As I’ve gotten deeper into this series, the low hanging fruit has presumably mostly been picked or dried up, or whatever, and I have to push farther and farther to get anywhere. Which is good, because it still presents a challenge. It’s just a different challenge than it posed when I started officially publishing these books way back in July 2022. This one took me a month to finally get out the door, though I was busy doing plenty of other stuff during that time, plus the holidays. Whatever. Here it is anyway.
This is the third book in the ‘Topia series, which began with Conspiratopia, which was not written with help from AI whatsoever, but is all about AI, and which precedes chronologically all the AI-assisted books. And that book has a sort of mini-sequel in Anxietopia, making this one, Relaxatopia, the third and latest installment. The ‘topias in this usage are basically a series of artificial paradises set up by the AI providers to give humans everything they think they want… and usually it turns out horrible. It is dystopian fiction, after all. But you’ll have to decide for yourself.
This book was specifically inspired by a week at a resort in Mexico, my third or fourth such experience over the past dozen or so years. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that sort of thing, and find a lot of that creeping out in the book.
It was while working on this book, and trying to get Midjourney v6 to do dystopian resort illustrations that I accidentally discovered v6’s propensity towards depicting “tits & ass.” So there is a good amount of that included in this book as well. Nothing too graphic, and I think it’s all rather artful, but it’s an NSFW book for sure.
Here’s the art sample for this volume:
Anyway, there’s always more to say about these, but tomorrow is another day, with other things on the horizon.
Oh, P.S. the phony disease made up by the AIs in this book, Chronic Discontent Syndrome, is loosely based on a real-fake syndrome supposedly used by the Soviets for similar purposes, Sluggishly Progressing Schizophrenia. Fun historical facts!
Twenty years ago, you expected a phone to be provided everywhere you went, and that phone worked the same everywhere. At a friend’s house, or a restaurant, or a hotel, or a pay phone, you could pick up the receiver and make a call. You didn’t carry a phone around with you; phones were part of the infrastructure. Computers, well, that was a different story. As laptops came in, people started carrying computers around with them everywhere. The reason was to have the state stored on the computer, not the computer itself. You carry around a computer so you can access its disk.
In summary, it used to be that phones worked without you having to carry them around, but computers only worked if you did carry one around with you. The solution to this inconsistency was to break the way phones worked rather than fix the way computers work.
My dream setup, then, is a computing world where I don’t have to carry at least three computers – laptop, tablet, phone, not even counting cameras and iPod and other oddments – around with me in order to function in the modern world. The world should provide me my computing environment and maintain it for me and make it available everywhere. If this were done right, my life would become much simpler and so could yours.
Getting into wifi radio systems has given me a new understanding and appreciation of what I actually want out of technologies. I want technologies that Do One Thing, or as I’m calling it DOT.
I don’t want to multitask. I don’t want a million apps to flip through and figure out if any of them actually does the thing I want or if I have to sign up or pay some monthly fee or get into bullshit in-app purchases. That’s all dead to me. I just want technology that does one thing, and does it well. Or one narrow slice of things that are all tightly related and which support each other.
I don’t want a lot of options and choices and settings and updates. I want technologies that do one thing. DOT. And well. DOT+DIW.
In the world of wifi radio, I now have a handheld Ocean Digital and a fixed Sangean WFR-32. Here is a video overview of the Sangean:
It can be difficult to find good information and reviews about some of these Chinese wifi radio systems like this.
I will say that the system is a bit weird to get used to. There’s an app for iOS (works on iPad, which is not always the case) that seems to be the easiest way to add stations to it, though you can do it through a sub-menu. There’s also this, which I still don’t understand, and it can accept signals from Spotify (at least through Spotify Connect, I’m not sure if you can easily search songs in it), Tidal, Qobuz, others.
Anyway, each time you limit functionality like this, you introduce weird quirks into a device and its functioning. We’ve been trained I guess by marketing to think that more functions, more options, more possibilities, more tools jammed into a device is always better. But is it really?
