Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
The Future is the Media is a Bank (?).
I sincerely hope not, but I will read any “future of the media piece.” In truth, most of these pieces are “I extrapolate very recent trends in media into the indefinite future.” All of them wrestle with the three tasks of media (and really all business):
1. Make something people want.
2. Let people know it exists.
3. Figure out how to make money of it.
All three problems are very hard, but not equally hard nor equally important. What I have learned is that any “future of media” punditry that does not focus on the first item as being the keystone on which any product, strategy, organization, or business must be built, it probably selling something.
So when I read a future of the media piece that focuses on how people will pay for stuff, I tune out. They will either pay for it (subscriptions, individual products, experiences) or someone will rent the attention you get for it (advertising, affiliate, brand deals, etc). Right now, the second step is the most fraught: algorithms controlled by fantastically powerful tech platforms are singularly dominant in how people find out about things, especially media things. If you can ride that dragon, making money is pretty easy! But riding dragons is fiddly, uncomfortable business.
Queer Writing Prize Sees Nominated Authors Withdraw From Consideration
Many authors nominated for The Polari Prize have withdrawn their name from consideration in protest of the inclusion of John Boyne among the nominees. Boyne has aligned himself publicly with JK Rowling’s unhinged transphobia. And in what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, this is not really cool with a bunch of folks. Withdrawing your name from consideration is an underrated mode of resistance, perhaps especially within groups you might feel naturally aligned.
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The Best Use Case I Have Yet Seen for AI
I visited several tremendous research libraries this summer. But, having neither the time nor the credentials to access the collections, I could only gaze at them. There was a moment at the Beinecke at Yale in which the truly beautiful library felt more like a mausoleum than a living, usable archive. The books were protected yes, but also trapped. There is not way around this, if you imagine only physical access. And even digitization alone still presents the abundance problem: how to find something among all that stuff? A sanctioned, open, and carefully managed LLM could be the skeleton key. The idea of an AI agent that is specifically, legally, and otherwise authorized by the library to do LLM things with its holdings could be truly wondrous.
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