In the wake of 9-11, security experts wanted more data to detect threats to security. In the explosion of data collection that followed, it became obvious that more data created more noise, perversely in some cases making it more difficult to see embedded threats rather than less. More is not always better, and data is meaningful only if a.) you're measuring the right things, and b.) you know the … [Read more...]
Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)
Classical music has lost a generation's worth of music lovers beginning in the late-90s with the rise of file-sharing and Napster. A significant part of the reason might be: metadata. Metadata are the tags that travel with every audio recorded track. For a piece of music or a recording to be found, it needs to be tagged. Metadata comes (mostly) in three varieties: Each track travels with … [Read more...]
When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem
On a panel at SXSW recently, John Dworkin, a VP at Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, told the story of how at one point last summer, a Taylor Swift song placed at No. 7 on the Billboard charts. At No. 6 was "Vacuum Cleaner for Babies," the sound of a vacuum cleaner that parents can play on a loop to soothe babies and help them sleep. He used the example to illustrate how … [Read more...]
The Essential AI: Translating the Art of What We See, Hear and Experience
AI is getting very good at translating text and speech from one language to another, transposing not just words, but also meaning, and in real time. I previously wrote about the implications for opening up the world's culture from behind language barriers (for example, only three percent of the world's literature is translated into English). But in thinking about ways to explain the conceptual … [Read more...]
A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI
Enough experts in artificial intelligence saying that AI will "change everything," suggest that it's worth pondering what the "everything" means. The short answer is we don't know. But we do know that technology has had profound impact on how the world works. And we know that the digital revolution beginning in the 1990s changed how we interact in profound and unexpected ways over the past thirty … [Read more...]
How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism)
In the 2010s, cheap solar panels from China began flooding the US market, killing off US domestic panel-makers who couldn’t compete on price. The US government slapped a 40 percent tariff on Chinese panels, claiming under World Trade Organization rules that China’s government was unfairly subsidizing panel-makers. Given how quickly solar panel costs were plummeting and the Byzantine ways in which … [Read more...]
Some Thoughts on Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” Movie
It’s a trap to review the movie a filmmaker didn’t make. A difficult temptation as it turns out with Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, the director/writer/actor’s passion project about Leonard Bernstein. Maestro isn’t really a movie about Leonard Bernstein or his career, or even about music per se. It’s not really a “biopic,” in the traditional Hollywood sense of the word. In the absence of all this, … [Read more...]
Is the Universal Translator Finally Here?
Only about three percent of books published in languages other than English each year are translated into English. And even that three percent sometimes takes years to hit bookshelves after original publication. Foreign-language movies account for only about one percent of American box office. And translation of foreign TV shows and radio into English is vanishingly scarce. Universal … [Read more...]
How to Think About How AI will Change the Arts?
A lot of the stories about AI and art right now are about legal issues -- artists and content companies suing Big AI for copyright infringement -- or reporters prompting AI models to create essays, novels, poetry or images and then explaining why AI will never be able to truly compete with human artists. Both stories, in my opinion, are distractions. (current copyright law never anticipated how AI … [Read more...]
American Orchestras Could Learn Something from South Dakota
Infinite choice of music in a few clicks sounds like a dream. In reality it can dull your desire and lead to what the social psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the “paradox of choice,” a kind of paralysis in decision-making that causes many of us to disengage altogether. Culture is like relationships; you get more out of them when you’re asked to invest something. So I can’t discount the context … [Read more...]