We, at the helm of the Social Book Exchange, seized on the opportunity that opened with the demise of the print book. Of course, print still exists, but as you know, it does so in a different realm and much like poetry, appeals to a very limited audience. Our initial idea was to simply provide a platform where authors and consumers could digitally interact with each other to discuss any passage, any sentence or line from a book, and where members could directly insert comments into said digital book texts. We admit, we did not foresee that the social reading experience offered on such a digital platform would lead to a blurring of distinctions between writer and reader (had there ever been such distinctions?) Alas, we get ahead of ourselves. In a nutshell, the original application offered a customizable experience rather than merely books that you could read digitally. We got our college degrees in rhetoric and writing, literature, physics, and philosophy, which translated to lots of research. What if we could implement assistive algorithms to perform the necessary research into questions on digital texts that would help save our users (both readers and authors) time and energy? Can you give more personal anecdotal evidence? Come again? The personal experience of one individual on your board rather than speaking in generalities? Sure, sure. Let’s call us I. As a young person with so many interest–mostly creative–I played it safe and majored in English. Looking back, I do wish I chose a minor like history or philosophy, but alas, that is neither here nor there. I did (and still do) love reading, but when it came to writing college papers, the part I loathed the most was the research. Even when it came to topics I felt passionate about, such as history or science fiction. When choosing material to read for personal enjoyment and enrichment, I preferred short stories, comics, and the like with the exception for poetry, for which I had no patience (or more accurately the propensity to work through its difficulties). If I was drawn to a particular author, it was usually someone like Borges, whose life work consisted of short stories, short works, and some poetry (which was not all that good, according to poetry critics). He never wrote a novel! I’d get my hands on anthologies, read a few stories in a row, set it aside and move on to another author. Eventually, my scattered method led to completing one favorite author’s oeuvre. It just took a lot of time. It was only after finishing college that I bothered to confront the big question: What do I do with a Master’s in English? In terms of getting a well-paying job, a degree in English was considered one of the most useless degrees. From my parents’ point of view, I should have gone to vocational school for something that would at least pay the bills if not turn into a solid career. But with a degree in the liberal arts? Disillusioned, and determined not to take the conventional path—that of teaching, I took on odd jobs here and there, prolonging the inevitable, what I said I would never do, and that is teach high school English. Disillusioned, I quit after only four years, which is when I decided I’d rather work for myself than ever work for someone else again. During my brief stint in teaching, I accumulated an extensive collection of curriculum and lessons, because at heart I’m a collector (more like hoarder). For the wannabe mature adult side of me, the idea of downsizing appealed to me, yet I would think, ‘this will probably come in handy someday; save it, just in case.’ Whether or not the lesson had been a hit in the classroom or not. One such handout was a ‘toolkit for critical thinking,’ I know, I know, one of those cringeworthy phrases that makes me sound like an asshole. The handout was meant to engage (another assholery empty phrase) with a speech by a famous figure, such as MLK or Cesar Chavez. There were 4 rhetorical “tools,” the third of which called for a VITAL QUESTION POSED. In other words, students were to come up with a question they would want to ask the author, if he was here (in this case, Cesar Chavez) about what they read. I really didn’t like this question, maybe residual from my (required) study of literary theory, which had posed the question of ‘authorial intention’, among other concerns. Phrasing the question as VITAL presumed that what an author intended mattered in terms of deciphering a text. I hadn’t thought much of the issue beyond grad school. I had yet to decide how I felt about the relevance of and relationship between author and the authored, artist to art, and so on. If pressed, I would like to agree with one of my most favorite authors of all time (or should I say favorite books?)