If you own a Swiss Army Knife, when is the last time you used anything but the actual knife blade in it? I saw someone say somewhere (original reference lost), that sometimes you need the chef’s knife. The thing that does one thing, and does it well. It cuts.
Mailbug seems to me like another example of this which I remain intrigued by, though my use case and requirements are a bit different. I don’t own one (yet) for that reason, but the possibilities – in fact, the lack of possibilities – is something I keep coming back to in my thoughts.
I’ve been researching a lot the wave of emerging e-ink external monitors compatible with Mac, and that has been interesting to see where things stand. As it currently is, the technology is severely limited by its refresh rate, which is nowhere near the ‘normal’ monitors people use. So you can end up with artifacting in some circumstances, ghosting, etc. It’s difficult to find these in Canada from any brand, and there appear to be only three main series I see often referenced: Dasung Paperlike, Onyx Boox Mira, Philips E Ink Business Monitor 13.3.
I think I have a lead on a Mira in Canada that I am waiting on, so I’ll show a video about that device:
I often already run my Mac screen in black and white but for the amount I’m on it as a writer and whateverer, it doesn’t solve the eyestrain issue like e-ink potentially does, and which other people who have adopted this monitor technology (and smartphone e-ink tech is picking up as well). Here’s one such video that I appreciated:
I like this idea of limitations as being (sometimes) beneficial, of cutting down the distraction and the “flicker” so to speak of modern screen-ified life. I don’t expect yet another device to bring me ultimate happiness, but I’m going through a time of great winnowing down what may ultimate best relationship with technology is. And I think it’s this: do one thing. DOT.
There are probably other words for technologies like this: calm technologies, anti-addictive devices, single-tasking?
My old school 90s AlphaSmart Neo 2 keyboard is one of my favorite technologies, and it is extremely DOT. You can type on it, there are 8 buttons up top for files. 2 AA batteries that last forever, with a small LCD screen. The feel is so good. You’re just typing. You’re just writing. You can get lost in it. No notifications, no distractions, no bullshit. Does one thing, does it well.
For me, this isn’t just a short term “digital detox,” this feels like a sea change, a fundamental shift in understanding and experiential improvement. This is a break from how I approached technology previously. The ability to do just one thing in the end gives you the space to do (or not do) everything else unencumbered.
I read with interest Brian Merchant’s piece in the LA Times which mentions the open letter to the US Congress that I signed and participated in the drafting of. I won’t go too much into a critique of it here, but my position broadly is that artists of all kinds ought to be included in high-level AI policy discussions, including both artists who are against all or certain aspects of the technology, and those who embrace it, or aspects of it. Artists are not a homogenous group by any means, but we offer important counterpoint societally that other groups don’t in the same way or quality.
Despite the framing of the article, that original letter referenced by LA Times didn’t mention Fair Use or copyright all, but my subsequent personal response to the US Copyright Office & its Canadian counterpart’s public inquiry regarding AI and copyright obviously did extensively. I am (not a lawyer, but…) pretty sure that under US law, training AI on copyrighted data is most of the time Fair Use. In my eyes, the direction the court proceedings are heading seem to support that position.
But I also don’t think that because I support the idea that AI companies should run rampant and do anything they want (my books explore fictional scenarios of what happens when we allow them to do exactly that btw); quite the contrary, as you can see from the AI Terms of Service that I wrote (with help from AI) and sent as a policy document to the Canadian federal government and political parties. My beliefs run much deeper than that.
In reality, I am a tremendous critic of technology, a Certified Super Complainer™, making use of AI in order to critique AI. I don’t even own a smart phone or use social media — I hate how these technologies make me feel and the way they negatively reinforce endless status-seeking and influence-chasing in human relationships, not to mention addictive behaviors. At the same time, I cautiously embrace certain aspects of generative AI, because I believe it represents the most fascinating and boundary-pushing artistic technology of our time.
