Wonderful Matters

The latest greatest in "AI"-generated video content comes from something called "Seedance 2.0." Nothing special about it except that it is just cleaner, smoother, nicer, and realer. Not really anything because soon there will still be  Better. And then after that even better. And better. And again better and better and better. And of course, Realer. When will the cognitive disruption be so great that the inability to see the fake from the real will result in some kind of social, economic, even political "black swan" event. As it is we are having to confront those realities, as it were, with breakneck speed. The things that can result from being able to be something of an influencer through media technology, merely holding a computer device in your hands with only the limits of your imagination impeding anything you can do as the best 21st century Baroque composer...  Every day we are experiencing something new we've never really had to fully address. T...

Do you remember in your college humanities class learning about the Baroque period, that time around the 1600s when everything belonging to the rich and powerful became garishly ornate? All the art, design, architecture, and music just got so much more decoratively entrancing. If you remember the details about why that all happened at that time, it was really all just part of the Counter Reformation, a way for the Roman Catholic Church to augment its performance art duties in the most attractive way it could. For if you remember the Reformation  Reformation, Rome noticed a lot of people reading the Bible and seeing God's Kingdom was nothing like what Rome told them it was. So, to rein them back in, Rome had to do something to make things more appealing, more dazzling, more compelling to keep them in the club and paying good money to keep the religious racket thriving.  All the spectacle of all that Rome has promoted through the centuries is no different than what happens in th...