Tuesday News: Game of Thrones coloring book, literary prizes for women, artificial intelligence and morality, and “manifesting prostitution”
George R.R. Martin overseeing “Game of Thrones” coloring book – So Game of Thrones fans may not be getting a new novel anytime soon, but you can join the adult coloring club and buy the soon-to-be-released Game of Thrones adult coloring book! Speaking as an adult who loves to color, I’m so not interested in this. I wonder how many Martin fans will be, though?
Bantam announced Monday that Martin will be overseeing the release of the “Game of Thrones Coloring Book,” featuring 45 new black and white illustrations by leading fantasy illustrators that are inspired by his “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels. –CBS News
Does an Award Like the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Help or Hurt the Cause of Women Writers? – Zoe Heller and Dana Stevens take on the idea of literary prizes for women, especially the Orange (now Bailey’s) Prize, with the eternal question of whether singling out a certain type of writing that has historically been marginalized keeps it isolated or helps with integration into the mainstream. I don’t really think there’s a good answer to this question (and at this point my own answer is better to recognize it than continue to normalize the lack of recognition), but I think these are important discussions to have. This one seems quite similar to the ‘should we pursue mainstream acceptance of Romance’ debate.
We are still many moors away from the egalitarian future of literary judgment that Brontë imagined 166 years ago, where authors might make their debut behind a gender-neutral curtain and be evaluated on their writing alone. Maybe for a century or more to come, we’ll continue to need cultural spaces in which “women’s writing” is protected and encouraged to flourish as something separate from “men’s.” But that same small part of me fears that the gated-off arena can too easily become a prison. There’s something ironic, and a little depressing, in the fact that the digital archive of a major American university now displays the poems of the boldly gender-ambiguous, literary-drag-wearing Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell under the festively decorated but irredeemably patronizing heading “A Celebration of Women Writers.”–New York Times
The Good, The Bad and The Robot: Experts Are Trying to Make Machines Be “Moral” – A fascinating article about the inevitability of profoundly advanced AI robots and the complex issues these machines will likely present to society. Following the plots of science fiction novels like Asimov’s I, Robot, Coby McDonald consults with a number of researchers and contemplates various issues relevant to human’s growing engagement with technological assistance. From studies that show the negative effects of anthropomorphic attachment to robots to conflicts arising from attempts to instill moral or ethical values and behavior into machines. And beyond those issues are the potential political ramifications:
The effect on the law will be exponentially more dramatic, Calo says, if we ever do develop super-intelligent artificial moral agents.
“If we do that, it’s going to break everything,” he says. “It’s going to be a fundamental sea change in the way we think about human rights.”
Calo illustrates the sort of dilemma that could arise using a theoretical situation he calls the “copy-or-vote paradox.” Imagine that one day an artificially intelligent machine claims that it is a person, that it is sentient, has dignity, experiences joy and pain—and we can’t disprove it. It may be difficult to justify denying it all the human rights enjoyed by everyone else. What happens if that machine then claims entitlement to suffrage and procreation, both of which are considered fundamental human rights in our society? And what if the machine procreates by copying itself indefinitely? Our democracy would come undone if there were an entity that could both vote and make limitless copies of itself.
“Once you challenge the assumption that human beings are biological, that they live and they die, you get into this place where all kinds of assumptions that are deeply held by the law become unraveled,” Calo says. –California Magazine
Ever heard of Monica Jones? She was arrested for what’s called ‘manifesting prostitution.’ Yup. – This is one of those stories that reminds us about just how powerfully female sexuality — especially for LGBTQ women and women of color — is still being policed. There is a crime called “manifesting prostitution” that exist “all over the country,” according to this article, and were responsible for 57,000 arrests in 2011 (which I assume is the most recent year for which statistics are available). The story of Monica Johnson, an Arizona State University student, is horrifying, but not particularly shocking when you think about all the ways in which women are losing more and more legal ground when it comes to reproductive rights.
In Phoenix, it’s a misdemeanor crime that’s part of the municipal code. Basically, cops can throw a person in jail for trying to stop or repeatedly talk to passersby, for engaging them in conversation, for asking someone if they are a cop, or for asking to be touched sexually. . . .
These laws open the door for racial profiling like you’ve never seen it: 94% of the people arrested in Brooklyn for this “offense” were African-Americans, largely women. And the trans community is quite frequently profiled as sex workers — so much so that the offense has been referred to as “walking while trans.” –Upworthy