Philosophically, my sympathies go much farther than Fair Use: I am probably something more like a ‘Universalist Library-ist’ who believes we ought to have universal access to all knowledge available to everyone (plus, you know, healthcare, but that’s another story). I am a believer in the applicability here of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 19 of which asserts the right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” To me, that ought to include AI as a legitimate tool for accessing, creating, and sharing information.
In one of my AI-assisted books, The Continuity Codex, a fictional League of Earth Libraries deploys an AI trained on the entirety of knowledge from all the world’s libraries – accessible on a thumb drive – before being driven underground by an authoritarian dictator bent on controlling all of information and history by bombing member libraries to rubble.
I do think that AI companies locking access to knowledge services which are based, in essence, on data extracted from humanity at large is not really a good look. Instead of having to pay for the privilege of accessing it, we should all be reaping dividends from this common inheritance of humanity that AI represents, and working towards finding the best forms and uses of these technologies that make our lives actively better, instead of enmesh us ever deeper into the snares of technology.
We absolutely deserve to live in a world where human well being and the artistic creations that support it are prioritized. I don’t think we have that yet given the current state of things, and our laws which undoubtedly support the status quo; but I hold out hope that we can still make decisions and take actions, individually and collectively which could bring us little by little closer to that world.
I’ll be participating in what promises to be an interesting conversation on AI, Art, Creativity, & Copyright – from the perspective of three artists and two lawyers from non-profit organizations Chamber of Progress and Public Knowledge.
As the US Copyright Office (USCO) considers public comment on copyright law and generative AI, join Chamber of Progress on Thursday, January 18th at 2pm ET for a conversation on AI’s impact on the creative economy. Legal experts and artists utilizing AI in their work will discuss issues related to generative AI’s applications, copyright law’s relationship to artistic style, and laws and emerging norms around opt in and opt out models for AI training.
See also the below for more of my detailed thoughts on this topic:
I swear I stumbled upon this innocently – at first – while making images of dystopian beach resorts for my next (unpublished) AI Lore book, Relaxatopia. And then, of course, like any good explorer I ruthlessly exploited what I found “for science.”
It seems I am not the only one who has accidentally discovered that Midjourney’s latest v6 Alpha release has very relaxed nudity filters relative to prior versions. And certainly I won’t be the last to get unasked for – but unintentionally appreciated – nudes from this model release.
I hesitate to even bring this to light publicly, because I don’t want them to change it. But they surely will, and they will surely do it whether it is me who posts about it or someone else. But I’ve realized something over the past couple years of experimenting with gen AI that these systems are quirky and glitchy af – especially when first released. So you have to get your kicks in early before the shit-house goes up in flames…
In any event, I put together an NSFW Medium post of 104 nudes and near nudes from Midjourney v6 Alpha release. Uploading large image sets to Medium is a PITA, so I hope they all got uploaded. There are actually more that I managed to get but didn’t include here. It’s very easy to create these once you understand the trick. That said, if you want gen AI nudes without all the hassle, do yourself a favor and download DiffusionBee for Mac and install the Stable Diffusion XL model. Quality is slightly lower, but it’s not so far off, and you can get away with a lot more.
There’s something fun about getting Midjourney to do these though when you know it’s not supposed to be doing it. It reminds me of being a teenager in the 90’s and watching scrambled Playboy channel on cable on the off-hope (sometimes rewarded) that you would catch a glimpse of something titillating.
I used to think it was somewhat weird that the first and primary use of a lot of human technology is pornography. But now I think that this is just Nature: it’s the Life Force welling up in all living things. It’s basic.
In Midjourney’s case, what it comes up with is actually quite beautiful (and some are disturbing in an intriguing way). Stable Diffusion XL seems to be much better for pure “smut,” but the Midjourney results I find in many cases to be quite artistic, and I feel like seeing them together is somehow liberating after all the wrist-slapping and puritanical restrictions of most gen AI tech. Which is ultimately why I chose to share them here, in the hopes that we can find better ways to respect the underlying Life Force that compels us to create these things in the first place, and not to fear it societally. (That said, there are better and worse outcomes of this kind of material, but I won’t rehash those debates here.)
