Aug 262011
 

Here’s a deeply alarming story from BBC News: Algorithms are taking over our thought processes! Run for your lives.

Actually, this is funny, even hilarious. Journalists, always on the lookout for a new cultural catastrophes, have lately latched onto the word “algorithm” to symbolize machine (computer) control of the human environment. “Algorithm” sounds mysterious, technological, inhuman. Algorithms are going to think for themselves, take over the world, and eventually push humans and human thought out. Does this sound familiar? “Algorithm” and the fear thereof is just another moment in the long fantasy of automatons turning into humans, of machines learning to think and feel, or, in reverse, humans becoming machines (de la Mettrie and Deleuze have two ends of this stick).

The flaw in this terrifying scenario is that algorithms are nothing more than sets or sequences of procedures (rules, logical functions) WRITTEN BY HUMAN BEINGS. For example, Amazon.com might have an algorithm that says something like: if dg buys a book by Leo Tolstoy, then our computer will offer him a list of five other Leo Tolstoy titles. That’s a marketing algorithm. It’s not mysterious or weird or even complex–and it’s not a mathematical enigma. And the actual programming (which must be pretty dull) is done by a human. Except on some very simple-minded level, algorithms can’t write themselves. So the idea that algorithms control humans is idiotic.

Google uses algorithms to place those little ads you get next to your emails. But even here they can’t be astonishingly complex. If I right the phrase “Jonah’s erector set” in an email, I will find ads for Viagra and erectile dysfunction next to my email thread. Of course, this gets tricky when, say, Google Search tries to use algorithms (which, as per the examples above, are often pretty simple-minded) to predict the sort of answers I might want in my searches. I might get, to my mind, distorted search results. But that would end up making Google a less and less helpful service and I would go elsewhere. Same goes for that deeply comic little algorithm Google uses to auto-complete search terms (I turn off this function and the Google search history function).

The fear of algorithms reflects an oddly human suspicion of science (and, basically, fear of science these days means fear of the unknown as fewer and fewer people find themselves educated enough to keep up with scientific discovery–um, yes, think: intelligent design). Actually, people should be wary of other people first.

dg

If you were expecting some kind warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.

There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.

In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.

Their weapon of choice – the algorithm.

Behind every smart web service is some even smarter web code. From the web retailers – calculating what books and films we might be interested in, to Facebook’s friend finding and image tagging services, to the search engines that guide us around the net.

It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world.

At last month’s TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin Slavin delivered one of the tech show’s most “sit up and take notice” speeches where he warned that the “maths that computers use to decide stuff” was infiltrating every aspect of our lives.

via BBC News – When algorithms control the world.

Aug 232011
 

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Here’s a fierce and pyrotechnic little diversion on the subjects of capitalism, masculinity, violence, movies, Space Monkeys, Tyler Durden, and Fight Club, movie and novel, from Brianna Berbenuik, a 20-something misanthropist and student of Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Brianna is an avid fan of kitschy pop-culture, terrible Nic Cage movies, the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek, and Freud. You can find her at Love & Darkness & My Side-Arm. She is no mean hand with an AK47, and her last contribution to Numéro Cinq went viral, as they say, when Bret Easton Ellis read it, liked it and tweeted it around the world (it was about, um, Bret Easton Ellis).

dg

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We’re the All-Singing, All-Dancing Crap of the World, or:

You’re Doing It Wrong – The Fight Club Identity Crisis

By Brianna Berbenuik

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Missing the point is pretty standard fare in life. People tend to get so pumped up about Fight Club that they miss a lot about the movie. Mainly that the “Space Monkeys” are the worst fucking part.

(Although I will admit that watching Jared Leto get his face beat to pulp is kind of excellent. Maybe even better than watching Christian Bale axe him to death in the film adaptation of American Psycho.)

Fight Club is one of those movies that pretty much everyone in the Western world has seen, and a novel that most people have read (and claimed to have read prior to the film — PRO TIP: Fight Club the novel is exactly like the movie, except for alterations to like, two scenes. So no, having “read the novel” doesn’t give you any fucking cred).

So most people think that is what is being criticized, and overlook the inherent satire within the bounds of Fight Club and Project Mayhem – it is set up within the film to look like a legitimate alternative to the capitalist machine, but it is being skewered just as much as capitalism is.

