ALEX ANDERLIK

WEBLOGS

Regularly updated essays, polemics, deranged ramblings, and more!

09/11/2023 - STITCHING THE HARMONIOUS WHOLE

A sketch of a photo of the final simulated 'quilt' created by the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Reference & Instruction team at a retreat in December 2022. It is comprised of a series of large shapes overlapping each other, as well as dozens of small rectangular shapes on top. They are organized in a 'crazy' fashion which is not random but which is also not symmetrical or uniform.

During the previous academic year I had the distinct privilege of collaborating with several colleagues at the Mansfield Library in the creation of an experimental approach towards not only reimagining our instructional curriculum but also mapping our values and goals as a part of the library more broadly. After spending the fall semester refining the process and ultimately carrying out the experiment in December 2022, we then regrouped and created an interactive presentation of our approach for the Montana Library Association conference in April 2023. This experience helped us break through communication barriers and provided an alternative to conventional curriculum revision approaches which are rooted in linear thinking and assume scarcity as a default, and I hope this approach will continue to help us - and anyone else who gives it a try - create a "crazy quilt" of ideas which prioritizes holism over neatness or conformity.

12/04/2022 - ARTIFICE AND INTELLIGENCE

A sketch of a still from the film Dark Star (1974) depicting a large rectangular supercomputer jutting out from underneath the titual spaceship. It is talking to a suited-up astronaut in the foreground. On the bottom of the computer is a label that reads 'CAUTION - NEURAL NET'.

I heard about the latest iteration of the ChatGPT machine, which quickly generates lengthy responses to text-based inquiries in a style designed to mimic human conversations, from a Tweet which favorably compared its verbose and highly-formatted response to a programming question with the Google search results to the exact same query.

12/19/2020 - THE CYBERPUNK FUTURE IS NOW

A sketch composite of two frames from classic cartoons: In the foreground, a scene from The Jetsons of a young boy, Elroy, sticking his tongue out while a doctor in a mask looks inside his mouth from a hovering video screen, and his mother, Jane, clasps her hands and listens attentively to the doctor. However, the background is not the Jetsons' space-age home but the dingy, filthy, trash-filled apartment of Barney Gumble from The Simpsons.

2020 will probably not be remembered as the Year of Cyberpunk, thanks to the instantly-infamous botched release of Cyberpunk 2077, the most-anticipated game in years whose promise of a deeply-immersive roleplaying experience in a technologically-supercharged hypercapitalist dystopian future was marred by, well, hypercapitalist strategies such as media manipulation, development crunch, and perhaps even a culture of artificial console scarcity. However, the genre’s resurgent relevance is no accident: in a country whose 21st century has so far been defined by 9/11, the 2008 recession, Donald Trump, coronavirus, and climate change, a cynical perspective of the future seems all but guaranteed. “The world you expected to be the future didn’t happen," said Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the original Cyberpunk tabletop roleyplaying game, in an interview with Wired. “We were supposed to get The Jetsons and instead we’re not sure if we’re gonna get fed."

11/21/2020 - THESE PIXELS ARE HANDMADE

A sketch of the first paragraph of this blog post, rendered with fancy medieval script and an elaborate floral illuminated 'A' at the head of the paragraph.

After being born over a year ago, my website has slowly but surely evolved from a simple sandbox to a small but sturdy skeleton upon which I am finally beginning to drape some sinewy scraps of meat. Building upon my extremely basic and sporadic attempts to learn web development and programming, which blossomed in the halcyon days of early-2000s forums like Gaia Online and expanded after taking a few computer science classes in high school and college, I’m extremely proud of what I’ve already been able to create (and feel grateful that Neocities’ backend stonewall has relieved me of doing any actual coding except for the occasional snippet of JavaScript)!

POETRY

The first two volumes of my apocalyptic poetry are out now. Read more, or contact me to obtain a physical copy!