. The idea that he still holds those clearances and has direct operational control over critical national security technologies is simply absurd. But that confluence of power in the communications and political realms, as I said, appears to make him beyond reach. He’s now flagrantly violating federal laws against vote buying, even after a direct Department of Justice warning.

Josh Marshall

[probablyasocialecologist]

The biggest reason that the last two hundred years have seen a series of conflicts between the employers who deploy technology and workers forced to navigate that technology is that we are still subject to what is, ultimately, a profoundly undemocratic means of developing, introducing, and integrating technology into society. Individual entrepreneurs and large corporations and next‐wave Frankensteins are allowed, even encouraged, to dictate the terms of that deployment, with the profit motive as their guide. Venture capital may be the radical apotheosis of this mode of technological development, capable as it is of funneling enormous sums of money into tech companies that can decide how they would like to build and unleash the products and services that shape society. Take the rise of generative AI. Ambitious start‐ups like Midjourney, and well‐positioned Silicon Valley companies like OpenAI, are already offering on‐demand AI image and prose generation. Dall‐E spurred a backlash when it was unveiled in 2022, especially among artists and illustrators, who worry that such generators will take away work and degrade wages. If history is any guide, they’re almost certainly right. Dall‐E certainly isn’t as high in quality as a skilled human artist, and likely won’t be for some time, if ever—but as with the skilled cloth workers of the 1800s, that ultimately doesn’t matter. Dall‐E is cheaper and can pump out knockoff images in a heartbeat; companies will deem them good enough, and will turn to the program to save costs. Artists who rely on editorial and corporate commissions will see rates decline, all because the companies unleashed a disruptive technology without soliciting input from existing workers. If ordinary humans and working people are not involved in determining how these technologies reshape our lives, and especially if those outcomes wind up degrading their livelihoods, time and again the anger will be acute and far‐reaching. And if workers cannot even legally organize with one another to cushion the blow, there is liable to be nowhere to turn at all, no option but to dismantle that technology. The same rage fueled (and may have helped inspire) a fictional contemporary of the Luddites too. When Mary Shelley dreamed up Dr. Frankenstein’s monster in 1816, she imagined him not as a simp, the way he would be portrayed in the movies, but as a thoughtful and articulate creature who ends up chafing, violently, against his impoverished, man-made existence. The Luddite rebellion came at a time when the working class was beset by a confluence of crises that today seem all too familiar: economic depression and stagnant trade, rising inflation and high prices, excessive taxes for an unpopular war, and a government that strands unions, rules out serious relief for the poor, and declines to uphold industry regulations. And amid it all, entrepreneurs and industrialists pushing for new, dubiously legal, highly automated and labor‐saving modes of production.

[wordsandrobots]

Now I'm trying to sort of reverse engineer why Gundam Wing, of all things, should be one of the more grounded instalments in terms of how it portrays spaceflight.

Like, we've got the White Base over in Gundam 79 sticking two fingers up at the entire concept of aerodynamics, merrily switching between being a spaceship and being a flying aircraft carrier, in the middle of a naval war in space that looked like it mugged Space Battleship Yamato for component parts. This mode continues through the subsequent series up to G Fighter, where they have ships-in-space but they're downplayed in favour of giant drop pods that can also somehow globe-trot with ease.

Then along comes Wing and suddenly we've got actual rockets and spaceships that aren't remotely designed to look like they can fly, and it's not out of being any more realistic. The mecha are more elaborate than ever and the giant spacecraft, truly enormous. But I suppose mobile suits here are depicted as having started as spacesuits, so perhaps it makes sense there's be a greater emphasis on getting the space travel somewhat more 'right'. Or perhaps it's a rejection of cartoonishness, trying to be a little less 'wacky wonder vehicle' when it came to the technology. And I suppose, above all, Wing doesn't require a base for its characters to hang around in. The Peacemillion's roll as that comes extremely late in the game, as everyone finally gets the hang of cooperating in one go. So possibly it's just a confluence of factors.

Certainly it doesn't last. Gundam X is right back to flying (hovering) aircraft carriers and from then on, spaceships that can fly or float remain the norm until Iron-Blooded Orphans (more on this to follow).

Wing remains an interesting aesthetic outlier in this regard.

[inkspottie]

Hear me out on an AU Spottie Confluence x Subnautica (I hope you know the Subnautica lore bc it kinda spoils): Urbanshade is a sub-company of Alterra, and as a bigger and more important company than Urbanshade (which is not known as part of Alterra) decided that during the checking about if there were illegal activities in their labs, transferred all test subjects (It takes place while Sadao's still in the tube in a dormant state) in a lab on 4546B in an Alterra lab. There the testing will continue, but the story will be different as Gabe doesn't go but change planets fully, this AU would take place after the canon-events of Subnautica, as Riley (mc) freed the Enzyme 42, curing the place from Kharaa. In the end, using the Precursor technologies (portal gates) Gabe manages to come back to Earth, and also have a sort of 'pocket portal' to reach 4546B where the others stayed at safety (will get update with Confluence updates :3)

I feel terrible because I know next to nothing about subnatica. I know it’s right up my alley of stuff I just never get to it, or get distracted by other things. But it does sound neat :0

[follow-up-news]

At least nine students have been abducted by gunmen during a late-night raid on their school in northern Nigeria’s Kogi state, authorities said Friday, the third such abduction amid rampant kidnappings targeting schools in the conflict-hit region this year. The assailants invaded the Confluence University of Science and Technology in Kogi state, which neighbors the nation’s capital, Abuja, and whisked away the students from their classrooms before security forces could arrive, according to Kogi Commissioner for Information Kingsley Femi Fanwo. The state has “activated the security architecture to track the kidnappers and ensure the abducted students are rescued and the abductors apprehended,” Fanwo added. The official said local hunters were helping security forces in “combing” the school area, which is surrounded by bushes in the remote Osara town. Nigeria has struggled with several mass school kidnappings since the first such incident in 2014 when Islamic extremists abducted more than 200 schoolgirls from the northeastern Chibok village, sparking the global #BringBackOurGirls social media campaign. A t least 1,400 Nigerian students have since been abducted from their schools in similar circumstances, including at least 130 children abducted from their school in Kuriga town in the northern Kaduna state in March. Some are still held captive, including nearly 100 of the Chibok girls.

[talenlee]

Game Pile: The Beginner's Guide, Midjourney, and Praying to Coda

The Beginner's Guide, Midjourney, and Praying to Coda

Watch this video on YouTube

This is a rebuild and expansion of my article on The Beginner’s Guide from back in 2018, with a newly developed thesis about authenticity and access to artists.

And below is the script I worked from!

The Beginner’s Guide

The Beginner’s Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. The game was released for Linux, OS X, and Windows on October 1, 2015. The game is Wreden’s follow-up to the critically praised The Stanley Parable, his previous interactive storytelling title that was initially released in 2013.

The game is narrated by Wreden and takes the user through a number of incomplete and abstract game creations made by a developer named Coda. Wreden challenges the player to try to come to understand the type of person Coda is from exploring these spaces in a first-person perspective. Wreden has stated the game is open to interpretation: some have seen the game as general commentary on the nature of the relationship between game developers and players, while others have taken it as an allegory to Wreden’s own personal struggles with success resulting from The Stanley Parable. When the game sold, a reviewer – at least one, but I can’t find records of more than that – made a bit of a stir by suggesting that the fiction presented in the game is true, and that therefore, the game was built out of stolen material, and gamers buying it could hypothetically, get it refunded if they felt that were in any kind of moral quandrary.

This is, as best I understand it, the ‘story’ of The Beginner’s Guide, the entity in media, the confluence of reporting and reactions to a game. And now, in that same disjointed way of The Beginner’s Guide, I want to tell you about s1m0ne.

S1M0NE, stylised however you wanna, is a 2002 Al Pacino movie about a dude who creates a virtual actress. That’s not even how the movie goes in full, it’s way more involved than that and it includes bestiality, and it has this nasty kind of undercurrent about the fundamentally exploitable nature of women in media spaces. It’s an interesting film.

I didn’t say good.

Anyway, the thing is S1M0NE’s central premise is the virtual actress, Simone. In-movie, she doesn’t exist. To reinforce this, she isn’t credited as having an actress. The movie does do an extensive cgi sequence, showing Simone being constructed digitally, but it was… let’s say it’s very 2002, and leave it at that. Anyway, a bunch of people including representatives from the Screen Actors Guild believed it and they started a fuss about it. I think. It’s hard to find sources about it now, but I remember a fuss.

I mean it stands to reason, if you’re a union you want to oppose things that hurt the interest of your members, and that’s a perfectly valid concern to be worried about around about now with things like deep learning technology allowing us to transplant faces and details across multiple media works and the complex relationship between motion capture and voice actor and fully integrated action – like, if you weren’t aware, motion captured faces are not a 1:1 acting thing, they’re a structure for animators to work from. Gollum is not ‘Andy Serkis is amazing,’ they’re Andy Serkis and the fifty people doing all the rest of the work are amazing, and yes, Andy’s ability to disappear into the role and do the physical acting element is impressive. That’s a real conversation.

But it’s not the conversation they were having in 2002.

There were some people, in late 2002, who genuinely thought that an Al Pacino movie with Winona Ryder and a budget of $10 Million had successfully replicated the human form with complete authenticity, and that the much cheaper and easier tack of using an actor wasn’t more likely. Then they thought it’d involve, y’know, pig-doinking.

Simone was played by a Canadian actress, and the movie otherwise glanced over its very interesting questions of identity and artificiality and technology to instead tell a story about a dude who was very, very anxious about his inability to control women. The real story of the movie, then, is less about what the movie wanted to talk about and much more about the fact some people couldn’t tell where the movie was fiction and where it was fact. The boundary of the diegesis confused people, and there were some critics who were genuinely unsure of how confident they could be about dismissing the fears of people who thought the end of actors had come.

This comparison is because, yeah, it’s kinda stupid that videogame criticism was duped into believing that maybe an author stole all their work and then recorded themselves having a nervous breakdown then edited that nervous breakdown and cleaned up the audio and packaged it up and sold it on Steam without at any point considering that the art was stolen, it’s not like videogames are unique in this regard. We have a history of people not knowing the boundary between art and real and sometimes, when people play with that, especially in areas of new technology, people make mistakes. But also, like, yeah, we are now living in a time when the idea of ‘someone tried to sell entirely stolen assets on steam for $15’ isn’t even a joke or punchline, it might just be a fact of a thing that happens regularly.

As a game experience, The Beginner’s Guide is fine. I like it as a game because it needs the medium of games to make sense, complete with the idea of incomplete games and the way games are made not from a coherent single point but a sort of constantly exploding set of interconnected steps. Like, you couldn’t make this as a book because this isn’t how a book would look when you’re exploring its dismantled bits. The Beginner’s Guide, if it were a book about books and making books, would look like collected pieces of paper in different hands, with a sort of formalising hand over it all.

Funnily enough it’d look a bit like the book of Genesis.

(There’s a long reach of an academic poke)

It’s a perfectly interesting work about imposter syndrome and emotional boundaries and creative processes and a lot of other things you can see in your own inkblots. It’s an artistic piece that tells you a narrative in a really blunt way, but it uses its framing to create a blurred diegesis. It uses real world markers to confuse you about the actuality of its narrative, or it did at the time.

There’s a forking challenge here; on the one hand, I want to berate videogames, as a culture, for being so woefully ill-equipped to deal with meta art as to be convinced that the narrative presented in The Beginner’s Guide was actually real and have at least one actual journalist be so unsure of the reality of the presented narrative as to hedge their bets and mention seemingly unironically that refunds for this game were an option. On the other hand, it’s not like we’re drowning in meta-aware fiction and a cultural discourse that can treat this kind of thing seriously. Since the Stanley Parable and then Beginner’s Guide, the most recent big ‘oh everyone talks about it’ meta-game in my space has been Undertale, and I hate that.

Since the Beginner’s Guide’s original appearance, things have moved on a bit, and particularly, the word ‘parasocial’ has fallen to the common voice. People with platforms use the term to describe the behaviour of people who don’t have platforms, and the people without platforms follow their word, and now ‘parasocial’ has a sort of loose use around it, the idea that it’s pretty much just anything that annoys you about other people on the internet, especially if they’re talking about media. Then we got ‘plagiarism,’ which is, I understand, ‘mostly vibes.’

I want to compare Davey Wreden to Fred Gallagher, the author of Megatokyo. Megatokyo if you’re not familiar with it, is a webcomic that started in August 2000 and has never officially stopped updating since. It’s updated twice this year, which puts it ahead of the same time last year. What Megatokyo is about is not important here, what is is that Megatokyo was enormously succesful, incredibly popular, and has never once had an update schedule its authors were happy with.

I wrote a lot about Megatokyo last year and I still think that article is worth restructuring and presenting in some kind of long form read way. In the end my conclusion about it is that I don’t think ill of Fred Gallagher as a creative, as much as I think that he got to suffer a unique kind of problem that only capitalism can cause, where you can be too successful to handle your own success. That is, both Wreden and Gallagher made something that led to people having assumptions and expectations that don’t make any sense, because the value of what they created was associated with capital, which is to say, money, and rent, and food.

There’s this idea we’re all circling around right now on a platform that is probably by now mostly procedurally generated – not just the stuff made in the past few years by tools like Chatgpt and the midjourney thumbnails and all, but rather that the algorithm of youtube made a lot of people make media in a way that shaved the non-formulaic parts off it, until there was nothing but hash tag con tent. The stuff you like is a small egg floating on a vast and turbulent sea of piss. It’s now that people care a lot about a kind of authenticity from work which separates it from what I’m going to call Generative Media, and which other people are going to insist on calling ‘AI.’

