the business of literature and the algorithms of culture
TRANSCRIPT
The Business of Literature and (the Algorithms of) Culturen: Richard Nash e: [email protected] t: @R_Nash
1950: 8K
1990: 35K
1997: 120K
2004: 275K
2010: 315K
1993: MP3 standard released
2001: iPod goes on sale
2005: ProTools on a sub$1.5K computer
A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.—Borges, “A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw”
“As the teams have grown better at predicting human preferences, the more incomprehensible their computer programs have become, even to their creators. Each team has lined up a gantlet of scores of algorithms, each one analyzing a slightly different correlation between movies and users. The upshot is that while the teams are producing ever-more-accurate recommendations, they cannot precisely explain how they’re doing this. Chris Volinsky admits that his team’s program has become a black box, its internal logic unknowable.”—Clive Thompson in the New York Times Magazine, writing on the Netflix Prize algorithms
I’m Richard Nash. You can email me anytime at [email protected] I mean it. (It’s the freemium consulting model.)There’s also Twitter: I’m @R_Nash. And my website is http://RNash.com (And my secret project is http://Sirens.io)