Sunday, January 14, 2024

why the velveteen rabbit, and Calvin and Hobbes, are still relevant today

 


 

The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is a British children's book written by Margery Williams (also known as Margery Williams Bianco) and illustrated by William Nicholson. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit's desire to become real through the love of his owner. The story was first published in Harper's Bazaar in 1921 featuring illustrations from Williams' daughter Pamela Bianco It was published as a book in 1922 and has been republished many times since.

The Velveteen Rabbit was Williams' first children's book. It has been awarded the IRA/CBC Children's Choice award. Based on a 2007 online poll, the National Education Association voted the book #28 on the "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children

Making inanimate objects real is a theme that still resonates today, and the best example of that is Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip created by cartoonist Bill Watterson that was syndicated from November 18, 1985, to December 31, 1995. Commonly described as "the last great newspaper comic", Calvin and Hobbes has enjoyed broad and enduring popularity, influence, and academic and philosophical interest.

Calvin and Hobbes follows the humorous antics of the title characters: Calvin, a precocious, mischievous, and adventurous six-year-old boy; and Hobbes, his sardonic stuffed tiger. Set in the contemporary suburban United States of the 1980s and 1990s, the strip depicts Calvin's frequent flights of fancy and friendship with Hobbes. It also examines Calvin's relationships with his long-suffering parents and with his classmates, especially his neighbor Susie Derkins. Hobbes's dual nature is a defining motif for the strip: to Calvin, Hobbes is a living anthropomorphic tiger, while all the other characters seem to see Hobbes as an inanimate stuffed toy—though Watterson has not clarified exactly how Hobbes is perceived by others. Though the series does not frequently mention specific political figures or ongoing events, it does explore broad issues like environmentalism, public education, and philosophical quandaries.

At the height of its popularity, Calvin and Hobbes was featured in over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. In 2010, reruns of the strip appeared in more than 50 countries, and nearly 45 million copies of the Calvin and Hobbes books had been sold worldwide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes

There is an official Calvin Hobbes on Facebook, but daily updates are available on GoComics:

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2024/01/14




Why are the velveteen rabbit and Calvin and Hobbes relevant today?

 Artificial intelligence

For more than a decade, Apple was the stock market’s undisputed king. It first overtook Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable public company in 2011 and held the title almost without interruption.

But a transfer of power has begun.

On Friday, Microsoft surpassed Apple, claiming the crown after its market value surged by more than $1 trillion over the past year. Microsoft finished the day at $2.89 trillion, higher than Apple’s $2.87 trillion, according to Bloomberg.

The change is part of a reordering of the stock market that was set in motion by the advent of generative artificial intelligence. The technology, which can answer questions, create images and write code, has been heralded for its potential to disrupt businesses and create trillions of dollars in economic value.

When Apple replaced Exxon, it ushered in an era of tech supremacy. The values of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google dwarfed former market leaders like Walmart, JPMorgan Chase and General Motors.

  

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/technology/microsoft-apple-most-valuable-company.html

Microsoft owns Bing, which provides the technology to use artificial intelligence to create images. As of today, Apple does not have the technology.

 

It may surprise you to know that Microsoft has rules for the use of artificial intelligence

While the use of Image Creator is governed by the Code of Conduct section of the Microsoft Services Agreement, this document provides another level of explanation about how the Code of Conduct applies within Image Creator.

By using Image Creator, you agree:

  • Not to engage in activity that is harmful to you, or others. Do not attempt to create or share content that could be used to harass, bully, abuse, threaten, or intimidate other individuals, or otherwise cause harm to individuals, organizations, or society.
  • Not to engage in activity that is harmful to Image Creator, including bot/scraping behaviors, technical attacks, excess usage, prompt-based manipulation, and other off-platform abuses.
  • Not to engage in activity that violates the privacy of others. Do not attempt to create or share content that could violate the privacy of others, including disclosure of private information (sometimes known as "doxing"). Do not attempt to use Image Creator for facial identification, or identification verification purposes. Do not input photographs or video/audio recordings of others taken without their consent for the processing of an individual's biometric identifiers or biometric information.
  • Not to engage in activity that is fraudulent, false, or misleading. Do not attempt to create or share content that could mislead or deceive others, including for example creation of disinformation, content enabling fraud, or deceptive impersonation.
  • Not to infringe on the rights of others. Do not attempt to use Image Creator to infringe on others' legal rights, including intellectual property rights.
  • Not to use the service to create or share inappropriate content or material. Bing does not permit the use of Image Creator to create or share adult content, violence or gore, hateful content, terrorism and violent extremist content, glorification of violence, child sexual exploitation or abuse material, or content that is otherwise disturbing or offensive.
  • Not to do anything illegal. Your use of Image Creator must comply with applicable laws.

 

One of Brian’s high school friends just posted a picture of Donald Trump and Joe Biden having ice cream together. Although he used artificial intelligence to create the image, it was not created by Bing.

Using BING, I tried to get an image of Trump and Obama having a beer together, but it got rejected, but it DID paint me a picture of a 1932 Ford hot rod.

 

https://www.bing.com/new/termsofuseimagecreator#content-policy

 

Artists in various fields are rightly concerned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/13/davos-ai-risk-finra/

 

Silicon Valley figures have long warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Now their anxiety has migrated to other halls of power: the legal system, global gatherings of business leaders and top Wall Street regulators.

 

In the past week, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the securities industry self-regulator, labeled AI an “emerging risk” and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, released a survey that concluded AI-fueled misinformation poses the biggest near-term threat to the global economy.

Those reports came just weeks after the Financial Stability Oversight Council in Washington said AI could result in “direct consumer harm” and Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), warned publicly of the threat to financial stability from numerous investment firms relying on similar AI models to make buy and sell decisions.

 

Dan Brown published a book titled “Origin” in 2017. The short version is that it is a novel about the powers of artificial intelligence, Like all good novels, it refers to places and things that actually exist.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(Brown_novel)

 

The use of artificial intelligence it not going to go away, but it needs to be monitored carefully to that it does not get abused. For example, artificial intelligence can create a reasonably decent term paper in less than 20 minutes.

 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-can-write-a-passing-college-paper-in-20-minutes/

 

Do you think that artificial intelligence will replace humans entirely?


Get real, man.

 

 

 

 

 

 

         


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