Libraries, AI and Warsaw - Unordered Thoughts

What a week. I went to Warsaw last weekend, and on my way back I watched the presidential inauguration in the US. Worth noting - the train arrived in Berlin two hours earlier than planned which should be considered a miracle. Apparently, some construction works didn't take as long as anticipated. As I said - a miracle.

There are so many thoughts in my head, and none of them is coherent enough to write a full-fledged blog post about. Therefore, I decided to share some of them with you, just to illustrate what is happening in my mind right now. Think of it like your view into the Pensieve.

Libraries

Public and private. What do we decide to collect and why? Are bad things worth collecting? What is the role of a library - to preserve, to protect, to make accessible? Library among the few public spaces where you can simply exist without paying a fee.

Personal knowledge management. How to store our data? What is the meaning of ten thousand photos on my phone. Do I want to remember everything? Are pictures evidence of an interesting life, or a delegation of memory? Would I like a search engine of myself?

Curation

The role of choice and taste in the world that has delegated curation to algorithms. The incentive of algorithms - do they make it easier or harder to discover things outside our bubble, considering they are tailored to what we like? It’s almost akin the issue of corporations buying art. Art of choosing. Composing collections - books, news, music, art.

The lack of control over feeds. The passiveness of consumption.

AI

Can one draw with generative artificial intelligence or are they just delusional? Is generating art as enjoyable as making art? What could happen when AI absorbs the entirety of the internet? What are the limits of knowledge? How repetitive might the internet become?

Content for content's sake. Job postings generated with AI, CVs written by AI. Bots talking to each other. The Dead Internet theory.

What will happen when we stop creating because everything can be generated faster and cheaper. How much of a lot is too much?

Unmasking AI. The accountability. The general lack of ethics in the tech industry.

Ultimately, what will happen to our hands?

Unmasking AI: the general lack of ethics in the tech industry.
Ultimately, what will happen to our hands?

Immigration

Warsaw always touches me deeply. The subtlety of the experience. The love, longing and loss I feel whenever I visit Poland. The familiarity and ease of navigating the reality in my native language. The freedom and rights I don't have there. The impossible home.

Thank you for reading.

Wiktoria

PS. In today's music corner, Emmanuelle Bertrand plays Camille Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33.