His dwelling pod was near the top of a skeletal tower with a roof crane. It would reposition pods higher up the tower as tenant’s means increased. When it functioned, you could wake to the groan of metal and hissing pneumatics as your pod was lowered to make way for someone to rise above you.More
Tag Archives: emotion
How you feel when no one is listening
Briefly reviews important theories about where emotions occur (from the brain to the world) and invites an AI to insert the implications of conversational AI, before settling on a view centred on language.More
Do AIs have feelings?
Feelings are in the body, but emotions are in language. How does this proposition impinge on the question of whether AIs have feelings?More
Metafiction and melancholy
A metafiction typically reflects on the writing process of the author as the work is being written. Either fictional characters assume the role of the author of the piece, or actual authors weave themselves into the story and reflect on their own processes. Metafiction is an appropriate genre with which to explore melancholy. Scholars have…More
Geometry and affect
I’m reprising some older blog posts from 2013 that consider vertigo, oblivion, melancholy, the motion of swings, and the emotional experience of urban spaces. Later on I drew this material together in my book Mood and Mobility (2016). With assistance from ChatGPT I’ve updated the sentiments of these posts under the rubric of geometry. I also attach…More
Vintage futures
I’m continuing the theme from the last post of looking back and looking forward. To that end I am reviewing the next set of posts authored in 2012. I start with the romance with digital technologies as they were then. When I wrote Vitruvius does steampunk in 2012, I was interested in how steampunk revelled in retro-futurism:…More
A digital time capsule
I’m looking back at old blog posts and publications. In 2012 I was also looking back to older studies, e.g. to 1994. See the 2012 post: “What’s a modem?” I’m indebted to ChatGPT for suggesting that the 2012 post served as a “time capsule.” In that post I revisited our 1994 study of computer-mediated communication…More
Mood tags
Silent personal reading emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, coinciding with the wider circulation of printed books and pamphlets, according to literacy scholars. Before this period, reading was typically performed aloud, even in solitude. Text-to-speech (TTS) software seems to be returning us to that read-out-loud practice. Our texts can be read to us by…More
Enter title here
Titles matter. I stumbled across an interesting web site with advice about titling your talks. The advice also applies to headings for essays, articles, books, blogs, podcasts, etc. Olivier Mitchell writes that in order to create a title “that gets people flocking to your session,” it ought to do at least one of the following (1)…More
Emotional targeting
Why do moods matter politically? Think first about economics. If you can predict the mood of a group of people then you might be able to predict how likely they are to buy (and sell) and how much they will pay (and sell for). So investors who speculate on the stock market have a lot to gain by accurately assessing and predicting…More