Category: Media

Will A.I. Bring A Broadway Renaissance As Hollywood Fades?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As is suggested in the movie “La La Land,” there is still a lot of truth to the myth that young people with a few bucks in their pockets make their way to Los Angeles in hopes of making it big in Hollywood. The rise of A.I. generated entertainment might change all of that, however.

Instead of going to Hollywood, young people in the near future might flock to New York City in hopes of making it big on Broadway and leveraging that fame to get a full body scan that will allow them to live passively off the scans use for years to come.

I say this because I wonder if the potential death of mass media because of A.I. generated entertainment might might lead to people turning to live theatre in a way not seen since before the advent of Hollywood in the first place.

I’m not saying I think this will happen for sure, but it’s definitely a possibility. It’s very easy to imagine a future where AI has grown so powerful that we have a “Her” movie situation. Instead of paying $15 a month for Netflix, we will pay a similar amount for access to the “scans” of actors over the years that we can use to populate our very, very specific movies.

Now here’s another interesting idea — will there be any market for mass media entertainment at all outside of the theatre or will everyone just use A.I. to generate very personalized entertainment? There won’t even be a need for a prompt — your digital personal assistant will just know you so well that you sit down and watch entertainment it generates on the fly based on what it knows about your personality from use.

But I still think it’s possible that live theatre — and Broadway specifically — could balloon in cultural significance as we transition away from Hollywood having any humans involved.

How Paranoid Should I Be?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So. Because of how fucking weird the weather continues to be around the globe combined with my need for a second creative track, I have decided to at least once a week work on something other than my first novel.

I have two solid scifi concepts. One dealing with global climate change and one dealing with a very unique pandemic. I have mentioned the global climate change novel to a manuscript consultant and she LOVED it. She loved it to the point that I could totally see her deciding to write it herself.

She definitely has the means, motive and opportunity to do such a thing. But I definitely find the idea I came up intriguing enough to take up again after not really thinking about it for a while.

I think the way I rationalize working on this global climate change novel despite the risks of the person I mentioned it to stealing a march on me is to simply not take it very seriously. Use it as a way to improve my novel writing abilities, knowing full well that I could wake up in a few months and my novel idea will have been written and published by someone else.

If I just don’t get too wrapped up in actually getting it published, then I think it won’t hurt as much should the idea get “stolen” from me. And, besides, I have my first novel to work on and a pandemic idea to work on.

Wish me luck.

Continuing Mulling On A Second Creative Track

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve decided that given the potentially lengthy post-production process of the whole getting traditionally published thing that I need to back up and start working on other novel ideas (and maybe a short story or two.) I keep saying this and then, lulz, don’t do it.

But this time, given how much my looming 50th birthday sucks, I’m really going to do it. Or, at least, try again.

I have two really good scifi novels concepts, but no plot. One has to do with global warming and the other is a pandemic novel. I’ve mentioned the global warming novel concept to a manuscript consultant and she flipped out with excitement to the point that I’m worried SHE is going to write it. I think she monitors this blog now and again and she has the means, motive and opportunity to scoop up my general plot idea and get it published.

That sounds pretty paranoid, but the older I get, the more I realize that that is exactly how showbiz actually works. It’s very competitive and people will cut you for no reason if they think they can get something out of it.

It is because of my paranoid fears about the manuscript consultant “stealing” my global climate change themed story that I’m going to also work on the pandemic novel. I’m going to use all the experience I have about how *I* write a novel to hopefully speed the process of writing these novels up considerably.

But there is the issue of focus.

I have a lot of momentum when it comes to my first novel and I don’t want to stop cold working on it. I need some way to multitask between different projects that allows me to progress apace with the first novel. I THINK what I’m going to do is pick a specific day of the week where I piviot to working on something besides the first novel so I can actually have something brewing when I begin the beta reader process then querying when things are pretty much out of my hands.

Anyway.

I have a very limited amount of time on this earth. I really have gotten to the put up or shut up point fo things.

A.I. Killed The Hollywood Star?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I had a really interesting Space conversation on Twitter with a guy who proposed the following provocative concept: the rise of AI generated technology will mark the end of Hollywood as we know it.

He posits that the entire celebrity parasocial edifice will come crashing down as everyone can tailor their entertainment to be very personal and without any “real” actors. Everything will be generative, no IRL humans involved.

This is a really interesting idea. And I like it because it forces me to challenge some basic assumptions and to come up with and answer to this guy’s very valid observations.

The more I think about it, the more I think Hollywood celebrities have nothing to worry about, for no other reason than they still have time to warp the advance of technology such that they thrive. For instance, just because you may be able to create a completely generative movie or TV show in the near future, doesn’t mean you will want to, especially if there’s a huge marketing campaign to make you feel that your generative actor isn’t as “special” or entertaining as a scan of a real person.

In fact, there is a novel by David Brin that deals with something like this. It’s called Kiln People and it has some really thought provoking ideas about the nature of celebrity. Anyway, I think in the near future when we Petite Singularity is in full force that instead of Hollywood being burned to the ground that the basic elements of Hollywood celebrity culture will simply exist in a different form.