—who happens to choose anonymity, whom I hope to host on the exchange, who said in an exclusive interview that she believed the writing takes on a life of its own once it is complete; that once something is written, it’s out of the author’s hands. I don’t know. Maybe I’m drawn to this notion because it sounds easy. Ignoring my distaste for the VITAL QUESTION “tool,” I went on with the activity. I had my students break into groups for each tool. Group #3 shared their vital question, which—uninspired— went something like this: “What is your favorite band?” I scratched my head, nodded, then went on to reprimand: “The prompt asked you to come up with a VITAL QUESTION to the author or someone in the READING related to the reading, which tells me that you either: 1-did not read the speech, or 2-did not understand it.” Yes, I was a hard ass. In the corner of my eye, I could see a hand waving hysterically. The hand belonged to brilliant student Susie Wong, who then blurted out “I have a really good question, Miss! If I could ask the author a relevant question, it would be, “If you were alive today, what would you say about the obvious disparity between our ghetto school, and say, Evergreen across town, with its star football team and enviable smart room technology?” Star student Susie Wong’s question, I thought, is and is not useful. On the one hand, her question showed the type of outside-the-box thinking I had been drilling into their heads all that term: “If” questions require imagination, creativity, and effort at problem-solving . On the other hand, the question might still be irrelevant, one could argue, to the actual speech. Say you could make a strong case for its relevance in that it has to do with institutional bias, one of the points made in Chavez’s speech. The question could still be moot, considering that the author of the speech was very much not here, very much dead. No amount of questioning could lead to a useful or practical answer, even if you believed in the relevance of the author’s opinions to the reading. Even if you relied on extensive knowledge of the author’s life and works, which none of my students had. All you could do was speculate. Even if I told them, well go on and learn all you can about Cesar Chavez to at least come up with a close approximation of how he MIGHT respond if he were here, how many of them would have the fortitude to follow through? What is more, from one view, how Chavez might answer if he were alive today would be neither here nor there. He would be very old, likely retired from activism, and therefore any opinions he vocalized would likely fall on deaf ears. I enjoyed your narrative just now. But say, what insight does this give into the goals of the Social Book Exchange, as a whole? Our mission? In part, it is still to create a space of true community amidst kindred-minds where literary types can interact. When we introduced the concept on Kickstarter, it immediately became popular mostly with university and high school teachers on the one hand, and with solitary literature buffs on the other. Of course, teachers were excited about the idea stimulating lively discussions on literature with their students. Book club members wanted it for interacting with each other and with their chosen book without having to expose themselves in-person to the ever-evolving virus. Then, despite, or maybe because of, my fickleness with the question of author relevance, we decided to include author interaction as an option, where fans could get instant answers to their probing questions about their favorite books. At first, things went swimmingly, we attracted a not-too-shabby reader and author base. But then two distinct challenges emerged: 1-Authors with an extensive oeuvre struggled with questions about their complex literary worlds. 2-Certain in-demand authors liked the idea of readers engaging with their books, but not the idea of interacting directly with their fanbase, either out of timidity or of outright hostility. Not even a monetary incentive could persuade them. One of our brilliant partners came up with his brilliant idea to solve both issues: What if we could partner with MIT ’s CSAIL project to acquire the services of the predictive vision algorithm, which 1-could answer questions about expansive literary worlds on behalf of the author and 2-completely replace the author as the author’s avatar, of course, with the author’s permission. We were excited by the idea, but with some reservation. Although MIT’s algorithm had proven successful, with an impressive accuracy of nearly 100%, we wondered about the nuances, about the blurred lines between the technical aspects of a book and more nuanced issues such as meaning and intent. Our partner was enthusiastic though, at the possibilities; he explained: The algorithm could serve as assistive avatars of sorts, fed the scope of an author’s oeuvre for those in-case moments when an author’s memory failed them (think George R.R. Martin and his brood of fans assigned various aspects of the Game of Thrones universe to explicate). Then for those authors who do want their books discussed but who do not wish to directly participate, who would still earn a sizable amount, with their permission, the algorithm could interact with readers in their place. We come to you now armed with confidence. What about issues of privacy or liability? Have you found authors to be agreeable to technology probing their data, even if it is strictly data on their works and not on their person? Our contract stipulates that the AI is forbidden from accessing any information related to the private lives of our authors. Can AI be taught morals?
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