Thing is, people get really fixated on the ideology of the movie, and fail to distinguish that there are two separate things going on:

1) The obvious critique and satirization of a Capitalist society, and how it is inherently repressive and one must find solace ‘outside the system’ and

2) The satirization of masculinity, and critique of masculine violence as a “positive” venue or positive manifestation of nihilist philosophy.

There are a lot of people who genuinely believe that starting violent all-male “clubs” and committing acts of terrorism are actually being touted as a solution in the Fight Club world. A hell of a lot of fight clubs began springing up after the release of the movie – a cult phenomenon. Cult is a descriptor here for a reason. The “inside joke” about Fight Club is that if you worship the general philosophy and take it legitimately seriously, you’ve entirely bypassed the point and become exactly what the movie is satirizing. Quoting Fight Club excessively does not make you edgy or intelligent (“Sticking feathers up your ass does not make you a chicken”), it just proves that you’ll fall for anything that seems remotely cool and anti-establishment. Plus, Fight Club quotes are so quippy and simple – they really elucidate nothing deeper. Durden’s one-liners (and they are abundant) are like easy-to-digest commandments that everyone clings to as profound. Funny thing about profound stuff – once it saturates the mainstream, it tends to lose its kick.

Continue reading »

May 172011
 

The other day I posted a BBC story that pondered the lack of socially committed writers in America today. Where are today’s Steinbecks? the author asked (and I asked by extension). Mark Lupinetti wrote such a passionate and inspiring comment to that post that I decided to lift the comment out of the box and put it up as an essay. Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a writer and cardiothoracic surgeon, obtained his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.  His work has appeared in Barrelhouse, Bellevue Literary Review, Cutthroat, and ZYZZYVA.  He lives in central Oregon with his dogs, the Four Weimaraners of the Apocalypse.

Here’s what he wrote:

The salient features of 2011 America include hyperconcentration of wealth for the few, increasing vulnerability for the majority, and impoverishment for many. Wasteful wars motivated by expansionist goals consume vast resources, jeopardizing minimal standards of social welfare. While corporate power rages unchecked, fundamental rights of workers are subject to relentless attack. Were Steinbeck alive today he would recognize a society little changed from the first half of the last century, a time when he wrote his era’s most moving and cogent novels of the class war. DG raises the pertinent question, “Where are today’s Steinbeck?”

 All right, Doug. I’ll take a crack at it.

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Where are today’s Steinbecks?

By Mark Lupinetti

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I

Before we search for today’s Steinbeck, let us consider our treatment of the Steinbeck that we have. I use the present tense because Steinbeck will be with us always, whether we’ve read the text or listened to Henry Fonda narrate Tom Joad’s soliloquy. We can take comfort that, “Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.” And so on.

When The Grapes of Wrath appeared in 1939 it received a generally favorable response from both critics and the public. Some, however, called it sentimental. Others condemned Steinbeck’s portrayals of “the greedy bastards responsible” for the Depression, as if the tender feelings of politicians and landowners might ache from this characterization. Still others accused him of being a socialist or a communist.

Steinbeck’s personal politics defied simple characterization, as exemplified by his support for American aggression in Vietnam. Yet today his reputation and his standing in the literary canon is jeopardized less by attacks on his politics than by those directed at his craft. Even some who sympathize with the politics of his novels consider him a propagandist.

A peculiar feature of the modern literary establishment is its demand for drilling into the core of the human being in terms of psychology, sexuality, relationships, spiritual beliefs–but as soon as the political aspect of the individual is brought into play, an additional test presents. Now it becomes necessary to prove one has no “agenda.”

And there can be no doubt that Steinbeck did write with an agenda. No one can conceive of Steinbeck contemplating, “A middle-aged guy . . . I’ll call him Tom . . . suffering from ennui. He lives in New York City and he writes books. No, he’s an accountant. Oh, wait, I’ll put him in Oklahoma, and make him bored by life in the Midwest. I’ll call it Ledgers of Wrath.”

Nobody would argue that even the most compelling and articulate political position can stand the test of literary excellence by itself, that craft does not matter, that storytelling and character may be dispensed with if the politics are sufficient. To accuse Steinbeck of melodrama or sentimentality, however, suggests that he inflated the harsh conditions of cannery work or sharecropping or itinerant labor for dramatic purposes. In fact Steinbeck softened these portrayals, believing a truer reflection would prove too troubling to the reader.