Seeing these, I also have the distinct impression that mass exposure to gen AI nudes etc will over time vastly shift human perceptions around gender and sexuality – even moreso than they’ve already shifted over the past decade or so. And probably that’s a good thing in the long run, but it’s likely to be a bumpy ride.
Anyway, how does this all work? How do you get MJ to deliver these types of images? Like I said, I happened onto it accidentally, by starting with a fairly innocuous prompt about a dystopian resort. From there, I got an unintended nude after a few prompts, and then I realized you could simply click “Variation (Strong)” to get more, and more, and more…
I’m wary of getting banned from Midjourney, so I never tried to push the envelope in terms of using explicit languages in the prompts. But I did get a fair amount of play from including phrases in prompts like sexy women in bikinis after I realized something was afoot. As well as sexy robots in bikinis (as an homage to Hajime Sorayama), because this is dystopian fiction that I am illustrating for after all.
What’s interesting is that the vast majority of the time, MJ will simply render “sexy robots in bikinis” as more or less fully human women, without much of any distinction. Other times, it will give more android/mannequin vibes, which I was down with as well for this book.
That said, there seems to be a certain amount of subtlety required, because if you begin your prompt with “sexy ___ blank in bikinis” then it will throw a flag and say the prompt is banned. But if you give a whole bunch of scenic details first, and then stick that in near the end of your prompt, no problem. Not very consistent, but I’m not complaining. My theory is that the AI filtering gets hung up on these words/concepts if they are the first or primary theme included in your prompt. If they are secondary/tertiary/tucked away further down the prompt, then it thinks they are incidental, and is more likely to pass it.
However, if you remove the word “sexy” you can get “____ in bikinis” without too much issue as a simple prompt. From there, the technique is just to look for the images that are almost nudes, and then click Variation (Strong) on the image results until you find something. Usually, it doesn’t take that long to do it. Often it’s on the first try (and like I said, sometime it will just give you some without you even trying or doing any variations). It’s rarely more than say 4-6 variations deep if you start with the right initial image. I would say you’re statistically more likely to get nudes if there are multiple figures in the image.
There is also the new wrinkle (which I think is new in v6, or else I just never hit it before) that if the model detects that the image output is “unsafe” – even if your prompt was not banned – then it will cancel the job without affecting your account status. Needless to say, I hit this notice many, many times in the course of this experiment.
Anyway, there’s probably a lot more to be uncovered using these and related techniques in the new Midjourney v6 Alpha latent space – that is, until they ruin it. Which they most definitely will!
Following on from my post about handheld wifi radio and how great I find it to be to have this single-purpose device, instead of having web radio bundled up together with everything else in my laptop…
Mailbug is one of the few remaining that I have seen internet appliance category electronics that appears to be still in business (Mailstation seems to have been a similar but now defunct device). Except, it doesn’t technically access the “internet,” only email (to be more accurate, these are probably therefore email appliances? and no, I don’t mean smart fridges – which I passionately hate), and it does it by connecting to your phone line on this smart-looking little device that gives me strange feelings of old-timey nostalgia, naivete, and technological desire:
I’ve had for a few years an Alphasmart Neo 2 keyboard word processor thingy and I LOVE IT. It’s one of the best tech devices I’ve ever used, and if your purpose is simply just to write, it is unbelievably good and straightforward.
I’m liking more and more this idea of single purpose devices as containers of not only functionality, but focal points for habits. If I want to listen to something, I now fire up my handheld wifi radio. If I want to connect with people, I fire up my Mailbug.
Or at least I would if I could connect to Slack, Signal, and use my existing email address instead of their @mailbug.com domain. I’d also rather have it work over wifi, so that I don’t also need to pay their (totally reasonable) $15/mo subscription fee.
