Episode AI notes
- The process of engaging with authors’ ideas has evolved, allowing for exploration through a conversational interface.
- Nonlinear reading approaches enable dynamic engagement with advice and idea-centric texts, while posing challenges for linear narratives.
- The shift towards AI-driven exploration prompts questions about the legitimacy of interactions and the evolving nature of discourse in literature. (Time 0:00:00)
Knowledge Exploration Transformed Transcript: Steven Johnson It’s one of these things where like, you know, until now, if you wanted to explore the ideas in an author’s work through a conversation, you could only do that by finding the author in Person or finding a scholar or a tutor who’s an expert in the author’s ideas. And like, that was it. That was not, there was no other way to do it. But now you can load, you know, a book in and you can start with like, I’m interested in this, tell me about that. And then slowly read the book in a nonlinear way through a conversational interface, kind of dipping in and out of the kind of original passages, which is terrible if it’s a novel or terrible If it’s a, you know, straight linear kind of history book, like I sometimes write. But if it’s an advice book or, you know ideas, there are lots of books that I think could be explored in that way that just weren’t possible before. Does it feel like cheating to do that? David Pierce Like for (Time 0:32:58)