Do “algorithms and online recommendations threaten to replace [publishers] as arbiters of quality”? This Economist riff on e-book publishing says so. Elsewhere, at least 20 companies are using computer software instead of human beings to write their articles.
How Long ’til Computers Start Buying Books?
It Ain’t Hard To Tell
This essay by Mensah Demary for Electric Literature on Nas and the literary legitimacy of hip-hop is the best thing you'll read this morning. "Nas is a world-class storyteller and practitioner of the narrative form," Demary writes, "I don’t understand why there isn’t more discussion around hip-hop’s literary value among today’s millennial-and-boomer intelligentsia."
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Or, Like Something Out of Kafka
In their latest Trend Watch, Merriam-Webster announced they've been seeing more searches for "Kafkaesque," a spike they attribute to British publishers writing about Booker winner Han Kang. Since the word is so overused, it's worthwhile to ask: just what does it actually mean now, anyway? Allison Flood tries to pin it down at The Guardian.
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W.S. Merwin named as 17th Poet Laureate of the USA
W.S. Merwin, a Hawaii-based poet born in 1927, has been named the 17th Poet Laureate of the United States. A fellow poet writes, "There is something monklike about Merwin ... He is trying to achieve a contemplative distance from desire and ambition."
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Lev Grossman on Aspiring Writers
Lev Grossman offers some words of encouragement for aspiring writers: "because it turns out that talent, whatever that is, and that glowy aura, are only part of the picture."
Falling in Love with Language
“When I heard Afro-Brazilian people speak Portuguese, first in films like City of God and Bus 174, and then live and direct in Bahia, I fell hard for the ease, lyricism, and lilt in their voices which reminded me of the Anglophone Caribbean family and community I grew up in.” Over at Words Without Borders, Naomi Jackson reflects on blackness in Brazil.
From electric sheep to electric books…what is next electric life?
Recommendation algorithms will have to improve mightily to be even halfway useful. I always play around with them at length–I work at an indie bookstore and since I can’t read everything I’m always searching for ways to give recommendations in genres I’m unfamiliar with–and am always disappointed. Just a few weeks ago I was testing out a new one. I put in A.S. Byatt; it simply suggested more A.S. Byatt and her sister Margaret Drabble–not at all helpful. I continued to test it, entering titles of books in my direct physical radius. When I got to F. Scott Fitzgerald the useless software recommended …. Nicholas Sparks. Why? Because they both write about relationships.
Computers have a long way to go before they can even dream of replacing a human recommendation.