Posts Tagged ‘New York Times’
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”*…
As Josh Begley elegantly demonstrates, silence may be nigh…
The New York Times published its first issue on September 18, 1851, but the first photos wouldn’t appear on the cover until the early 1900s over 60 years later. This visual timeline by self-described data artist Josh Begley captures the storied newspaper’s approach to layout and photography by incorporating every NY Times front page ever published into a single one-minute video. The timelapse captures decades text-only front pages before the newspaper began to incorporate illustrated maps and wood engravings. The liberal usage of black and white photography begins a century later and finally the first color photo appears in 1997. What a fascinating way to view history through image, over 60,000 front pages in all…
Showing instead of (simply) telling: “The Rise of the Image: Every NY Times Front Page Since 1852 in Under a Minute,” from @thisiscolossal.com (who found it via @kottke.org).
See the animated visualization here or here.
(TotH to EWW)
* Ansel Adams
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As we ponder the prevalence of pictures, we might spare a thought for a man who made powerful– and beautiful– use of images, John James Audubon; he died on this date in 1851. An ornithologist, naturalist, and artist, Audubon documented all types of American birds with detailed illustrations depicting the birds in their natural habitats. His The Birds of America (1827–1839), in which he identified 25 new species, is considered one of the most important– and finest– ornithological works ever completed.
Happy Mozart’s Birthday!
“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism”*…
The state of local journalism in the U.S. is an altogether justified topic of concern.
Since 2005, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers (2,500) and is on track to lose a third by 2025. Even though the pandemic was not the catastrophic “extinction-level event” some feared, the country lost more than 360 newspapers between the waning pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022. All but 24 of those papers were weeklies, serving communities ranging in size from a few hundred people to tens of thousands. Most communities that lose a newspaper do not get a digital or print replacement. The country has 6,380 surviving papers: 1,230 dailies and 5,150 weeklies…
The State of Local News 2022
Research suggests that when newspapers disappear from communities, civic engagement declines (as do voting rates), partisan divides worsen, economic development suffers, and (absent oversight) the costs of local government rise… very sound reasons for concern.
But, as Rachel Matthews suggests, there is another reason to worry. Her focus is on the U.K., but sadly, her point is only too relevant to the U.S….
While we might take issue with the idea that there is less local news, it is undeniable that there is a decline in the legacy local newspaper with which we associate its delivery. This decline is in the numbers of titles and also, significantly, in their visibility. The move to digital has put papers online and also removed the surrounding trappings, such as town centre offices or newspaper sellers, from our streets. Financial pressures mean fewer staff, who are reliant on remote methods of communication rather than being visible in communities.
This loss of the physical newspaper is significant to the historian because the local newspaper’s physical legacy is that most often accessed by both professional and amateur historians…
How will we study the local past when we can’t read all about it? “What do historians lose with the decline of local news?“, from @ProvNewsHistory in @HistoryToday.
[Image above: source]
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As we read all about it, we might send informative birthday greetings to Robert Conley; he was born on this date in 1928. A newspaper, television, and radio reporter, he served a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and NBC News.
But Conley is probably best remembered as the founding host of NPR’s news and cultural program All Things Considered. His (and the show’s) first episode was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2016.
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently”*…
AI isn’t human, but that doesn’t mean, Nathan Gardels argues (citing three recent essays in Noema, the magazine that he edits), that it cannot be intelligent…
As the authors point out, “the dominant technique in contemporary AI is deep learning (DL) neural networks, massive self-learning algorithms which excel at discerning and utilizing patterns in data.”
Critics of this approach argue that its “insurmountable wall” is “symbolic reasoning, the capacity to manipulate symbols in the ways familiar from algebra or logic. As we learned as children, solving math problems involves a step-by-step manipulation of symbols according to strict rules (e.g., multiply the furthest right column, carry the extra value to the column to the left, etc.).”
Such reasoning would enable logical inferences that can apply what has been learned to unprogrammed contingencies, thus “completing patterns” by connecting the dots. LeCun and Browning argue that, as with the evolution of the human mind itself, in time and with manifold experiences, this ability may emerge as well from the neural networks of intelligent machines.
“Contemporary large language models — such as GPT-3 and LaMDA — show the potential of this approach,” they contend. “They are capable of impressive abilities to manipulate symbols, displaying some level of common-sense reasoning, compositionality, multilingual competency, some logical and mathematical abilities, and even creepy capacities to mimic the dead. If you’re inclined to take symbolic reasoning as coming in degrees, this is incredibly exciting.”
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The philosopher Charles Taylor associates the breakthroughs of consciousness in that era with the arrival of written language. In his view, access to the stored memories of this first cloud technology enabled the interiority of sustained reflection from which symbolic competencies evolved.
