Welcome to At present in Books, our each day round-up of literary headlines on the intersection of politics, tradition, media, and extra.
The Future is the Media is a Financial institution (?).
I sincerely hope not, however I’ll learn any “future of the media piece.” In fact, most of those items are “I extrapolate very recent trends in media into the indefinite future.” All of them wrestle with the three duties of media (and actually all enterprise):
1. Make one thing folks need.2. Let folks understand it exists. 3. Work out the best way to generate income of it.
All three issues are very arduous, however not equally arduous nor equally necessary. What I’ve discovered is that any “future of media” punditry that doesn’t concentrate on the primary merchandise as being the keystone on which any product, technique, group, or enterprise have to be constructed, it in all probability promoting one thing.
So once I learn a way forward for the media piece that focuses on how folks pays for stuff, I tune out. They’ll both pay for it (subscriptions, particular person merchandise, experiences) or somebody will hire the eye you get for it (promoting, affiliate, model offers, and many others). Proper now, the second step is probably the most fraught: algorithms managed by fantastically highly effective tech platforms are singularly dominant in how folks discover out about issues, particularly media issues. In case you can journey that dragon, being profitable is fairly straightforward! However using dragons is fiddly, uncomfortable enterprise.
Queer Writing Prize Sees Nominated Authors Withdraw From Consideration
Many authors nominated for The Polari Prize have withdrawn their title from consideration in protest of the inclusion of John Boyne among the many nominees. Boyne has aligned himself publicly with JK Rowling’s unhinged transphobia. And in what ought to come as a shock to utterly nobody, this isn’t actually cool with a bunch of parents. Withdrawing your title from consideration is an underrated mode of resistance, maybe particularly inside teams you would possibly really feel naturally aligned.
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The Finest Use Case I Have But Seen for AI
I visited a number of super analysis libraries this summer season. However, having neither the time nor the credentials to entry the collections, I may solely stare upon them. There was a second on the Beinecke at Yale wherein the actually stunning library felt extra like a mausoleum than a dwelling, usable archive. The books had been protected sure, but in addition trapped. There’s not method round this, in the event you think about solely bodily entry. And even digitization alone nonetheless presents the abundance downside: the best way to discover one thing amongst all that stuff? A sanctioned, open, and punctiliously managed LLM may very well be the skeleton key. The thought of an AI agent that’s particularly, legally, and in any other case licensed by the library to do LLM issues with its holdings may very well be actually wondrous.
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