For one thing, the sender was Clancy Martin, a writer and philosophy professor I didn't know personally but vaguely recalled had written about his misspent youth as a smalltime jewelry-biz con artist, also being a serial liar in his love life. For another, they were offering to pay me. "Clancy up to his old ways!" I thought.
My role, the email explained, would involve recording original commentary on a "great book"-Clancy suggested Romeo and Juliet, though it could be any classic in the public domain. This commentary would somehow be implanted in the text and made interactive: Readers would be able to ask questions and AI-me would engage in an "ongoing conversation" with them about the book.
We'd be reading buddies. Proposing me for Romeo and Juliet did strike me as subversively funny-my "expertise" on romantic tragedy consists of having once written a somewhat controversial anti-marriage polemic titled Against Love. I've also written, a bit ironically, about the muddle of sexual consent codes, which I supposed could prove relevant. Juliet was, after all, only 13.
These days, Romeo (probably around 16-we're not precisely told) would risk being called a predator.
A bunch of decidedly illustrious participants, known as "Rebinders," had apparently already signed on: the Irish Booker Prize winner John Banville on James Joyce's Dubliners, best-selling writer Roxane Gay on Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, also Bill McKibben, Elaine Pagels, Garth Greenwell ...
And bringing up left field, Lena Dunham on E. M. Forster's A Room With a View, a quirky prospect.
Denne historien er fra September - October 2024-utgaven av WIRED.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra September - October 2024-utgaven av WIRED.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Spin Cycle - To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers).
To study tornadoes, it helps to wear a skirt (and rocket launchers). When the Dominator is about to intercept a tornado, Timmer uses a two-prong system to anchor the vehicle. Air compressors lower the car so its thick rubber skirt nearly touches the ground, and spikes wedge 6 inches into the earth to firmly prevent the vehicle from liftoff. Timmer and ONeal have seen roughly 65 tornadoes in the past six months. It was a historic amount, ONeal says. A lot of meteorological setups are busts, but every day we drove out this year, we felt like we would see a tornado.
Fantastic Plastic - a plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history.
Stretchy seaweed. Reverse vending machines. QR-coded take-out boxes. To cure our addiction to disposable crap, we'll all need to get a little loony.
Piece of Mind - This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition.
This diagram maps 1 cubic millimeter of the brain-but its unprecedented clarity deepens the mysteries of cognition. Although this image wouldn't look out of place on a gallery wall alongside other splashy works of abstract art, it represents something very real: a 1-cubic-millimeter chunk of a woman's brain, removed during a procedure to treat her for epilepsy. Researchers at Harvard University stained the sample with heavy metals, embedded it in resin, cut it into slices approximately 34 nanometers thick
I Am Laura Kipnis-Bot, and I Will Make Reading Sexy and Tragic Again
WHEN A FLATTERING EMAIL ARRIVED inviting me to participate in an AI venture called Rebind that I'd later come to think will radically transform the entire way booklovers read books, I felt pretty sure it was a scam.
DAMAGE CONTROL
According to Léna Lazare, the 26-year-old face of the radical climate movement, they're also acts of joy.
AN IMPERFECT STORM
CAN THE U.A.E. REALLY MAKE RAIN ON DEMAND OR IS IT SELLING VAPORWARE?
THE HOLE IN THE MAP OF THE WORLD
ON THE SURFACE, THERE'S NOTHING UNUSUAL ABOUT IT. JUST A SPOT OF OCEAN. BUT BENEATH THE WAVES LURKS SOMETHING INCREDIBLE: A MASSIVE WATERFALL. AND IN ITS MYSTERIOUS DEPTHS, THE FATE OF THE WORLD CHURNS.
COOLER HEADS
The deadliest environmental threat to city dwellers worldwide isn't earthquakes, tornadoes, flooding, or fire. It's heat.
TERMINAL VELOCITY
IT WAS 2 AM at Denver International Airport, and Jared Murphy was only a few hours into a planned 17-hour layover.
THE ETERNAL TRUTH OF MARKDOWN
If the robots take over, we should at least speak their language.
