andrew kortina

for robots

Andrew Kortina writes about technology, philosophy, politics, and culture at kortina.nyc. He co-founded fin.com and venmo.com.

for humans

about me // andrew.kortina@gmail.com // subscribe

notable — some of my favorites, a good place to start…

• The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science

• Principles for Radical Tax Reform and a Universal Dividend

• I, Backpack

• Consciousness as Computation // Learning from Deep Learning and Information Theory

film / video

See also /devlog, my notebook on filmmaking.

newest

• For Anne Hall

• The hero with 8 billion faces

• Old Castle, by the river, in the middle of a forest

consciousness-and-computation

• Narrative, Intelligence, and AI

• Social Systems are Computations that Minimize Uncertainty

• Consciousness as Computation // Learning from Deep Learning and Information Theory

personal

• For Anne Hall

• The hero with 8 billion faces

• Old Castle, by the river, in the middle of a forest

• The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science

• Origins of Venmo

work-and-dignity

• For Anne Hall

• The hero with 8 billion faces

• The Beautiful Struggle // The Beautiful Game

• Free Will, Techno-Determinism, and Panache

• Panem et Circenses

• Techno-Industrial Alienation, Craft, and The Calculus of Form

• If We Were All Buddhists, Life Would End When the Sun Burns Out

• Every New Yorker Wants to Open a Restaurant

• “They Say the #1 Killer of Old People is Retirement”

• The Emperor Has No Clothes, There is No Santa Claus, and Nothing is Rocket Science

tech-gov-and-society (outsider economics)

• The Social Dilemma Dilemma

• Virtualization, Forklifts, Microphones, Shipping Containers, Video Conferencing, Stethoscopes…

• When You Gaze Long Into the Machine, The Machine Also Gazes Back

• Advertising, IP Law, and the Invisible Hand

• The Infinite Frontier as American Capitalism’s Response to the Malthusian Trap

• I, Backpack

• Principles for Radical Tax Reform and a Universal Dividend

• Speech is Free, Distribution is Not // A Tax on the Purchase of Human Attention and Political Power

• History of the Capital AI & Market Failures in the Attention Economy

• Napkin Modeling the US Govt “P&L” // Income Tax and Redistribution Scenarios

• Kinky Labor Supply and the Attention Tax

• Social Systems are Computations that Minimize Uncertainty

• Controlling International Trade with a ‘Crypto Customs’ Bureau // The End of National Labor Politics

• Metrics, Incrementalism, and Local Maxima

• Panem et Circenses

• “They Say the #1 Killer of Old People is Retirement”

etc

Oakland Film Club - Rob and I host this regularly. We do typically prepare and share some personal remarks as ‘homework.’

A Few of My Favorite Things - glimpses of the sublime, standing on the shoulders of giants.

Notes - short notes / books and papers I’m reading

Work, Art, and Dignity in the Face of AI and Mass Automation - Recording of a talk I did at FORM 2018 along with a map of my writing on work, dignity, and AI.

mit iap seminars (organized by me and rob)

2020. (Essay, Syllabus). Film Noir and Failures of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution - a three part seminar.

2019. (Essay, Syllabus). Narrative, Intelligence, and AI - a three part seminar.

2018. (Essay, Syllabus). Consciousness, Computation, and the Universe - a two part seminar.

2017. (Essay, Syllabus). AI, Mass Automation, and the Evolution of Human Dignity - a two part seminar.

software

• GitHub - My open source projects.
• Unsubscribe Button for Chrome - Adds a shortcut to Gmail for unsubscribing from marketing emails.
• Focus Reader View for Chrome - Adds a “Reader View” (like Safari’s or Readability) to Chrome.
• Run in Terminal for VS Code - Use a keyboard shortcut to run any command in the Integrated Terminal of Virtual Studio Code.
• VS Code Markdown Notes - Navigate notes with [[wiki-links]] and #tags.

etc etc

• Suping Up VS Code as a Markdown Notebook

• A Collection of Internet Curiosities

• Charlie Kaufman on Screenwriting

• Memo on Office Food

• On Liberal Arts Education

• Cormac McCarthy on Vacation