“What I have done in my career is just try to assess who we are, what we are, why we are here, and how come we, as animals, are able to walk around and wear pants and dresses and talk on the internet, while the other animals are not. It's been my obsession since I was young. I think if I hadn't become a novelist, I might have been happy to be a naturalist or a field biologist.

There is some kind of magic in the creative process. I am reaching for things in my unconscious that surprise me. I don't know what it's going to be. I'd like to do many, many things. It's all my life's work. I don't want to just write the same book over and over again as some other authors do. I don't want to become formulaic.”

T.C. Boyle is a novelist and short story writer based out of Santa Barbara, California. He has published 19 novels, such as The Road to Wellville and more than 150 short stories for publications like The New Yorker, as well as his many short story collections. His latest novel Blue Skies is a companion piece to A Friend of the Earth. His writing has earned numerous awards, including winning the PEN/Faulkner Award for Best Novel of the Year for World's End.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“The fact that technologies are being used and combined to capture our attention is concerning. This is currently being done with no limitations and no regulations. That's the main problem. Attention is a very private resource. No one should be allowed to extract it from us by exploiting what we know about the human mind and how it functions, including its weaknesses. We wrote this paper as a call to regulate the attention market and prevent algorithmic emotional governance.”

Computer scientist Fabien Gandon and research engineer Franck Michel are experts in AI, the Web, and knowledge systems. Fabien is a senior researcher at Inria (Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique), specializing in the Semantic Web, while Franck focuses on integrating and sharing data through Linked Open Data technologies.

Together, they’ve written Pay Attention: A Call to Regulate the Attention Market and Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance. Their research unpacks how digital platforms are monetizing our attention at an unprecedented scale—fueling misinformation and division and even threatening democracy and affecting our emotions and well-being.

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

AI competes for our attention because our attention has been commodified. As our entire lives revolve more and more around the attention economy, what can we do to restore our autonomy, reclaim our privacy, and reconnect with the real world.

Computer scientist Fabien Gandon and research engineer Franck Michel are experts in AI, the Web, and knowledge systems. Fabien is a senior researcher at Inria (Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies du numérique), specializing in the Semantic Web, while Franck focuses on integrating and sharing data through Linked Open Data technologies.

Together, they’ve written Pay Attention: A Call to Regulate the Attention Market and Prevent Algorithmic Emotional Governance. Their research unpacks how digital platforms are monetizing our attention at an unprecedented scale—fueling misinformation and division and even threatening democracy and affecting our emotions and well-being.

“The fact that technologies are being used and combined to capture our attention is concerning. This is currently being done with no limitations and no regulations. That's the main problem. Attention is a very private resource. No one should be allowed to extract it from us by exploiting what we know about the human mind and how it functions, including its weaknesses. We wrote this paper as a call to regulate the attention market and prevent algorithmic emotional governance.”

Episode Website

www.creativeprocess.info/pod

Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast