Jay Hoffmann

I don’t know what to call this yet

Tag: LLM

  • Men made it, but they can’t control it

    Thinking about HTML tables this week. Not only because I’m going to be talking to a class about that very topic soon, but because it seems that we are in the HTML tables phase of technology’s next big Internet-driven cycle (it would seem): AI and language learning models.

    Anyway, what do I mean by that? We’re forcing it, basically. We are using the technology of AI in a clunky way. It is unrefined and depends on hacks, rather than going with the grain of the technology. When the technology recedes into the background, becomes more minimal, and less intrusive, than we may truly be on to something. Until then, I can’t help but feel like we’re using tables for layout.

    Reading

    Read through The End of the Googleverse. The web has been reported dead before. The Post-Google world is more interesting to me than not.

    Speaking of Google, I could take a look at their NotebookLM, which I was surprised (and kind of pleased) to find had at its helm Steven Johnson, the co-founder of Feed and writer of many books including Interface Culture.

    Notably, much like the web, what’s absent from the next wave of AI tools are any sort of concept of transclusion. Ted Nelson never quite cracked that technological nut, and we are so well past it that nobody even thinks about it anymore.

    Bleak House continues, Chapters 31 through 37. Much is revealed and we are quite expeditiously arriving at the point at which it will all collapse. Lady Deadlock has made herself known to Esther. Richard has fallen to the Jardynce sickness. Tachyhorn is onto Deadlock. And the world continues to simply turn, in a way only Dickens can describe:

    Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too, the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis that every one is either robbing or being robbed.

    On to The Grapes of Wrath. If I could write like any author, oh man would I want it to be Steinbeck. There is so much pathos in every passage of the book. Every word choice is perfect.

    Yes, but the bank is only made of men. No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

    Harrowing, and true, and poignant. But also, the rhythm of that excerpt is right on point.

    Watching

    Fully caught up to Only Murders in the Building

    Octavia Butler on writing:

    The first, of course, is to read. It’s surprising how many people think they want to be writers but they don’t really like to read books… The second is to write, every day, whether you like it or not. Screw inspiration….

    Forget about inspiration, because it’s more likely to be a reason not to write, as in, “I can’t write today because I’m not inspired.” I tell them I used to live next to my landlady and I told everybody she inspired me. And the most valuable characteristic any would-be writer can possibly have is persistence. Just keep at it, keep learning your craft and keep trying.

    Notes

    Maybe there’s someothing to a public and shared Aboard board that can be used to collect History of the Web type resouroces innto different categories, or mabe collect it there everytime a footnote is made

    For today:

    • Move Notion finances into Google Drive
    • History of the web ideas
    • Mow the lawmn
    • Do all the laundry

  • Consuming films like Coca-Cola

    Reading

    The conclusion of two books: Sculpting in Time and Just Keep Investing.

    On Sculpting in Time I will say that it is an incredibly unique perspective and view of cinema—recognized by Tarkovsky as a wholly artistic pursuit and a unique medium focused on the compression and rhythm of time. And these are accurate, and well thought out, though perhaps a bit dated these days, as the cinema has receded into the narrative over form in greater and greater strides over the last few decades. This has caused more than one person to lament lately about the state of content, but thankfully Tarkovsky precedes that view and entirely rejects it.

    He concludes the book with a look at the responsibility of the artist. The responsibility is, of course, to represent one’s own personal vision faithfully. But, there is also a responsibility to create true art, even when it is challenging, rather than popcorn movies for pure consumption:

    People cease to feel any need for the beautiful or the spiritual, and consume films like bottles of Coca-Cola. The contact between film director and audience is unique to cinema in that it conveys experience imprinted on film in uncompromisingly affective, and therefore compelling, forms. Th e viewer feels a need for such vicarious experience in order to make up in part for what he himself has lost or missed; he pursues it in a kind of ‘search for lost time’. And how human this newly gained experience will be depends only on the author. A grave responsibility!

    I found it interesting, when talking about Stalker, how bothered he was when people asked him what the mysterious “Zone” at the center of the film was:

    People have often asked me what the Zone is, and what it symbolises, and have put forward wild conjectures on the subject. I’m reduced to a state of fury and despair by such questions. The Zone doesn’t symbolise anything, any more than anything else does in my films

    I wonder what he would think about Star Wars and Marvel movies, where every offhand storyline requires a huge backstory and every plot thread needs resolving.

    Just Keep Investing more or less reiterates the title over the course of many chapters. It’s good advice though.

    Watching

    I saw an interview with Karim Lakhani about the future of AI. I think in many ways it represents well the popular view, and presents a nuanced vision for what’s to come. One thing that gave me pause was when Lakhani pointed to AI as a place to substitute whenever one is doing tasks that require thinking. This is a useful starting point, but I think that it hides the technology and makes AI feel too much like magic.

    Final Note

    I was reminded of this excellent quote by Oliver Burkerman (in Four Thousand Weeks) from this week’s Marginalian:

    Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.” The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about.

    Notes

    Meal Plan: Meatloaf + Breaded Chicken using new breading

    Focus

  • Weeknotes #1

    Reading

    Articles

    I saw an interesting parable in a recent entry in Cory Doctrow’s Pluralistic blog. There’s a story that goes around that in the midst of his progressive reforms, a labor activist was pushing on new federal discrimination laws. According to some accounts, he responded with “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.” It‘s also possible the story isn’t entirely true. Either way it’s pretty cool.

    Finally got through Ronan Farrow’s huge profile / takedown of Elon Musk in the New Yorker. It’s scary and unnerving in all the usual ways and is such an indictment of America’s major political failings it reads like satire sometimes. This about sums it up:

    In the past twenty years, against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure and declining trust in institutions, Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded

    Simon Willison put up a written post of a talk I saw at WordCamp US. It’s brutally practical, which is kind of good.

    Books

    Bleak House chapters 22 through 31, where the threads are beginning to come together. In a much longer aside from the narrator, Mr Guppy starts to put the whole thing together and Lady Deadlock realizes that Esther is indeed her daughter. Richard casts off after an argument with Mr Jarndyce and Esther become ill.

    Dickens appears to excel at weaving together a compelling story and social commentary so that one never lives without the other, and so that each is made better for it. And it keeps you in.

    On to Chapter 4 of Sculpting in Time,Cinema’s destined role where Tarkovsky begins to pick apart the trajectory of cinema by viewing it through the prism of his own experience in the industry. He talks about his transition from film school to the wider world of filmmaking, and the way in which mass appeal has shaped the way in which people respond to film. But he comes back to the universal truth of cinema, that it was a tool invented to record facts, actuality, and time:

    Cinema came into being as a means of recording the very movement of reality: factual, specific, within time and unique; of reproducing again and again the moment, instant by instant, in its fluid mutability-that instant over which we find ourselves able to gain mastery by imprinting it on film.

    Watching

    Started Solaris to keep up with Tarvovsky.

    Notes

    Meal Plan this week
    Monday –
    Tuesday –
    Wednesday
    Thursday

    New todos: