Aura = Idea + Time

"To me, the aura is the feeling that something is more than the sum of its parts."

"A strange weave of space and time: the unique appearance or semblance of distance, no matter how close it may be. While at rest on a summer’s noon, to trace a range of mountain on the horizon, or a branch that throws its shadow on the observer, until the moment or the hour become part of their appearance – this is what it means to breathe the aura of those mountains, that branch. Now, to bring things closer to us or rather to the masses, is just as passionate an inclination in our day as the overcoming of whatever is unique in every situation by means of its reproduction. Every day the need to possess the object in close-up in the form of a picture, or rather a copy, becomes more imperative. The difference between the copy, which illustrated papers and newsreels keep in readiness, and the original picture is unmistakable. Uniqueness and duration are intimately intertwined in the latter as are transience and reproducibility in the former."

"I reread this piece last year for the first time in a long time because it popped into my mind when I was hearing all the discourse about generative AI.

"In many ways it reads like a prophecy for what the internet has become. There are so many lines where you could replace "work of art" with "content" or "mechanically reproduced" with "AI generated" and the point stands exactly: 'The content reproduced becomes the content designed for reproducibility.'"

"…​but Walter Benjamin was not involved in the egg trade on Neopets in 2002. He doesn’t get it."

"I have come to ground us in an equation: Aura = Idea + Time."

"The computer can do many things, but it can’t think. And it can’t have an idea."

"I read this strange little book called 'Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode' while I was writing this and the writer Jen Calleja likens AI to a goblin that wants to convince you that you can’t write."

"To love something is to feel something about it and think something about it, like you’re having a conversation with the people who made it trying to figure out why they did what they did."

"I think one of the truest signifiers of Aura is that it makes you want to make something: The song that made you want to learn how to play guitar to stir that same feeling up with your own hands; The episode of Project Runway that makes you go to Joann Fabric [R.I.P. -Dave] and try to make your own pair of selkie [?] shorts at home. The final coupling of characters in a show that makes you so angry that you rewrite it yourself, or rewrite it to make it weirder and hornier. I’ll say it! Fanfiction is an aura signifier."

"Don’t make me tap the equation. Time is on here for a reason."

"For me, the creative process is equal parts discipline and magic. Discipline is my boring, efficient, scheduled side when I say "I’m going to work on this piece every day for an hour whether or not I want to because it will never come to exist otherwise." Magic is when I finish that formal sitdown hourlong writing session and go for a walk no headphones no music no podcast and let the brain run free. If I was stuck on something in the discipline part, it usually sorts itself out during the magic part and letting the magic happen takes time. There’s kind of no way around it.

I think if we want to build the world we want we need to be as in touch with our humanity as much as possible instead of handing it over out of convenience and hoping that the tech companies steward it wisely. They, famously, will not do that.