Featured Essay
Embodied AI: An Extended Data Definition
Multimodal AI trained on YouTube-TikTok-Netflix (object-segmented and identified audio-video-speech) and public domain science data (that exceeds the spectrum of human sensorial field) will be grounded in a world that is in some ways vaster than that experienced by a single human neurophysiology.
Autopia and The Truelist: Language Combined in Two Computer-Generated Books
Nick Montfort discusses two of his computer-generated texts that manifest as print-on-demand books, websites and gallery installations. Though distinct in form and content, Autopia and The Truelist were guided by the author's self-imposed constraints and programmed with minimal code to produce predetermined, "novel-size" outputs. Montfort intends these texts to engage the imaginations of readers with the combinatory aspects of language in culture as well as invite them to a deeper reading of the generating code.
Things They Wrote With: The Material Making of Modern Fiction
In his new book, Michael Wutz examines how the work of four canonical novelists - Norris, Lowry, Doctorow, and Powers - register the revolutions in 20th century media technology. Such an analysis, reviewer Joseph Conte suggests, is an important extension of Kittlerian media theory to the field of American literature.