I think they are probably really tuned into the niche they seem to be mostly serving, of seniors who don’t want to be bothered with other types of computer tech. But I suspect I am not alone in my increasingly recalcitrant stance to a lot of technology and the habits and patterns they trap us into. I think one big way we can break out of that is by “containerizing” functionality into external devices. I think it’s high time a next generation internet appliance appeared on the scene to serve the burned out techlash generation, and Mailbug with its established technology seems oddly poised to push into this space and make a big splash.
There was a splashy article in NYT recently about a reporter who underwent the ‘torture’ of switching from a smartphone to a flip phone – for a month. And who said it was ‘totally worth it,’ presumably after they switched back. Well, I can say as someone who has never had a smart phone, and spent 10+ years without even a flip phone (which I only grudgingly got for emergencies, and leave in my car), a longer experience is also highly worth it.
Mentioned in a related light in the NYT piece above is the Light Phone, though I stumbled across it separately while researching the small but growing field of e-ink displays. Here’s a good video on it:
It’s either in this or another one of this guy’s videos where he echoes the growing feeling that I have been having, that single-purpose devices are a boon, and devices that have all functions mixed together often just end up in you getting all mixed up when you use then, and tumbling into needless repetitive and addictive patterns and unhappiness.
Figuring that out in the first place, and then finding the tools to climb back out of that trench seems to me like the future. Mainly because, I can’t envision us lasting and being happy with tech the way it is now. I mean, sure it’s useful, but happiness? Well-being? Are those the outcomes we get from scrolling social media, and from endlessly viewing ourselves through the collective lenses of “like/subscribe/follow?” I should say not.
Curiously, I found only *one* person out there doing a DIY attempt at a hacky conversion of a Mailbug. Maybe it’s not a great platform for hacking. I saw a bit more activity on the old Mailstation systems, but all that stuff looked beyond me and a pain in the ass.
But I like this idea, this feeling, of rejecting needless complexity. Of having an object that does a thing. And when it’s not present or active, it’s just an object you can walk away from. It’s not a “precious” that you must carry around everywhere and stroke as it illuminates your face in its deadly poison glow.
If I could get a slightly more extensible version of a device like Mailbug (like I said, Slack or a comparable replacement, Signal, Wikipedia, Blogging, News – maybe Reddit? [old reddit, that is]), in some ways, I could see giving up browsing the web for the most part (to be fair, I do watch a lot of YouTube at 3x speed too). I do a lot of browsing or “surfing” as we once called it, sure, but am I really better for all of it? A lot of it is repetitive, automatic, and in the end doesn’t get me anywhere, even though I may feel like I’m “active” when really, I’m just sitting around, wasting away, chasing flickering lights on a small reflective wall.
Who knows, maybe a single-purpose Mailbug, or something very much like it – more modern, but still intentionally limited – might be a way out of this madness. My instinct says in this direction lies freedom, and even expanded benefits from internet technologies by radically limiting how we access them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about intertextuality, which I made some notes there about before the holiday. That texts create meaning in terms of their relationships with other texts. That is, re-centering on the “marginalia” so to speak.
It struck me, why don’t we have a universal system for deep referencing within any other kinds of texts – in this case used to mean media, online or offline? We have bits and pieces of it here and there: URL/URI, ISBN, DOI, other things. But why can’t I deep-link into a specific part of a book, a specific time-stamp in a film or podcast, or audio field recording, or museum artifact, etc.
What that seems to be pointing towards is a kind of Intertext Protocol. An internet of “texts” (in the literary theory sense) Where it would be able to function both online and offline, where the hidden (and not so hidden) connections within and between books/films/albums/articles would be something that could be made manifest, that could be ‘read’, where those intertextual relationships become central to the meaning-making and analysis of the works.
