As an early advocate for AI (Artificial Intelligence) I get some pushback from people who don’t know anything about the technology and who just want to persecute the entire idea of AI anything. They argue AI text responses are wrong; they bray that AI images are stolen. I have little patience for having a conversation with those types of Luddite deniers because, in the end, their arguments are both boring and wrong. Here’s why.
In the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence) Art, and NFT Art, there are some who believe that sort of machine-made Art is fakery, and it, therefore, does not quantify as an aesthetic effort, while others, like me, see the rise of AI in Art, and Writing, and Science, as only a good thing — at least for now, before AI inevitably becomes our Overlord — as our ability as a Human Race continues to find new ways extend our originality of imagination. Take, for example, the following set of images where I asked the Midjourney Bot V4, to create a “treehouse neighborhood in a big city.”
Continue reading → How AI Art Extends Our Originality of Imagination
Helen Keller — a Deaf and Blind woman who became an author and an international SuperStar against the merits of her monumental disability — is one of the most magnificent examples of the human spirit in the history of America.
I have defended the spirit of Helen Keller on this blog, and while I am a tremendous fan of her incredible mind, I’m not terribly interested in her sex life as a lesbian or not, or as the secret, fateful, lover of her teacher, Anne Sullivan’s, husband, or her role as the concubine of a local cub reporter who wrote about her early life and made her a star.
What does concern, and interest me, is the lingering slandering of her as a young child in her effort to write, at 11-years-old, a story for publication called “The Frost King” — that was too closely associated with a previously published work entitled “The Frost Fairies” — that she was accused of plagiarism that haunted and stooped her for the rest of her life.
Continue reading → The Frost King: Defending Helen Keller and Other Non-SuperHuman Deaf-Blind
Two and a half years ago, when my former office moved locations from midtown Manhattan to the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) area of Brooklyn — which increased the length of my commute from about twenty five minutes to nearly an hour — I had to find a new place to pray in the morning so that I would make it to the office on time.
Continue reading → Morning Inspiration from a Holocaust Survivor
We know that when you’re stuck and feeling down and foundering in a hole that the First Rule of Holes is to Stop Digging — but what if you’re trying to create a hole? What if your entire purpose is to dig deeper than you’ve ever before dared? 
I get too easily lost. When going from one place to another that requires turns, I will more than often take note of landmarks along the way — notable stores, odd looking lamp posts, even the occasional fire hydrant that has interesting graffiti on it.
I know when I pass a particular store, I am going in the right direction. I have often wondered how people do this kind of thing when climbing mountains. I figured that perhaps they use flags that have been planted by successful climbers in the past. It turns out that I was somewhat right, except about the part of the climbers being successful.
On October 26, 2007 in our WordPunk blog, I wrote an article — Is Stealing Ever Good? — advocating the theft of inspiration as a qualified original intent:
Some call stealing inspiration, but if you see or experience something and then change or employ those experiences in your life — you have effectively borrowed and stolen the thoughts of others and I wholly encourage that effort.
I am not condoning plagiarism, but I am supporting the opportunity to consider and use ideas that are not your own because there are no original thoughts left in the world.
Over the weekend, I read a fascinating article in the New York Times indicating that the world-famous “copy” of the Mona Lisa was probably actually sanctioned by the great Leonardo da Vinci himself:
Continue reading → Is Copying the Mona Lisa Inspiration or Stealing?
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