Tag / Artificial Intelligence

Row of cinema seats
by flares

Machine Learning

Molly vs the Machines (Marc Silver, 2026)

It is a relief that I was in my mid-thirties before social media hit me — I am, in a dubious phrase, a digital immigrant.

I suspect some of the systemic racism, sexism and homophobia, I would have been soaked in and probably expressed would put me in cancellation territory. The (large) dormitory village where I grew up was hideously white — there was a Black technician, but I don’t recall any Black pupils. Ethnic diversity was for takeaways and corner shops, or something in the (not very) big city. It wasn’t quite a monoculture, but the only access to alternate lifestyles was in print. I am/was overweight, which was added to the litany of low key bullying.

Social media allows the weight conscious to see many more images than the glossy magazines I could have consumed. Perceived self-image is magnified, trauma added to trauma, cyberbullying not only endemic, but no further away than the mobile in your pocket. It’s never easy being a teen, but I’m glad I’ve got it out the way with when I did.

Continue reading →
by flares

Barbikane

Tangerine Dream: Zeitraffer (Barbican Music Library, 16 January-2 May 2020)
Trevor Paglen: From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ (The Curve, Barbican, 26 Sep 2019—Sun 16 Feb 2020)

BoardSo, the Barbican – aka the alcohol-free concert hall – was heaving and so the slightly complicated but with good sight lines for a rendezvous foyer turned out not to be a smart move. Especially when Dennis was playing havoc with the trains. But that didn’t dissuade the thousands of people who had descended for a wellness fête (and who were queueing in their hundreds for the ladies loos hidden in the bowels of the building).
Continue reading →

by flares

How to Suppress #94

Back in the day I wrote a chapter on postmodernism and science fiction for The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Space, as always, was tight, and as I recall, my focus was on the three key thinkers who characterise postmodern theory — for better or worse Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson and Jean-François Lyotard. I certainly knew about Meaghan Morris’s The Pirate’s Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism (1988) and Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (1985) but it looks like neither get a mention. It might have been I assume one or other would be in a chapter on gender or feminism, but that’s no excuse.

More problematic — and I’m not going to go and check — is that all my fictional examples were by male authors.

The editors did not notice, but someone did:

Butler fails to mention even one science fiction text author by a woman or even one female literary theorist. How to suppress women’s writing? Butler’s article supplies an egregious answer. (Barr 153)

Yes, bang to rights.

Continue reading →