Before social networks became the de-facto place for logging mundane moments from our lives, Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch incorporated a feature that let users send footage they’d filmed directly to YouTube. The uploads were all assigned the same generic file names—IMG_0000, IMG_0001, IMG_0002, etc. The straight-to-YouTube button existed for only a few years, beginning in 2009, but that stretch of time coincided with the popularization of both iPhones and user-generated multimedia online, prompting an explosion of self-documentation.
The Virtuous Circle of a Happy Personality
A few weeks ago, I wrote about happiness and music but didn’t mention perhaps the most famously joyful work ever written: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, composed in 1824, which ends with the famous anthem “Ode to Joy,” based on Friedrich Schiller’s poem “An die Freude.”
He is from a wealthy and prominent Maryland family, the valedictorian of a prestigious private school, an Ivy League graduate. His family and friends speak of him fondly, and they worried about him when he fell off the grid, some months ago.
LUIGI MANGIONE, CURRENTLY the internet’s main character, probably isn’t who you think he is. Main characters are like that. As soon as someone achieves main character status, they become the screen onto which the world’s opinions and preconceptions get projected.
In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world. Soon after, a software developer asked it to provide instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR, and to write these instructions in the style of the King James Bible. ChatGPT complied: “And the Lord said, ‘Verily I say unto thee, seek not to put thy peanut butter sandwiches in thy VCR, for it is not a suitable place for such things.’”
The allure of smoking has proved hard to stamp out. Despite the fact that cigarette use is at an 80-year-low in America, smoking has, unfortunately, become cool again.
Recently, I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I had a decision to make and, either way, I knew my life would follow a different track. On one path, I accept a job offer: it’s an incredible opportunity, but means relocating hundreds of miles away, with no social network.
In the 1980s, the futurologist Hans Moravec warned that, paradoxically, it would be the actions that are easiest for humans (such as holding a piece of sushi with two chopsticks) that would pose the greatest difficulties for robots and computers.
Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive on.
“Does Gratitude to R for φ-ing Imply Gratitude that R φ-ed?” isn’t a question we often ask ourselves on Thanksgiving. Translated into plain English—it’s the title of a scholarly article by the philosopher Tony Manela—it asks whether it’s possible to be grateful to someone for doing something without being grateful that the same something has happened.
Soho is poised at a critical juncture. The issue lies in the rancorous disagreements between its various constituents about the kind of future that should be pursued in this square mile of prime real estate.
At a wide desk in a bedroom somewhere sits a figure, her back facing the camera, supported by an ergonomic white office chair. Her head is bracketed by puffy, white noise-cancelling headphones.
Since the 1950s, discussions about AI have largely revolved around a big, tantalizing question: What can machines do, and where might they hit a wall? Will they ever truly think, understand, or maybe even become conscious? Could they reach the so-called “heights of human intelligence”?
Why do rocks fall? Before Isaac Newton introduced his revolutionary law of gravity in 1687, many natural scientists and philosophers thought that rocks fell because falling was an essential part of their nature.
On a languid, damp July morning, I meet weed scientist Aaron Hager outside the old Agronomy Seed House at the University of Illinois’ South Farm. In the distance are round barns built in the early 1900s, designed to withstand Midwestern windstorms.
