To annotate is to engage in whispered dialogue with the dead. The hand tracing notes in the margin is shaking hands across time, reaching into the past to argue, to marvel, to collaborate.
Electronic books purport to supply mechanisms for annotation, but they lose the art of it, the scrawl that wraps around two arrows pointing out different passages. Annotating a physical book is a journey.
The “art of it” is certainly lost. But I think we are on the verge of a great change in the accessibility of annotation because of electronic devices and the use of AI. I also think that those raised on electronic annotation will create their own art.
I do not want AI to help me annotate because it will be influenced by the way it was trained. I want my insights to be mine. But perhaps I misunderstand your point.
I did not mean that AI will help anyone annotate, although perhaps it might. I meant that it will assist in accessing and organizing annotations. Right now, insofar as understand where we are, electronic annotations can be exported to separate apps for those purposes, but you have to do the organizing yourself. AI will learn how you want the organization to operate but do the grunt work for you - I worked with someone back in the file cabinet days who trained his secretaries to do just that.
I think of AI, in this context, as a good secretary - someone who knows how you want things done & gets them done for you in the way that you want. You dictate a letter; the secretary transcribes it, spells the words correctly, brings potential modifications to your attention, types (or prints) the letter & mails or emails it, files it away.
I think AI stands for Assistive Intelligence. I suspect that we are going to find that AI comes in different flavors, and we will be able to chose which one suits our sensibilities.
I am always thrilled to find a handwritten annotation. Your essay is perfect.
This is another great argument for reading physical books rather than books on devices.
Electronic books purport to supply mechanisms for annotation, but they lose the art of it, the scrawl that wraps around two arrows pointing out different passages. Annotating a physical book is a journey.
The “art of it” is certainly lost. But I think we are on the verge of a great change in the accessibility of annotation because of electronic devices and the use of AI. I also think that those raised on electronic annotation will create their own art.
I do not want AI to help me annotate because it will be influenced by the way it was trained. I want my insights to be mine. But perhaps I misunderstand your point.
I did not mean that AI will help anyone annotate, although perhaps it might. I meant that it will assist in accessing and organizing annotations. Right now, insofar as understand where we are, electronic annotations can be exported to separate apps for those purposes, but you have to do the organizing yourself. AI will learn how you want the organization to operate but do the grunt work for you - I worked with someone back in the file cabinet days who trained his secretaries to do just that.
I think of AI, in this context, as a good secretary - someone who knows how you want things done & gets them done for you in the way that you want. You dictate a letter; the secretary transcribes it, spells the words correctly, brings potential modifications to your attention, types (or prints) the letter & mails or emails it, files it away.
I think AI stands for Assistive Intelligence. I suspect that we are going to find that AI comes in different flavors, and we will be able to chose which one suits our sensibilities.
Agreed. Same here!