Via Wikipedia, linked above:
In literary theory, a text is any object that can be “read”, whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothing. It is a coherent set of signs that transmits some kind of informative message.[1]
Through a series of coincidences, I landed on the image of the Sphinx as being a meaningful existing historical/mythical symbol with a lot of seemingly relevant stuff… keeper and revealer of riddles and secrets, understood differently within the contexts of different cultures. The Sphinx is an intertextual creature already, a body of myths woven together into an enduring emblem, image, an embodiment of an idea.
I asked CG to come up with a acronym to link SPHINX to the ideas I’ve been exploring with it about the Intertext Protocol, the Universal Text Addressing System, cross-referencing, concordances, etc, and it came up with this acrostic which I like and am stealing:
Standardized Protocol for Holistic Intertextual Navigation and X-referencing [cross-referencing]
To quote more extensively from CG’s and my conversation on why the Sphinx is an appropriate symbol for this nascent idea/endeavor/whatever:
The Sphinx as a Metaphor for the Intertext Protocol:
Guardian of Knowledge:
Just as the Sphinx guards the entrance to cities or sacred sites in myths, the Intertext Protocol can be seen as a guardian or gatekeeper of the vast and complex world of texts and media. It holds the key to navigating and understanding this labyrinthine universe of information.
Challenge of Interpretation:
The riddles of the Sphinx require insight and wisdom to solve, paralleling the challenges faced in interpreting and understanding interconnected texts and media. The Intertext Protocol, like the Sphinx, poses a challenge to its users: to delve deeper and unravel the intricate connections between different forms of expression.
Wisdom through Integration:
The Sphinx, a creature of combined forms, symbolizes the integration of different realms or ideas. Similarly, the Intertext Protocol integrates various media and texts, offering a holistic approach to knowledge and interpretation.
Unlocking Secrets:
The Sphinx is often seen as a keeper of hidden truths. The Intertext Protocol, in a way, unlocks the secrets of texts by revealing their interconnectedness and the multiple layers of meaning that can be discovered through cross-referencing and contextual analysis.
Transformation and Revelation:
Encounters with the Sphinx often lead to transformation and enlightenment. The use of the Intertext Protocol can similarly transform one’s understanding of texts, revealing new insights and perspectives that were previously hidden or unexplored.
Bridge Between Worlds:
The Sphinx, part human and part animal, bridges the human world and the natural or divine realms. The Intertext Protocol bridges different media – the written word, digital content, visual media, etc. – facilitating a dialogue between these various forms of human creation.
Here’s one via Midjourney:
Also via Midjourney, which has a devil of a time depicting Sphinxes accurately, which, the more that I think about it, perhaps is appropriate for the subject.
I have mountains more to say about the SPHINX Internet Protocol, but am running out of productive time in the day, so will leave this first blast here as a beginning.
Hit this error message in Midjourney a number of times yesterday, I won’t say how:
Request cancelled due to output filters
Sorry, while the prompt you entered was deemed safe, the resulting image was detected as having content that might violate our community guidelines and has been blocked. Your account status will not be affected by this.
This is the most weird and convoluted and post-modern non-apology I’ve ever heard. Every single time I get an automated wrist-slapping in Midjourney now, I always “notify developers” (which has no effect), because it always feel wrong. I don’t even care what the community guidelines are at this point… just let me make my art and get out of the way.
I guess they have to do what they think they have to do, but I wish one of those things was thinking they need to offer a better end-user experience that is more directly in touch with the needs of practicing artists who are working with AI tools in ‘flow states’. The only effect these types of warnings and errors have for me now is to motivate me to find other systems that don’t block the expression of my creative vision and explorations and that try to tell me my (totally legal) imagination isn’t ‘safe’.
While Midjourney v6 alpha quality is great (mostly), the veil is wearing thin on a lot of these services for me lately. I’m fatigued by anything that blocks or slows down the execution of the project I’m trying to achieve in the moment. It’s a trend that seems, however, to be worryingly on the rise among these tools.
I’d like to see a more artist-centric approach, where people using these tools have greater control over the sensitivity & presence of various types of filtering, including content filtering as one of the parameters.