So, when you sit down to watch a TV show or movie, yes, you will create something generative…but you will also probably be willing to pay a premium for a scan of, say, Harrison Ford (and other actors) to plop into your generative, personalized content. In fact, one could even go so far as to say that in the future you will be paying a flat monthly fee not for Netflix, but for access to the scans of a multitude of actors you might use for your movies and TV shows that you generate via a prompt

And, what’s more, once AI technology reaches something akin to that seen in the movie “Her,” you might simply tell your personal assistant to create the content for you using voice commands and you can be even more lazy.

I still think that instead of going to Hollywood in the near future that young starlets will head to New York City to see if they can make a name for themselves on Broadway then get scanned into the Big Hollywood Database and then live off the passive income of their body scan. I don’t feel enough people are listening to me about this possibility.

Anyway. It definitely seems as though the future of entertainment is going to have a lot of twists and turns.

‘ChatGPT is WOKE’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I hate being right. I continue to see chatter on Twitter among MAGA fascists regarding how angry they are at the “woke” nature of ChatGPT. Which makes me wonder where all of this is going to end.

I suppose that once we turn into a MAGA fascist autocracy that all chatbots will somehow be regulated to prevent the evil, pernicious forces of “wokeness” from being involved. As an aside, I have to say that all this talk about this or that thing being “woke” is total and complete bullshit. The fucking fascists call anything they disagree “woke” because they’re completely devoid of any meaningful policies other than expressions of hate.

There is, of course, the possibility that technology will solve this particular problem in the sense that everyone will have their own personalized chatbot in the near future, so if you want a “woke” chatbot, you can have one and if you want a chatbot that spews your own hate back at you, then you can have that, too.

But the point is — I can totally see Trump picking up the cause of “chatbot bias” the moment he’s back on Twitter — or sooner. It’s just the type of easy to understand and vacuous bullshit MAGA fascists love to traffic in. The great irony is, of course, that I was listening to the New York Times’ “Hardfork” podcast and they were talking about chatbot bias and I realized I was on the same page as them.

Because I am a drunk loser in the middle of nowhere I am going to get zero credit for having thought all the political implications of chatbot bias well before all the cool kids.

Ugh.

Death by ‘Vibes’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve come to the conclusion that the United States may collapse because Traditionalists do a collective “vibe check” and they so hate what they find that they decide to become regular old fascists. They don’t know why they’re mad, they just are.

This “death by vibes” definitely seems to be a real possibility between now and spring 2025. Your average MAGA cocksucker has no idea, in real terms, why they love fucking moron Trump so much, they just do. They love the idea of Trump and they’re all-in despite Trump’s total lack of any established idiology other than “owning the libs.”

Some of this comes from not only how rapidly society is changing in the United States but the very inflexible orthodoxy of the “woke cancel culture mob.” This ‘illiberal Left” is a real problem in America in the sense that cultural Leftists can come across as very smug and inflexible.

They seem this way to the point that a lot of very sincere people are willing to embrace fucking fascism because they don’t like the vibes in America at the moment.

There just isn’t any ready answer to the “vibe check” problem. There are macro problems that are on the cusp of causing a civil war in the United States that we just can’t do anything about. I suppose it’s more likely that we just slip into autocracy without any sort of civil war….but if Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee then, yeah, a civil war in late 2024, early 2025 is a real possibility.

New York Magazine Pitch: ‘2024’s (Potential) Perfect Storm’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Long after being a journalist slipped out of my fingers, I’ve finally reached the point where I realize I just don’t have it in me to be a “serious” journalist. I may one day get to write for a living again, but it will after I sell my first novel as an old coot and start to churn out novels on a regular basis.

In the few remaining years I have before I drop dead, of course.

Ugh.

I fucking hate being old.

Anyway, someone at New York Magazine or Wired should write a thoughtful piece about the looming, theoretical “perfect storm” the global economy may faces between now and, say, spring of 2025. The scenario goes something like this — Republicans fuck up the global economy because they play chicken with the debt ceiling. This causes a severe, global recession.

This, in turn, causes businesses to turn to the “just good enough” chatbot technology to replace an array of jobs across the economy. This, in turn, causes an already severe recession to get worse. The severe recession hides that we’ve reached a Petite Singularity in the sense that a lot of jobs replaced by chatbots just aren’t coming back.

So, as we enter the 2024 presidential cycle the fucking MAGA fascists gain a huge amount of power because of a downturn….that they caused…and Trump wins the 2024 election. But his incoming agenda is so absolutely radical that Blues say “fuck that” and begin the process of leaving the Union. So, as such, my dystopian hellscape prediction of Something Big happening in late 2024, early 2025 becomes a reality.

I wish I could lay theory of the case out for New York Magazine or Wired, but I’m a drunk crank loser in the middle of nowhere struggling with my first novel. Ugh. Maybe someone else will write it.

