Content—Circular, Semi-circular, and Misshapen

Memory Trick

I have a pretty good memory for song lyrics. I'd have a good memory for song writers, too, except one doesn't always know or appreciate who wrote a given song, and my memory just played a trick on me. It occurred to me to write a blog about how some things seem circular. The two things I had in mind were clouds and content. Not the kind of clouds I mentioned in this recent blogitem, although tornadoes have circular features as do lenticular clouds. Rather, it's what we're calling "The Cloud," a metaphor for remote computer services. And not the kind of content I expect to be after I finish this blogitem, pronounced in English with the accent on the final syllable. Rather, the kind of content that this blogitem will become when I "publish" it on my blog server, which is "in the cloud" as far as my thousands of millireaders are concerned although it happens to be nearby at the moment. Adding a frisson of confusion to the non-English speaker, this kind of content sports a first-syllable accent. I trust we're all content with that.

OK?

So...Content

I am, and apparently have been for almost 20 years, a "content creator." When I started this blog, I thought of it as "writing" and publishing what I had written on the World Wide Web. I'm sure I characterized myself as a "blogger" many times. The term "content creator" has become popular in recent years to describe people who create and share content on social media platforms. These creators are often driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and want to establish their own "media brands". I asked several self-appointed experts if I could consider myself such and unanimity ruled: I could, therefore I am!

So, apparently, is Google's currently experimental artificial intelligence called "AI Overviews" which helped me with the above paragraph. Beginning with "the term "content creator" and ending "media brands". This is the very first instance of AI usage on my blog, and I'm not content with it. That pair of sentences was emitted by Google in response to the search-box inquiry when was "content creator" first used. Presumably it could have given me the correct answer by searching for the true first use, but it "chose" to write has become popular in recent years instead of offering a date*. I can choose a recent year of my own, thank you. But wait, there's more! Look carefully at "media brands". and you will find the period (full stop) outside the quote marks**! Heresy and imprecision in the same two-sentence output. And yet, I finally—if initially unwittingly—gave in to the temptation to use AI. Is this the beginning of the end?

What About Clouds?

I somehow got it into my alleged mind that Joni Mitchell wrote the song about clouds and circles, but it was actually Harry Chapin who wrote the song about circles. I'm not aware of any songs about The Cloud in the computing sense, but I just have a mercifully few words on the subject. Younger people may not even remember the days before all their devices were connected to the internet. This was generally in the '90s, when you needed a "modem" to connect to the "phone line." How historical! Before then, we just had computers and used them without interconnection. The cloud in those days was "sneakernet" when "users" physically carried "floppy disks" from one computer to another to exchange data. But there was another cloud before that! If you're verging on superannuation, you'll remember "time sharing" where even the computer was too much for civilians to own. There was a big mainframe on the other end of the telephone line, and you connected your telephone and "dumb terminal" to it to accomplish chores computational.

If I'm not being the right amount of obvious, local/remote computing has come and gone several times. Although now it's remote all the way, with enormous data centers feeding our lowly gadgets, let's remember that our lowly gadgets now have more computing and storage capacity than existed in the whole world less than 60 years ago. Who's to say that our current cloud paradigm will continue indefinitely? AI in your pocket, exabytes of storage on a thumb drive? Not impossible! Will we forever be attached to ISP bills and supernumerary subscriptions?

I wouldn't bet against such progress. Although Joni Mitchell and I may not live to see it, and Harry Chapin surely won't.

Another Circle, This One With Artificial Stupidity

I try to be patient, but often my patience is tried. As I have stolen from the best: "If God wanted pictures to fly through the air, he'd have given them tickets." One of the silliest trends with which we're currently afflicted is the tendency of content creators to make gratuitous videos that can be pre-replaced with a few words. Must one watch a tedious video about replacing a battery if his only goal is to find the part number of the battery? Apparently so, and I was thrilled to read that one of the prospective applications of AI is to watch videos on your behalf and summarize them in written words.

The next time the battery in my key fob dies, I'll use AI to find its replacement.

And the Misshapen Circle?

That would be the yoke in Tesla's newer vehicles. I traded the steering wheel, a device of traditional circularity, for a yoke. Many airplanes have yokes which adjust its control surfaces to turn the aircraft and regulate its altitude. The yoke in the Tesla, sadly, has no altitude-control features. After driving with both the yoke and the steering while for long enough to develop an opinion of their relative merit, I have the following RIKL Review: No big difference, but the yoke sure looks and feels cool! Now if the Tesla had a cyclic and a collective, wouldn't that be something!

* Yes, picky
**Yes, picky, picky, picky

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