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[...] most automated jobs still require humans to work around the clock, often part-time or on a contract basis, fine-tuning and caring for automated processes when the machines get stuck or break down, as technical systems, like humans, are apt to do.

It's also true that the long march toward a…

Uber and CrowdFlower are two links in a growing supply chain of services that use APIs and human computation to put people to work. Uber uses CrowdFlower's API to pay someone to review the results of Ayesha's work, and, if it passes muster, it will process Uber's payment to her within minutes. If i…

The curious thing about David's fiction, though, is how recognized and comforted, how loved, his most devoted readers feel when reading it. To the extent that each of us is stranded on his or her own existential island--and I think it's approximately correct to say that his most susceptible reade…

[...] Not long ago, one of my former undergraduate workshop students came to visit, and I took him on a walk in my neighborhood. Jeff is a skilled, ambitious young person, gaga over Pynchon's critique of technology and capitalism, and teetering between pursuing a Ph.D in English and trying his hand…

When I was young, I used to know that I had a story to write when I found in my mind and body an imaginary person whom I could embody myself in, with whom I could identify strongly, deeply, bodily. It was so much like falling in love that maybe that's what it was.