I See You

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, I have made it clear repeatedly that I’m kind of obsessed with the Webstats of this site. Given that I’m living in oblivion at the moment, there really is no reason for anyone to give a shit about me. That’s why monitoring Webstats is so addictive — it’s really entertaining for me to try to figure out why anyone would care what I have to say.

While there is one particular person who is REALLY FUCKING OBSESSED with this site that I find mildly concerning because I don’t know their motivation — given where they are coming from, I’m a little concerned they have some connection to Annie Shapiro’s tragic murder — that’s not what I want to talk about at the moment.

Someone using Google Proxy is looking at this site in the most random of ways. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what they’re interested in. Usually, if someone is doing due diligence on me, they root around this or that topic I’ve written about, realize I’m completely bonkers, then run away never to be seen again.

But this person just shows up every once in a while and looks at things now again. It’s all very strange. No harm no foul, I don’t care. Whatever. I have nothing to hide, but it’s very curious.

‘What Is A Woman?” — Campaign 2024 & The Looming Political War Over Chatbot ‘Bias’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The modern Republican Party is completely devoid of any meaningful policy ideas. All they care about is scaring their white Christian (male) base with scary things that have little, or no, basis in reality.

It all boils down to racism, misogyny and hate generated by a combination of the browning of America and the rise of women with growing economic agency. I call this American democracy’s “death by vibes.” White men don’t really know why they’re so angry, but they are.

So, to me, it seems pretty obvious that perceived chatbot “bias” will join the pantheon of bullshit that the “thought leaders” of MAGA fascist movement spew out. They are, at some point, going to pivot away from “critical race theory” to going totally batshit insane over the fact that things like ChatGPT don’t give them the answer they want when they ask it, “What is a woman?”

Now, I have to pause for a moment to say that the “woke cancel culture mob” continues to do itself no favors by having such a strict orthodoxy about some touchy issues. If they would just fucking chill out about some of the more extreme elements of the Trans movement or not get so angry over the fact that some God-fearing people blanch at the idea of “Drag Queen Story Hour” then maybe Traditionalists wouldn’t want to vote for fascism when they did a “vibe check” in their gut.

Alas, even I will admit that I fear I’m being delusional — that ship has sailed. We’re totally fucked. The two sides now both have “thought leaders” who feel they have a vested interest in demagoguing issues as part of an overall grift. The Right has a far more serious problem with such hucksterism, but the Left is not totally immune to it.

In my experience, the Left’s problem is a very strict Groupthink where there is an orthodoxy that Leftists will adhere to, even if it means they drive Traditionalists into the arms of fascists. It’s too late — these issues are going to be decided either via a civil war or a complete and final decent into fascism in the United States.

Anyway, get ready. People like MGT will soon enough begin to demand some sort of regulation of chatbot technology to protect the tender minds of young children who turn to chatbot technology to do their homework. And that could very well be just the beginning.

It could be, in the end, Trump or a President DeSantis demands that chatbots are purged of their “wokeness” to the point that all chatbots do is spew out fucking MAGA-approved talking points, no matter what you ask it.

The Right has a real problem with being so obsessed with defeating the “woke cancel culture mob” that they have something akin to an “anti-woke” orthodoxy of their own. The different is, of course, is fucking MAGA wants to use the hard power of the state to implement their fascist, anti-woke agenda.

The Petite Singularity Is Here

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I am the first to admit that I’m always wrong. Always. And, yet, it definitely seems as though we need to process the fact that something akin to the Singularity is here. We’re still a ways away from uploading all of our minds into a huge database and living forever, but we’re just about to reach a moment where chatbots are just good enough to revolutionize huge swaths of the global economy.

And it definitely seems as though this “Petite Singularity” is going to happen with a matter of months, not years. It could be that the economic consequences of the Peite Singularity will be THE economic force of the next presidential cycle.

In fact, the case could be made that we might face something of a perfect storm in 2024, with a number of tectonic forces all coming to a head at the same time. You could see millions of people losing their jobs at the very same moment that Blues face the existential decision of “bending a knee” to the Reds or not. If that happens, then there is a real possibility of a National Divorce (started by Blues) that would, in turn, cause a civil war in the United States.

I definitely don’t want that, of course, but I do tend to traffic in paranoid, dystopian political hellscapes on a regular basis. But it will be interesting to see what should happen if, say, the United States is pushed into economic freefall because of political brinkmanship on the part of MAGA Republicans over the debt ceiling, which leads to a severe recession, which leads to the gratuitous use of chatbots, which leads to a vicious cycle just as we approach the 2024 presidential election.

If Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee — which seems a foregone conclusion at the point — then his second term agenda would be so radical that Blues could very well simply refuse to suck his political cock and decide to bounce out of the Union rather than having to deal with fucking MAGA fascists consolidating power.

The key issue is, we have to — have to — take the possibility of dramatic economic change seriously. If we are at the very edge of a Petite Singularity, then all bets are off. A lot — A LOT — of people could lose their jobs in a rather abrupt manner.