I'm the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books After We Scan Them into Our Company's Insatiable AI Platform
I'm the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books After We Scan Them into Our Company's AI
In this satirical first-person account, 'Book Doug' describes his job as Senior Legacy Media Completion Specialist: after his company's AI scanners digitize rare antique books, he shreds and burns the physical remains. He cheerfully rationalizes the destruction as efficiency and inventory management, while the Guardian's report notes that vendors and experts worry such 'destructive scanning' by AI companies threatens cultural artifacts.
If there is only one copy left, the efficient move is to make it infinitely reproducible and immediately unavailable to anyone without a subscription.
- k310
Satire, but the idea gives me the creeps. Our local library sends books to the landfill after booksales.
So, anecdotally, I am 77 and made book reductions before I moved to the countryside. At the time, I used Half Price Books, which was a few miles away, not 150 currently, I have an enormous number of nice books needing good homes. HPB was good in that I did get some money, people kept jobs and people really WANTED the books simply because they had to pay money for them.
The 150 miles and boxing and hauling are daunting. The books are mostly woodworking, gardening, landscaping, some fishing, and lots of cooking.
My plans are to simplify my lifestyle so that I can concentrate on just a few great interests. Things like landscaping are not in the plans.
I can set up a mailbox if anyone, especially a cause helping people learn trades, is interested. They would flood Little Free Libraries. Location is near Yosemite, and unfortunately the Yosemite library is a branch of said book burial agency. I get a carful in for free with Veteran's and Senior passes. Hint, hint.
Mods, it's not about money, but about putting things to good use, rather than creative or uncreative destruction. You know, when I hear of books being banned for kids, I think "well, why can't they have electronic copies or access to books page by page on the web, like the Internet Archive does?" --- though too many seem brutally truncated. But kids and physical books seem to go hand in hand, and one school district is […]
- arjie
You guys have heard the Seinfeld Isn't Funny trope thing? Where Seinfeld had a style of humour on the show that became such a widespread cultural sensation that people who watch the show after became immersed in comedy derivative from it think it's not funny because all the jokes are boring? McSweeney's is from the turn of the century, other side, and so should be classic.
But this feels like a mashup of the Twitter snowclone "I'm the guy who was in charge of sending the HBO email / writing the GCP AI announcement / etc" with the classic goes-on-too-long Reddit bit. I know, I sound like a guy ranting about a satirical piece but it just sounds like a Reddit copypasta snowclone. And not because of it, I'm sure, but because that style is pervasive.
Ah well, it's my fault for ruining my brain on reams of Reddit content. Mostly I'm just commenting to see if anyone else has burned their neurons on garbage like I have (DAE? See, the reddit is everywhere).