D. Graham Burnett 💫


"These are grim times for the disciplines entrusted with carrying forward the humanistic project.

"And yet, odd as it may seem, I think things have never looked better. Let the machines show us what can be done with analytic manipulation of the manifold. 

"After all, what have we given them to work with? The archive. The total archive. And it turns out that one can do quite a lot with the archive.

"In this sense, generative A.I. might count as a conceptual win for my field. Historians have long extolled the power of the archive. Little did we know that the engineers would come along and plug it in. 

"And it turns out that a huge amount of what we seek from a human person can be simulated through this Frankensteinian reanimation of our collective dead letters. What a discovery! 

"We have a new whole of ourselves with which to converse now. Let’s take our time; there is plenty to learn."


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