The conversation around generative art is a real struggle sometimes because it feels like sometimes when people are talking about ‘ai art bros’ they’re dealing with a small pool of obnoxious people, and sometimes I can even tell the specific dickhead they mean. It’s Shad, it’s Shad, so often they mean Shad, and yeah sure, Shad sucks. But the conversation around generative media is so often structured in these really weird ways that seems to imply low-quality images don’t exist until generative media gets involved. That nobody cranks out bullshit, or that art is a transferrable property of a human agent, or that in the great days of the internet, nobody’s using pictures they didn’t draw to illustrate articles they wrote. In this very video I’m using gameplay footage from a game I don’t own, and the reason you’re not seeing the footage from S1m0ne to reinforce that point is because a robot would get mad at me and block the video if I did.

I’m even in defensive crouch saying this stuff here. Look: I think generative media tools have applications, particularly in zero-value situations. Nobody in the world is having their pocket picked if I copy art of Rin Matsuoka and use that for my D&D character. Similarly, someone with less image editing skill than mine using generative media to generate pictures of things they weren’t going to pay for in the first place are not hurting anyone unless you believe in a literal cosmic value of these things. In that case, you’re basically just like the generative media people who are functionally, praying to chat gpt. If you’re rapid prototyping, if you’re making a game and need temporary assets to give yourself tools to build around, if you need a powerpoint presentation for class, all of this stuff represents no lost value. This is a perfect place to put generative media. I’m sure purists will disagree, and I just do not care. But there’s my stance: Generative media is an interesting toy that should be used as such, and if it can replace your job, your job probably sucks and you should be doing something cooler and better that people value more. That’s a problem with jobs, and how we give people money to feed themselves, not the software that generates anime tiddy on demand.

Now, here is where things get tangled up.

It seems to me that generative media is being attacked right now by people I generally like and agree with on most things, because of very high concept, seemingly contradictory positions. People who dislike copyright law busting it out to attack midjourney, and people who hate Disney praying for them to fight Google. Ideas about the inherent nobility of art and stick figure illustrations being better than generative media on websites dedicated to sharing unsourced artworks of definitely not stick figures. People don’t have reasons that make a lot of sense for why these things should not be tolerated, but they are very real about their emotional hatred of them. Which, you know, given the people who defend generative media, makes sense, a lot of those people suck and are incredibly obnoxious. Particularly it seems a lot of them are the losers of the NFT wave who are trying to get in ground level as ‘prompt engineers’ as if the ecosystem they’re entering will value them at all.

One of the most sterling arguments against generative media, and one I personally like, is the idea that these tools represent potential precarity for artists who are already struggling to pay for things like, again, rent and food. Potential, in that, largely commission-based artistic survival under capitalism seems to be a bit of a dice roll as it is. My solution to this is not to shame people who weren’t going to pay for art for failing to be able to support a commission economy they weren’t partaking in in the first place, though, it’s things like massive overhauls of income inequality and universal basic income, but also I can understand how my idea is hard and yelling at strangers in hyperbolic language is really easy.

The pressure that created the Beginner’s Guide is also the pressure that meant someone talking about an artistic work of anxiety media couched it in terms of fucking refunds so people didn’t feel they’d ethically mis-stepped by buying fiction about exploitation, a thing that nobody otherwise does, and it’s the same pressure that means ‘someone is making cheap bad art with an exploitative method’ is a threat to the livelihood of a small number of people who have managed to make an extremely precarious living doing art in the first place. As if money is why artists make art, as if we aren’t all struggling in exploitative systems, as if the existence of bland corporate art pumped out in huge troves to pad resume drawers isn’t

Since these past few years, writing academically, a habit I’ve gotten into is always trying to attribute where I get ideas for. Sentences that are referring to someone else’s idea, with the little note of ‘hey, this is that person, at this date.’ It’s a thing that can create the habit of also starting sentences with ‘Wreden says this’ or ‘Gallagher’s work shows this,’ which creates in casual conversation an impression of a very specific kind of authorial access. Certainly here on Youtube, I don’t want to give you the impression because I’m pointing to their work that I can tell you what they think or feel. The idea that I can connect to these authors through a particularly big brained reading of their work is similar to how Christians think they can read god’s mind because they read the book of Daniel, and like, Fred Gallagher exists.

I don’t know what Davey Wreden was thinking about the Beginner’s Guide when he made it. Even if I asked him now, I won’t get an answer, I’ll get the answer of what he remembers of what he was thinking, which may be the same thing but can’t necessarily. I can try, and that’s a way to get at this authenticity, but it’s not a way to guarantee it.

The Beginner’s Guide is still an interesting game to me, because the conversation around it, and around ownership of work, and of unsourced material and exploiting artists hasn’t changed that much but all the people engaging in it have gotten new things to have to try and fit into their models. We are no closer to Coda.

Those opening paragraphs of this article are from from wikipedia.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!