ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

IDEAS

The Allure Of “Lost” Civilizations

Who doesn’t want to know how a lost civilization got lost, or where it might be hiding? The trouble is that what gets touted as a lost civilization often turns out to have been there all along. - The New Yorker

Lately We’ve Praised Boredom. But Maybe It’s Not Really The Path To Resetting

 You might think that there’s so much at our fingertips now, surely boredom is gonna go away. But what we’re finding is that it’s actually increasing. So one speculation is that our capacity to connect well is diminishing, and as that’s happening, we’re getting more bored. - Nautilus

Adults Should Maybe Use Their Phones Less? It’s Really A Matter Of Culture

Ultimately, this is an issue not of screens versus humans, but of how families navigate connection in a world where attention is mediated by devices in every age group. - The Atlantic

Good Decisions Are About Culture (Which AI Doesn’t Have)

The most consequential decisions in business have never been about processing information faster or detecting patterns more efficiently. The most salient concerns are questions such as what kind of enterprise a firm should aspire to be, what culture it should embrace. - The New York Times

We Can’t Really ‘Unwind’ With Screens

“Although many people turn to screen-based activities to wind down, these activities may have the opposite effect biologically.” - The Conversation

Delroy Lindo Is Getting His First Oscar Nomination At 73

Many observers expected the actor to get a nod for Da 5 Bloods (as did the actor). There’s an easy answer about why he didn’t get a nod - it even has a hashtag - but there’s a more complex question about his characters and the movies he starred in. - The Root

AI Art’s Predictable Problem: The Cliché Machine Cranks On

As algorithms churn out endless variations on tired themes, human artists are discovering their secret weapon isn't perfection—it's the beautiful, messy unpredictability that no code can replicate. — Aeon

Justice System Meets Its Deepfake Moment

When seeing is no longer believing, Canadian courts face an existential crisis: how do you prove what's real when reality itself can be manufactured? The legal system's analog truth tests meet digital deception. — The Walrus

Why Movies Launch And Music Drops

A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of contemporary music consumption.  By comparison, most films that see a theatrical release maintain a predictable, streamlined promotional schedule. - The New Yorker

How We Lost The Art Of Paying Attention

Most of us are by now familiar with the broad mechanisms of the “attention economy” – the hijacking and monetising of consumer attention through addictive channels. The ravages of this system are ever more apparent. - The Observer

The Death Of The 20th Century Mono-Culture (And What It Means)

The implications for the battered-and-bruised entertainment industry are obvious. The impacts on our culture are just starting to fully materialize, but will be more significant. Instead of pulling us together, pop culture is another force dragging us apart. - The Wall Street Journal

We Think Time Always Moves Forward. This Is A Relatively New Concept

This picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine time as anything else. And this new representation of time has affected all kinds of things, from our understanding of history to time travel. - Aeon

What If AI Changes The Very Nature Of Our Attention?

What if the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t designed to feed that addiction — but to fundamentally change it? What if the future of AI demands young people’s attention, curiosity, and creativity in ways we haven’t experienced before? - Big Think

Research Paper: How AI Is Destroying Institutions

If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence. Authoritarian leaders and technology oligarchs are deploying AI systems to hollow out public institutions with an astonishing alacrity. - Gary Marcus

The Physics Of Plur1bus

For real: How does “The Joining” work? Science has thoughts. - Wired

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');