John Higgs! I'm so happy to find you on here! I'm halfway through The KLF tenth anniversary edition, which I ordered from the library after reading William Blake vs. The World (which I discussed extensively in this post: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/beach-combing-journal-air-floating ).
The footnotes are excellent! I love footnotes in general, but in the KLF book they're like hot sauce, making everything more tasty.
P.S. I discovered your 'stack today: the very day you had posted. I then went to the archived one numbered the same as my age- this one.
Also! A Brighton-based friend I've never met in real life sent me a package of cool English shit a few weeks back (leaflets from stone circles, pipe stems from the Thames, stones from Brighton Beach, etc.) which also included a vintage map (Bartholomew's Revised Half-Inch Series) of Cape Wrath. At the time I was mystified, but things being what they are I pinned it up on the wall today. In fact, the colours of it are very harmonious with my decor.
Really liked that read. Simply put and dead on. An AI Moz terrifies me as a Smiths fan and a human, but I’m sure it’ll happen. I’ve a slightly different view of AI now thanks to ‘genuine’ / ‘authentic’. Do you think we can recreate an AI McCartney with the amount of information, photos and audio that exists? Like Joyce’s Ulysses’ Dublin? Multi point perspective cubist Macca.
The thought of AI Macca gives me The Fear, but I confess if there was an ABBA Voyage-style show or event that took you to Pepperland, I'd be first in line
Hi John, interesting read as always. The distinction between authentic and genuine puts me in mind of Werner Herzog's distinction between the accountant's truth and ecstatic truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KQSgcAcNpo
And how he has been criticised in the past for setting up scenes in his documentaries which are not "true" if you look at it through a strictly factual lens, but they are definitely true if you consider his idea of the ecstatic truth - and in the end, are more "genuine" and interesting for it.
An enjoyable read as ever, John - however, I must challenge you on this idea that you can frame a distinction between 'authentic' and 'genuine' in terms of an 'internal vs external' distinction. This metaphysics is engrained in us, having been handed down from Plato via Kant. Yet the idea that these two come apart cleanly, like a fossil and its cast, is surely suspect. What meaning to our internal states without the supposedly external states that brought them about and give them meaning...? Even our capacity to reflect on this 'internality' depends upon what lies 'outside'. This split is becoming more and more difficult to maintain. Sooner or later, we may have to give it up.
In case you missed it, here's a Stranger Worlds that dances on this existential ballroom:
Hey Chris! Good to hear from you. I was of course using a Blakean understanding of creativity, in which imagination is divine and beyond the closed system of the limited, finite world. Hence I side-step your concern. So, Yay Blake!
Not sure if you side-step my concern or just dodge it, but I'll let it slide. 😍 This makes me want to mash up Blake with Alain Badiou's idea of truth as rupturing the prior conditions of a field... although perhaps not enough to actually write anything more than this idle remark. 🙂
"AI doesn’t know that it exists and it doesn’t know that we exist, so be wary of the endless think pieces that suggest otherwise."
+
"It’s not AI we have to worry about, but the use of AI in a capitalist system."
Thanks for these John. I think these quotes will resonate on and on.....
John Higgs! I'm so happy to find you on here! I'm halfway through The KLF tenth anniversary edition, which I ordered from the library after reading William Blake vs. The World (which I discussed extensively in this post: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/beach-combing-journal-air-floating ).
The footnotes are excellent! I love footnotes in general, but in the KLF book they're like hot sauce, making everything more tasty.
P.S. I discovered your 'stack today: the very day you had posted. I then went to the archived one numbered the same as my age- this one.
Also! A Brighton-based friend I've never met in real life sent me a package of cool English shit a few weeks back (leaflets from stone circles, pipe stems from the Thames, stones from Brighton Beach, etc.) which also included a vintage map (Bartholomew's Revised Half-Inch Series) of Cape Wrath. At the time I was mystified, but things being what they are I pinned it up on the wall today. In fact, the colours of it are very harmonious with my decor.
Really liked that read. Simply put and dead on. An AI Moz terrifies me as a Smiths fan and a human, but I’m sure it’ll happen. I’ve a slightly different view of AI now thanks to ‘genuine’ / ‘authentic’. Do you think we can recreate an AI McCartney with the amount of information, photos and audio that exists? Like Joyce’s Ulysses’ Dublin? Multi point perspective cubist Macca.
The thought of AI Macca gives me The Fear, but I confess if there was an ABBA Voyage-style show or event that took you to Pepperland, I'd be first in line
Hi John, interesting read as always. The distinction between authentic and genuine puts me in mind of Werner Herzog's distinction between the accountant's truth and ecstatic truth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KQSgcAcNpo
And how he has been criticised in the past for setting up scenes in his documentaries which are not "true" if you look at it through a strictly factual lens, but they are definitely true if you consider his idea of the ecstatic truth - and in the end, are more "genuine" and interesting for it.
Much appreciated, I hadn't heard that - "an ecstacy of truth" is a lovely phrase
An enjoyable read as ever, John - however, I must challenge you on this idea that you can frame a distinction between 'authentic' and 'genuine' in terms of an 'internal vs external' distinction. This metaphysics is engrained in us, having been handed down from Plato via Kant. Yet the idea that these two come apart cleanly, like a fossil and its cast, is surely suspect. What meaning to our internal states without the supposedly external states that brought them about and give them meaning...? Even our capacity to reflect on this 'internality' depends upon what lies 'outside'. This split is becoming more and more difficult to maintain. Sooner or later, we may have to give it up.
In case you missed it, here's a Stranger Worlds that dances on this existential ballroom:
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/our-different-worlds
Stay wonderful!
Chris.
Hey Chris! Good to hear from you. I was of course using a Blakean understanding of creativity, in which imagination is divine and beyond the closed system of the limited, finite world. Hence I side-step your concern. So, Yay Blake!
Not sure if you side-step my concern or just dodge it, but I'll let it slide. 😍 This makes me want to mash up Blake with Alain Badiou's idea of truth as rupturing the prior conditions of a field... although perhaps not enough to actually write anything more than this idle remark. 🙂