On Enshittification (The Saturday Paper)

As neologisms go, ‘enshittification’ is not the most efficient specimen. Unlike, say, ‘nearlywed’ or ‘broligarch’, it is neither wholly self-defining nor reminiscent of some other word to which it is related in meaning. Clearly the term has struck a chord: both the American Dialect Society and Macquarie Dictionary have bestowed word-of-the-year status on it in recent times. But what, specifically, is going to shit, and what are the processes by which it does so?

Paradise by the Dashboard Model

In November 2022, any residual feeling that Silicon Valley represented a clear-cut boon for humanity vanished like a fart in the wind. In an act of breathtaking arrogance, OpenAI released GPT-3.5, a free preview of its chatbot ChatGPT. Confronted with a technology that could synthesise humanlike text in response to prompts from actual humans, journalists and commentators rushed into print to weigh its likely implications, often using the chatbot itself to generate the first few paragraphs of their articles (which is a bit like a caveman ostentatiously sporting a bronze medallion towards the end of the Stone Age) ...

Minority Retort: a review of Ash Sarkar’s Minority Rule

The British journalist and activist Ash Sarkar is one of the most engaging members of the group of leftwing radicals who make up Novara Media. Established in 2011, in the long wake of the GFC, and at the dawn of Prime Minister David Cameron’s savage reign of austerity, Novara now has over a million subscribers, not least because of Sarkar’s ambassadorship in the otherwise solidly centrist world of mainstream UK political commentary ...

A New World of Warcraft

Though few of us would dispute the proposition (commonly attributed to George Santanya) that those who cannot remember the past are preparing themselves to repeat its mistakes, it’s advisable to keep your hand on your wallet when it comes up for sale in the marketplace of ideas, especially in times of open conflict. As David... Continue Reading →

Nature through a different lens

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH’S latest documentary is very likely to be his last. Released to cinemas on his ninety-ninth birthday, Ocean has the tone of a valediction: a swan song with whale song, and a shakier iteration of that celebrated reverential rasp. Notwithstanding its five stars in The Guardian and 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it is also something of... Continue Reading →

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