> New modalities of presentation will make media more accessible to a wider audience, so they can benefit and learn from it, even if some of the magic is lost in translation.
I think a flaw in your argument here is that you're dismissing the possibility that specific expression of an idea is the modality. Consider, for example, summarizing a poem. You aren't just losing some magic. You're losing the entire point.
Exactly this. On the less artistic side, I've seen so many critiques of popular self-help books for being anecdote heavy and people sharing (or even selling!) summaries of the key bullet points, and the whole point is to develop a resonance with the author to drive home the point. Otherwise it's now just a listicle.
Most people aren't getting the point anyway. The surface idea was always enough for them. It's a hard-knock life when you realize you're staring into the blank face of a man for whom science fiction is just war in space with cooler guns and aliens. In the US, it's a culture of point missing. From Punisher Skull tattoos on our police to racist Star Trek fans, missing the point is mostly what the people around you are doing and they get testy when you point it out.
One of the beautiful things about the human experience is that there can be multiple points. The greatest works of art can be appreciated in many ways, and the viewer's perspective can add a lot of richness that goes beyond the original intent. Even in a standard white collar work environment where we want to make single points very crisply there is a real art to framing things and choosing the right words to motivate different individuals with different contexts to do the right things to row the boat in the same direction.
I think AI is useful for sifting through high volumes of data to get the gist, but I don't really count it as it's own modality. It is by definition a watered down version of the training data that produced it, it lacks the human spark that makes content worthy of attention and analysis.
Not everyone "misses" the point. People can take what they want and choose to discard the rest. Consider, for example, watching beach volleyball not for the thrill of the sport but to ogle the players. That they're also engaged in serious competition is not lost on anyone - the audience just doesn't care.
Some authoritarians also like vigilante violence and find it in The Punisher. Some racists also like futuristic fiction and find it in Star Trek. The rest of the work don't fly over their heads - it is willfully ignored because it doesn't match their worldview.
Many people are perfectly capable of getting e.g. the moods, visuals, themes, ideas conveyed by poetry, and it simply doesn't match their taste. That doesn't make them morons, and to imply otherwise is snobbery.
>Some racists also like futuristic fiction and find it in Star Trek. The rest of the work don't fly over their heads - it is willfully ignored because it doesn't match their worldview.
I can enjoy fiction that doesn't match my worldview... and it doesn't change my worldview. I am immune to propaganda without the inability to appreciate it, or temporarily be entertained by it. And it has fascinated me my entire life that others must be molded into something new from fiction, or run screaming from it with their ears plugged up with nothing in between.
Perhaps the rest of you can do this too, and you're merely being ungenerous in your assumption that those whose politics you disagree with have so little psychological fortitude that they're incapable of the same. Or maybe you can't, and it scares you that they can.
> Some racists also like futuristic fiction and find it in Star Trek. The rest of the work don't fly over their heads - it is willfully ignored because it doesn't match their worldview.
Everyone does that. In star trek, race determines your temperament and skills. You do not see many calm Klingon scientists anywhere outside of their planet. Start Trek is also, basically, about humans being overall morally superior.
You can see whatever you want to see in the star trek.
I think the fixation on specific expressions being essential to understanding and appreciating something doesn't hold up to scrutiny. You're picking the most extreme case; but even then, if the alternative is between someone reading a summary of a poem and not reading anything about it at all then the summary is infinitely better.
If you read a translation of the Odyssey you can still gain a deep appreciation for the story. Do you think people from Homer's era would've lamented that people were reading the Odyssey instead of hearing it performed live? To my understanding, this was historically considered a key part of the Odyssey. The changing of modalities isn't something new.
Can you only appreciate the Tao Te Ching if you understand Chinese? This is one of the most deeply poetic works with multiple layers of meaning and interpretations. If you want to take a fully academic approach you can read literal translations of each character with side-by-side definitions and explanations. But I believe reading a translation can still convey the soul of the work.
For a more modern example: many people lament the proliferation of Let's Play videos on YouTube, where people record themselves playing through various games. Surely some would lament that you're missing the point by not playing through games yourself, but if the alternative is never having experienced the game and story, then maybe videos make a reasonable compromise.
If god appeared before you dressed as a beggar in the streets to give you life changing advice, I suspect that most would disregard it. The way in which a message is packaged is important, and not everyone is prepared to receive a message in any form, so it's best to meet them halfway and present it in a way that they can access.
I think a flaw in your argument here is that you're dismissing the possibility that specific expression of an idea is the modality. Consider, for example, summarizing a poem. You aren't just losing some magic. You're losing the entire point.