This “transcendence” beyond oral narrative myth narrowly grounded in one’s own immediate circumstance and experience gave rise to what the sociologist Robert Bellah called “theoretic culture” — a mental organization of the world at large into the abstraction of symbols. The universalization of abstraction, in turn and over a long period of time, enabled the emergence of systems of thought ranging from monotheistic religions to the scientific reasoning of the Enlightenment.
Not unlike the transition from oral to written culture, might AI be the midwife to the next step of evolution? As has been written in this column before, we have only become aware of climate change through planetary computation that abstractly models the Earthly organism beyond what any of us could conceive out of our own un-encompassing knowledge or direct experience.
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For Bratton and Agüera y Arcas, it comes down in the end to language as the “cognitive infrastructure” that can comprehend patterns, referential context and the relationality among them when facing novel events.
“There are already many kinds of languages. There are internal languages that may be unrelated to external communication. There are bird songs, musical scores and mathematical notation, none of which have the same kinds of correspondences to real-world referents,” they observe.
As an “executable” translation of human language, code does not produce the same kind of intelligence that emerges from human consciousness, but is intelligence nonetheless. What is most likely to emerge in their view is not “artificial” intelligence when machines become more human, but “synthetic” intelligence, which fuses both.
As AI further develops through human prompt or a capacity to guide its own evolution by acquiring a sense of itself in the world, what is clear is that it is well on the way to taking its place alongside, perhaps conjoining and becoming synthesized with, other intelligences, from homo sapiens to insects to forests to the planetary organism itself…
AI takes its place among and may conjoin with other multiple intelligences: “Cognizant Machines: A What Is Not A Who.” Eminentl worth reading in full both the linked essay and the articles referenced in it.
* Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
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As we make room for company, we might recall that it was on this date in 1911 that a telegraph operator in the 7th floor of The New York Times headquarters in Times Square sent a message– “This message sent around the world”– that left at 7:00p, traveled over 28,000 miles, and was relayed by 16 different operators. It arrived back at the Times only 16.5 minutes later.
The “around the world telegraphy” record had been set in 1903, when President Roosevelt celebrated the completion of the Commercial Pacific Cable by sending the first round-the-world message in just 9 minutes. But that message had been given priority status; the Times wanted to see how long a regular message would take — and what route it would follow.
The building from which the message originated is now called One Times Square and is best known as the site of the New Year’s Eve ball drop.
“It’s the 8th Wonder of the World”*…
Linotype typecasting machines revolutionized publishing when they were invented in 1886, and remained the industry standard for nearly a century after. The first commercially successful mechanical typesetter, the Linotype significantly sped up the printing process, allowing for larger and more local daily newspapers. In Farewell, etaoin shrdlu (the latter portion of the title taken from the nonsense words created by running your fingers down the letters of the machine’s first two rows), the former New York Times proofreader David Loeb Weiss bids a loving farewell to the Linotype by chronicling its final day of use at the Times on 1 July 1978. An evenhanded treatment of the unremitting march of technological progress, Weiss’s film about an outmoded craft is stylistically vintage yet also immediate in its investigation of modernity…
Via Aeon: “The last day of hot metal press before computers come in at The New York Times.”
* Thomas Edison, speaking of the linotype machine
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As we agree with John O’Hara that “hot lead can be almost as effective coming from a linotype as from a firearm,” we might spare a thought for a communicator of a very different sort, Arthur Duer “Harpo” Marx; he died on this date in 1964. A comedian, actor, mime, and musician, he was the second-oldest of the Marx Brothers. Harpo was a master of both the clown and pantomime traditions; he wore a curly reddish blonde wig, never spoke during performances, and of course, played the harp in each of the Marx Brothers’ films. A man of wide and varied friendships, he was a member of the Algonquin Roundtable.
“The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here”*…
The United States of America is a country of immigrants. That’s the cliche we know, but don’t always take to heart. Especially, during this political season…
Helpful background at “Where Are All the People in the United States From?”
* Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
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As we ruminate on roots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 (though some sources locate it on March 7 of that year), that The New York Times revised its style sheet to normalize the capitalization of “Negro” in its pages, a change that it memorialized in a editorial…
The New York Times now joins many of the leading Southern newspapers as well as most of the Northern in according this recognition. In our “style book” “Negro” is now added to the list of words to be capitalized. It is not merely a typographical change; it is an act in recognition of racial self-respect for those who have been for generations in “the lower case.”
[More here]
Sociologist, historian, activist, and author W.E.B. Du Bois, who led the fight for capitalization
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