Germany, Gender Studies, and dickovers
Postcard #49
Hello and welcome back to another edition of THE POSTCARD, Unregistered’s fortnightly roundup of recommendations.
Thoughts, tools, and treats
This week’s POSTCARD is about the topics in the title, as well as aesthetics, culture, writing, and, once again, AI.
AI
AI is technology, not a product, John Gruber argues. Instead of a single killer AI product, the technology will permeate every application: „Actual products have to be real. Actual experiences have to rely on actual products.“
Writing
The Hinternet Editorial Board suggests „an honest scale of AI reliance“ for writers. And Jasmine Sun explains why she thinks „it’s the best time in the world to be an independent writer.“
Theory
Should identity-based academic fields be reformed or abolished? „The problem is the theories, not the subject,“ Helen Pluckrose writes. Leaving the study of important aspects of human life to ideologically homogeneous spaces would be worse than „reforming the field to meet the standards of rigorous academic inquiry,“ she argues.
Aesthetics
Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen share what they learned when awarding their New Aesthetics grants. Here is a list of the recipients; here are my two cents on the call.
10 things about Germany that are just weird
Including, as you might have guessed, a general faith in authority.
Noteworthy
“Culture is an ecosystem, a cycle that maintains itself that is reinforced by policies, structures, power dynamics, physical spaces, rituals, processes, recruitment, training, precedents, celebrations, values and, above all else, bagels and maybe spreads too. It’s an operating system that runs across anything and everything, and changing it involves considering the entire system.“
—Tom Goodwin, Digital Darwinism. Surviving the new age of business disruption, 2nd edition, London & New York 2022, p. 237.
A mystery link leading into the unknown
What is...
As always,
Dirk
P.S.: Feel free to send me pointers to articles, books, sites, pods, tools, and treats that could be interesting for this roundup. While I cannot promise to link them, I read and appreciate every hint.