Exploring the ways in which artists, artisans and technicians are intelligently expressing their creativity with a passion for culture, technology, marketing and advertising.
There are three primary fears creatives, like artist, illustrator, and author Christoph Niemann, face: the fear of not being good enough, the fear that our work will be irrelevant, and the fear of running out of ideas. Niemann explains how these fears are very real, but that there are solutions we can apply to each.
Patents are supposed to spread knowledge, by obliging holders to lay out their innovation for all to see; they often fail, because patent-lawyers are masters of obfuscation. Instead, the system has created a parasitic ecology of trolls and defensive patent-holders, who aim to block innovation, or at least to stand in its way unless they can grab a share of the spoils. An early study found that newcomers to the semiconductor business had to buy licences from incumbents for as much as $200m. Patents should spur bursts of innovation; instead, they are used to lock in incumbents’ advantages.
The patent system is expensive. A decade-old study reckons that in 2005, without the temporary monopoly patents bestow, America might have saved three-quarters of its $210 billion bill for prescription drugs. The expense would be worth it if patents brought innovation and prosperity. They don’t.
The first time Yann LeCun revolutionized artificial intelligence, it was a false dawn. It was 1995, and for almost a decade, the young Frenchman had been dedicated to what many computer scientists considered a bad idea: that crudely mimicking certain features of the brain was the best way to bring about intelligent machines. But LeCun had shown that this approach could produce something strikingly smart—and useful. Working at Bell Labs, he made software that roughly simulated neurons and learned to read handwritten text by looking at many different examples. Bell Labs’ corporate parent, AT&T, used it to sell the first machines capable of reading the handwriting on checks and written forms. To LeCun and a few fellow believers in artificial neural networks, it seemed to mark the beginning of an era in which machines could learn many other skills previously limited to humans. It wasn’t.
That's how the fantastic featured story by Tom Simonite begins in the latest issue of MIT Technology Review. It is definitely worth the read.
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Not long ago, handwriting was taken for granted as something anyone could generally do well. Today, children are taught how to type on tablets - putting pen to paper is an afterthought. INK follows Tanja Tiziana - a freelance photographer in Toronto, Canada - and her journey to rediscover the written word. A film by Ryan Couldrey
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