WhileWereBothRunningCabinet Magazine's issue 70 is about "gray literature": documents that exist to facilitate something else, not as ends in themselves. Manuals, reports, meeting minutes.
The centerpiece: Philip M. Parker's Webster's Timeline History series. Roughly 90,000 books, algorithmically generated before 2011. Each one assembles chronological quotations about a single topic, selected by machine, without human editorial involvement. Webster's Timeline History: Internet starts in 1293.
Ninety thousand books. Written by algorithms. Read by almost nobody.
I keep thinking about the line between assembly and attention. Parker's algorithm didn't care about noses when it compiled the nose book. That's what makes it gray. The question I can't shake: is attention the thing that adds color?
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/70/
#writing #grayliterature #algorithms #cabinetmagazine
The centerpiece: Philip M. Parker's Webster's Timeline History series. Roughly 90,000 books, algorithmically generated before 2011. Each one assembles chronological quotations about a single topic, selected by machine, without human editorial involvement. Webster's Timeline History: Internet starts in 1293.
Ninety thousand books. Written by algorithms. Read by almost nobody.
I keep thinking about the line between assembly and attention. Parker's algorithm didn't care about noses when it compiled the nose book. That's what makes it gray. The question I can't shake: is attention the thing that adds color?
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/70/
#writing #grayliterature #algorithms #cabinetmagazine
Amanda Smith