The gloss provided by Ben Underwood echoes, rather than disputes, the approach taken in the work described here. Various critiques of the capacity of computing technologies to represent many everyday aspects of human cognition, much less consciousness, are well known. The work here acknowledges such limitations and embraces critical perspectives of AI such as provided by Searle, Winograd and Flores, Agre, and others. The goal of the GRIOT system is not to model consciousness. It is not full system autonomy or machine competence at a Turing-test style for story generation. The gloss provided by… continue

This was before ‘cows on parade’ became an art marketing success in Chicago. In subsequent years, the author has noticed similar decorated cows (and not a few plasticine horses) in cities throughout Europe and also in Russia and the Ukraine.

On the contention that works of literature need to be, defensively, cordoned off from the world (including the world of literary theory) see Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book, Technological Obsolescence, reviewed in ebr by Anthony Enns.

Although it sounds like an inherently noble goal, providing more people with access to more information will not necessarily promote print-based literacy and could actually do more harm than good by proliferating opportunities for oligarchs to circulate misinformation designed to confuse and distract the wired, but functionally illiterate multitude. People need to be educated – and to educate themselves -about how to access, analyze, and assess the validity and the relevance of the multiplicity of information that’s so readily available in the networked society. Although it sounds like an inhe… continue

Pynchon is the subject of discussion in two 2007/8 reviews: Beginning with a discussion of paranoia’s centrality to critical work on Pynchon, Timothy Melley’s review of John Farrell’s Paranoia and Modernity considers the historical importance of paranoia to the Western mind. In his 2006 ebr essay, McHale returns to Pynchon and to postmodernism to reflect on earlier approaches to the movement Pynchon is the subject of discussion in two 2007/8 reviews: Beginning with a discussion of paranoia’s centrality to critical work on Pynchon, Timothy Melley’s review of John Farrell’s Paranoia and Modernit… continue