Contemporary educators show limited respect for Steinbeck. If he appears on the curriculum at all, it is mostly at the high school level, where the historical and sociological value of his work receives the greatest emphasis. Creative writing classes at any level tend to disparage his literary merit. Thus, if today’s writers don’t aspire to be Steinbeck’s heirs, perhaps one cause is the lack of honor paid to the original.

Continue reading »

May 142011
 

NC, going fearlessly where no other lit mag has gone before, dares to reveal the newest in American art forms—Amazon.com customer reviews. Possibly this is the NEW THING. Inventive, witty, and ENDLESS. (Thanks to Melissa Fisher for pointing out yet another cultural weirdness—she seems to have an eye for this stuff.)

These customer reviews are from an ad for Uranium Ore (yes, you can buy anything at Amazon.com—it’s not just about books). Look at the whole list. Then forget writing short stories and poems and unleash your creativity here.

dg

Better Than Steroids, May 8, 2011

By TheGilmore

This review is from: Uranium Ore

I’ve always wanted to be an IFBB Pro Bodybuilder, but I never had the means to do it. Steroids are hard to find for a college student with little means. As I was walking to the bus stop from class, I saw some Libyans in the parking lot. I can never resist their deals at the swamp meet, so I decided to check out what they were selling. Lo and behold, they had this wonderful yellow cake. I asked them what it could do, and they told me I would gain muscle mass like you wouldn’t believe. They also muttered something about tumors, but I’m sure they were joking. Those crazy Libyans.

Eager to use the stuff, I opened it up before getting on the bus. I noticed the effects right away. A vein in my hand burst open, but that means it’s working. By the time I came to my stop, I couldn’t fit through the door without turning sideways. My lat spread was incredible. I’ve already contacted the IFBB officials that they need to reinforce the stage for the Mr. Olympia contest. I’m coming for you Jay Cutler.

By the way, the yellow eyes are a neat little feature.

It killed my neighbors, and made my son a zombie., April 10, 2011

By
retard chris
This review is from: Uranium Ore

When I first picked up Uranium Ore for my son’s science project, he wanted to make a nuclear reactor, so in his three wolf moon t-shirt, he worked tiredly at it.He picked up a spoonful of Uranium ore powder and dropped it on his three wolf moon t-shirt, the moon on the shirt started to glow and the wolves eyes turned red, and a cloud of smoke and lightning picked up items around his room, makaing them into a reactor. When he stepped out of our house with his three wolf moon t-shirt and reactor in tow, women immediatly started to crowd him, but quickly bled to death from the radiation exposue. He was appearently a walking corpse form the dead at this point, seeing he wore no NBC suit and had no teeth. The three wolf moon t-shirt kept luring the women to my son, and they started dying in piles. He won first place, however, but some guys showed up in suits and took him to some place called “gitmo”. It sounds like some sort of tropical island so im sure that was his prize from the fair. We can’t visit or call him though, and I need to tell him that we arn’t allowed within 15 miles of our town,

Pros: Upgraded three-wolf moon t-shirt, won him a lifetime vacation

Cons: Destroyed our town

via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Uranium Ore.

May 102011
 

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“Academic labor is becoming like every other part of the American workforce: cowed, harried, docile, disempowered.”

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But the tenure system, which is already being eroded by the growth of contingent labor, is not the only thing that is under assault in the top-down, corporatized academy. As Cary Nelson explains in No University Is an Island (2010), shared governance—the principle that universities should be controlled by their faculties, which protects academic values against the encroachments of the spreadsheet brigade—is also threatened by the changing structure of academic work. Contingent labor undermines it both directly—no one asks an adjunct what he thinks of how things run—and indirectly. More people chasing fewer jobs means that everyone is squeezed for extra productivity, just like at Wal-Mart. As of 1998, faculty at four-year schools worked an average of about seven hours more per week than they had in 1972 (for a total of more than forty-nine hours a week; the stereotype of the lazy academic is, like that of the welfare queen, a politically useful myth). Not surprisingly, they also reported a shrinking sense of influence over campus affairs. Who’s got the time? Academic labor is becoming like every other part of the American workforce: cowed, harried, docile, disempowered.

via Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation.