Winter 2025: Barker vs. AI
Roll up, roll up, roll up! Looking for a brand new selection of fascinating articles, interviews, and reviews? Want an answer to the question of AI to human superiority? Have more than a few minutes to read an email?
Then ebr has the newsletter for you!
This month, we’re putting the barkers head-to-head against everyone’s favorite new tool, collective consciousness, and possible world destroyer—the large language model! Can you tell which summary of our fantastic content is human-written or AI? Have a gander, take a guess, and find the answers below!
Barker vs. AI
1. Parrots on a Wet, Black Bough: Facing into AI Art
a. Erroneous and disappointing or marvelous and mysterious? Stuart Moulthrop’s “Parrots on a Wet, Black Bough: Facing into AI Art” proposes a reparative perspective on AI art that looks beyond the output and into human perception.
b. Stuart Moulthrop’s “Parrots on a Wet, Black Bough: Facing into AI Art” argues that we should stop worrying about AI’s soulless ‘math-house’ origins and instead embrace its glitches to find the Kenergy in the machine.
2. Hallucinate This! Authors talk with Rob Wittig
a. In “Hallucinate This! Authors Mark Marino and Chatty G (ChatGPT) talk with Rob Wittig,” Mark C. Marino and his AI alter-ego “Chatty G” discuss their “autobotography” via a chaotic, postmodern deep dive that proves collaborating with an AI is less like HAL 9000 and more like Everything Everywhere All at Once.
b. Rob Wittig becomes the prompter in “Hallucinate This! Authors Mark Marino and Chatty G (ChatGPT) talk with Rob Wittig,” leading human-LLM writing duo Mark Marino and Chatty G on an exploration of ‘their’ creative process, more-than-human empathy, and the future of writing in a world of generative AI.
3. Interview with N. Katherine Hayles and Deena Larsen
a. N. Katherine Hayles and Deena Larsen discuss the high-stakes evolution of electronic literature in “Interview with N. Katherine Hayles and Deena Larsen,” emphasizing that digital texts deserve the same main character energy and rigorous close reading as the classics.
b. New modalities of literature have been a source of delight for both Deena Larsen and N. Katherine Hayles from the ’90s to today. Their piece, “Interview with N. Katherine Hayles and Deena Larsen,” presents electronic literature’s journey through their own eyes, experiences… and symbionts!
4. Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts
a. In this book review, Deena Larsen provides as much a tasting menu as a review of Hayles’ book “Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts”. The review, like the book itself, urges us to consider the ways human-AI relationships foster new perspectives and umwelts.
b. In “Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts,” Deena Larsen’s review of N. Katherine Hayles’ work argues that humans are just the sidekicks in a vast, nonconscious squad of bacterial and algorithmic symbionts—basically The Matrix if the machines were powered by probiotics.
5. 9 Shocking Ways to Get the Perfect Summer Brain: A Review of Gyms
a. In “9 Shocking Ways to Get the Perfect Summer Brain,” Daniel Johannes Rosnes explores how AI can be used as a mental barbell to pump up human creativity, suggesting that training with algorithms is basically a Rocky montage for your brain where the machine is your over-eager personal trainer.
b. Daniel Johannes Rosnes dusts off his mental dumbbells to review Kyle Bootens’ Gyms with an overbearing AI trainer in “9 Shocking Ways to Get the Perfect Summer Brain,” ultimately finding the book to be an excellent display of the limitations and abilities of co-writing with LLM technology.
6. A Review of Joseph M. Conte’s Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel
a. In “A Review of Joseph M. Conte’s Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel,” Bengü Demirtaş delves deep into Conte’s explorations of works by DeLillo, Pynchon, Coetzee, and Pamuk, discovering the inherent difficulty of representation in the postmodern milieu.
b. Bengü Demirtaş’s review of Joseph Conte’s book in “A Review of Joseph M. Conte’s Transnational Politics in the Post-9/11 Novel” examines how post-9/11 novels try to represent the ‘unpresentable’ chaos of a globalized world via a deep dive into how literature maps a ‘multiverse’ of political anxieties.
What do you reckon? Think you’ve done well? Well, don’t be too sure! We’ve got another round left, yet, thanks to The Transformers gathering, where Anna Mills, Jon Ippolito, Maha Bali, Jeremy Douglass, Mark C. Marino, Annette Vee, and Marc Watkins have convened to discuss the future of writing in the advent of AI!
But who can summarize their discussions–and Ippolito’s provocations–best?!
Bonus Round!
1. Writing As Thinking—By Proxy
a. What kind of affordances and constraints can new writing-technologies offer? In “Writing As Thinking—By Proxy,” Jon Ippolito challenges us to think through the meaning and history of thinking, writing, and humanity’s constant effort to outsource it.
b. In his provocation “Writing As Thinking—By Proxy,” Jon Ippolito suggests that while AI offloads the mechanics of writing, it might just be the latest evolution in a long history of cognitive shortcuts—one where the future of writing is vibes, sign language, and Discord-level banter.
2. Writing As Thinking: The Discussion
a. Using Ippolito’s essay “Writing As Thinking: The Discussion” as fuel for their debate, The Transformers consider the importance of the structural approach to thinking that writing offers and deliberate on whether or not AI can be a facilitator or hindrance on that journey.
b. The Transformers debate whether AI is a cognitive superpower or just a fancy way to turn students into ‘brains in jars’ in “Writing As Thinking: The Discussion,” ultimately concluding that while our writing tools are evolving, we need to keep the ‘productive friction’ alive.
3. Does Education Really Require the F-Word?
a. In “Does Education Really Require the F-Word?,” Jon Ippolito argues that ‘friction’—the necessary struggle of the learning process—is what gives education its real value, suggesting that in an age of AI-assisted ease, we need to stop viewing some mental hurdles as a bug.
b. Is ‘friction’ really the key to human growth and should it be the basis for learning? Jon Ippolito’s provocation “Does Education Really Require the F-Word?” covers friction, bad and good, and questions what varieties are really useful in the writing classroom.
4. Friction and Education: The Discussion
a. The Transformers discuss the reduction of friction via LLM use in “Friction and Education: The Discussion,” dissecting the ways in which generative AI has already evolved to offer more ease and the best ways they’ve found to instigate growth, change, and disagreement.
b. The Transformers discuss how AI’s “magic button” makes everything friction-less but risks robbing students of the deep cognitive growth in “Friction and Education: The Discussion,” proving that education is the pedagogical version of ‘no pain, no gain,’ just with more LLMs and less spandex.
That’s it! The latest update from your favorite journal dedicated to digital futures of literature, theory, criticism, and the arts. So, see you next time for more—
electronic book review
ANSWER KEY
Human vs. AI
1: a. Human b. AI
2: a. AI b. Human
3: a. AI b. Human
4: a. Human b. AI
5: a. AI b. Human
6: a. Human b. AI
Bonus Round!
1: a. Human b. AI
2: a. Human b. AI
3: a. Human b. AI
4: a. AI b. Human