I often wake up before dawn, before my wife and children so I can enjoy a little bit of lonely time. I climbed downstairs to the quiet kitchen, drank a glass of water, and put it into my air. Then I chose some music, set up a coffee maker, and sat down and listened as the coffee brewing.
It is in this finite state that my encounter with the algorithm began. Groggily, I would scroll some daddy content on Reddit, or watch photography videos on YouTube, or check out Apple News. My laptop greets me to work from the kitchen island and I want to accept it’s invitation – but if I’m not careful I might watch every available clip of the movie I can’t see, or start an episode of “Rookie”, an ABC Police program that tells the story of a middle father’s father who himself reinvents himself through a lapd (I’ll find with Tiktok, maybe it’s my effort because it’s similar to me because it’s like me because it’s like Quant’s because it’s Quantity in the Its scene, my kids wake up while I’m still rolling and I waste my hours of giving up sleep to make sure.
Cultural Industry: Centennial
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If this morning sounds familiar, it is because the rhythm and algorithms of life have been merged for decades in the smartphone era. We listen to podcasts while we get dressed and watch Netflix before going to bed. In between, there are blues on the bus, Spotify in the gym, Instagram at lunch, YouTube before dinner, X for toothbrush, pinterest, for insomnia hours. It’s a strange way of life. The algorithm is ancient – In 300 BC, Euclid invented a largest common divisor for finding two integers. Essentially, they are mathematical programs that solve problems. We use them to rule physical things (such as elevators) and bureaucratic things (such as medical residency). Does it make sense to regard unclaimed time as a problem? We have solved it through the algorithm, but now there is no.
The feeling of overstimulation is the result of algorithmic life. Another is some kind of confusion in our thinking. Why do we care about our concern? Walking into the basement in the darkness, you may stumble upon a spider web. A philosophical idea is that this is how care works. We are plagued by the possibility that happens to occur when we live – we are plagued by the nursing network. You met an old neighbor in the morning and that night, want to know his situation. Your middle school students like Chappell Roanyou do the same soon. One contactSource“Thirteen years old may make you a lifelong liberal. The algorithmic culture incorporates the randomness of our care; it takes advantage of the fact that what we encounter today may be obsessed with tomorrow. Meanwhile, its network is woven by company-owned machines.
I have long felt like I was stuck in my personal network and have been trying to get off the car. Then, one morning last year, I started chatting with the AI system Claude in an experimental spirit. “I finally started to make progress on the articles I was writing,” I typed on my phone while coffee brewing.
“Good morning!” the system replied. “It’s so nice to hear the sounds–when the work you’ve been researching starts to blend together, nothing feels like that. What is this post about and what helps you break through this advancement?”
I didn’t answer. At that hour or any time, I didn’t want AI to be a writing coach. However, after using the phone, I can now put it down. I drank coffee and started marking the old draft.
I kept chatting with Claude and changpt in the morning – not about my writing, but about topics that interest me. (Why are the bad tariffs? What’s going on with the crime situation on the subway? Why is dark matter black?) Instead of checking Apple News, I started asking about confusion – a system of search networks based on AI – “What’s going on in the world today?” In response, it reliably came up with a brief news summary, which is rich and non-standard, unlike this section. economist headThe world is short. “Sometimes, I ask confusing follow-up questions, but I don’t want to read another book.
It happens that around this time, the algorithmic Internet (Reddit, YouTube, X and other worlds) begins to lose its magnetism. In 2018, New YorkReporter Max read ask“How much is the Internet fake?” He pointed out that a large part of online traffic comes from “robots disguised as humans.” But now “AI Slop” seems to have taken over. The entire website seems to be written by AI. The model is repeating beautifully, and the earrings are strangely carved. Anecdotes are posted to online forums, and the comments below have chatbot rhythms. One study found that more than half of the text on the Internet has been modified by AI, and more and more “influencers” appear to be completely generated by AI. Alert users are embracing the “dead Internet theory,” a once-conspiracy world that believes the online world has been automated.
In the 1950 bookHuman use of humans“Computer scientist Norbert Wiener – the inventor of cybernetics, research on how machines, bodies and automated systems control themselves – shows that modern society runs through information. As these societies become larger and more complex, he wrote, more affairs will depend on information between humans and machines, between machines and machines, and between machines and machines.” Artificial intelligence machines can send and respond to messages faster than we do, which is a source of concern, but another is because they communicate in literally, strange or narrow ways, or just wrong, we will continually incorporate their responses into our lives without having to be so challenging. We can lie down and wait for the robot slaves. ”
The information around us is changing, even writing on our own. From a certain point of view, they seem to be silent on the human voice of some algorithms that have been trying to influence and control us for the past few decades. In my kitchen, I love quiet but feel uneasy about it. What will these new voices tell us? How much space can we say?
Recently, I lifted a huge twin-peak backyard tent tightly back for my son Peter’s seventh evening party. As a result, I spent more time on the spin bike than I had in the weight room. One morning, after Peter got off at camp, I stepped on a virtual bike trail on the coast of Swiss Lake while listening to Evan Ratliff’s podcast Shell Game, who used AI models to imitate him on the phone. Even if our addiction to podcasts reflects our always-consuming media needs, they are tranquil islands in the algorithmic ecosystem. I often listen to them while organizing. For a brief effort, I rely on “Song Exploders”, “Shots” and “Happier with Gretchen Rubin”; when I have more work to do, I listen to “Radiolab” or “Ezra Klein Show” or “Conversation with Taylor” by Tyler Cowen. I like these ideas and the company. It’s more fun to ride with Gretchen and her screenwriter sister Elizabeth.
Podcasts flourish with emotional authenticity: sounds in ears, three friends in a room. Some experiments were conducted in a fully automated podcast – for a while, “Discover Daily” published “Discover,” which provides “deep technology, science, and culture” for AI generation, but they tend to be charismatic and lack intellectual rates. “I’m most proud of finding and generating ideas,” said Latif Nasser, co-host of “Radiolab,” said AI is a verb in the office of “Radiolab” – using it is like “over the pickets,” but he “will be out of curiosity, like, ‘OK,’ Okay, give me five episodes.”I’ll see what’s going on, pitch is rubbish.”
But what if you provide your own good idea for AI? Maybe they can be made a reality through automatic production. Last fall, my rotation added a new podcast, The Deep Dive. I generated these plots myself using a Google system called NoteBookLM. To create an episode, upload the document to the online repository (“Notebook”) and click the button. Soon, a male and female podcast duo is ready to discuss what you upload in a compelling podcast voice. NoteBookLM is a research tool, so on my first attempt I uploaded some scientific papers. The master’s artificial fascination does not have the ability to arouse my own charm. I had even greater success when I wrote a few chapters of the memoirs for AI. Listening to the host’s “instance”, it was interesting to hear their responses at first. But when I tried to create a podcast based on articles I wrote a long time ago, I really liked it and was forgotten to some extent.
“It’s a huge problem, it cuts the core,” said one host, discussing an article I published a few years ago.

Health & Wellness Contributor
A wellness enthusiast and certified nutrition advisor, Meera covers everything from healthy living tips to medical breakthroughs. Her articles aim to inform and inspire readers to live better every day.