Old books and new technology
I'm a little late this time. I eventually want to move this to going out on a weekday instead of the weekend, to give me a better chance to polish things. That aside, here are some recent adversaria.
The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting, published in 1922
I've been reading the second of the Dr. Dolittle series with Aveline before bed, and she's enjoying it immensely. I'm always impressed by how old books for children seem to treat children much more as adults as a matter-of-fact than newer children's books. I don't know if it's specific to older books, or some sort of book survivor bias that's given me that impression. I know my daughter has also enjoyed the Swallows and Amazons series (another series that treats kids more competently, just as much as I enjoyed them when I read them as a kid.
Did you enjoy any "older" book series as a kid? Which ones?
The role of technology is our lives has always been something people write and think about, but the rise of AI-like sensational tools has brought that conversation to a wider audience. There have been many articles already floating around about how AI is going to change the way we work/live/play/think/etc. But should it? This is only a short newsletter, so I can't get into too much detail about it, but I wanted to share at least three things (out of a hundred, there's no shortage of "takes" on technology) to think about for this.
First, what do we even mean by "technology" anymore? And what about its common shorthand — "tech"? What if tech has changed meaning from something grandiose to something slipped in as an optimization to collect additional rent. Will AI-like tools be one of those?
I keep saying "AI-like", because I'm not a believer in AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). This article on Artificial General Intelligence and the bird brains of Silicon Valley is a great explanation of why. It would be interesting to dig into the human predilection for anthropomorphizing, since it seems to be something we've done for centuries, not only with computers.
On the philosophical side, it's possible that the drive towards a technological utopia is leading us towards outsourcing virtue to technology, which is a dangerous path to go down.
Enough techno-pessimism from me. It's a busy time this May, and this year Delilah introduced me to the concept of Maycember (via this parody music video). It's fun to laugh at the busyness of this part of the year and feel solidarity with other parents going through the same thing.
Last weekend I got to see three great bands. Jakub Zytecki all the way from Poland did a great job as an opener followed by the band Sungazer which is headed by Adam Neely (who has a great Youtube channel if you like music theory) and finally headlined by Plini all the way from Australia. If you like interesting instrumental progressive rock music, they're all worth checking out.