"However, the most important factor for me at this point is that I have heard “Tom’s Diner” so many times that *I no longer hear it*. Like frog vision, I no longer notice what remains the same, only what has changed. I don’t hear the song anymore, just the different ways that my DSP algorithms respond to it."

"We’re more willing to grant intelligence to things that we’ve built ourselves than to non-human species, even though it’s increasingly obvious that primates, cephalopods and trees have forms of intelligence that we should maybe be listening to. So how do we take this sudden decentring of the human with regard to AI? It’s like a Copernican moment when suddenly we have to acknowledge there are other forms of intelligence present. And then suddenly go, “Oh shit, there have been incredible amounts of intelligence here all along, and we’ve completely ignored them." This is very good.

I finally sat down with this, after it being in my to-read pile for ages. It was entirely worth it. I particularly liked the parts about the natures of silence, and about animal sentience, and about maintenance and regeneration as a natural state. It is worth every minute of however long it takes you to read it, be it the 44 minutes Medium estimate, or a bit more, or a bit less.

"Valve subtly guides the player’s attention toward significant events and objects by using elements naturally found in the game world. This allows the player to retain control of their perspective without getting lost or confused, and contributes to an overall immersive experience." Matthew Gallant puts together a nice selection of screengrabs to illustrate Valve's craft.

"There was an implicit value judgement in Greenfield's talk between the "purely sensory experiences" of raves or today's computer games, and the cognitive activities of reading a book or listening to a symphony, which, because they make us "see one thing in terms of another thing", involve a more mature mental engagement. For Greenfield, the Beethoven was a higher experience because it offered an "escape from the moment", where a rave was about losing yourself to the "thrill of the moment". I think that's a flimsy distinction, since both are about submitting to the sensory power of music. I'd like to see the difference in brain activity between somebody "escaping" life's mundanities and another person "thrilling" to the implacable now of the beat."

"I thoroughly enjoy the more real time nature of these diary fragments popping up among my friends’ updates. It’s easy to picture @samuelpepys conducting his business and pleasure, travelling around London — from his home near the Tower of London to Deptford to Westminster — when he’s updating you on his progress during the day." Phil on the joy of small updates from things that aren't (quite) people.

"Sony acts like a character in a Charlotte Brontë novel–they seem to think they have an entire lifetime to seize the moment."