It's official: Nintendo is releasing a 'reborn' version of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (OOT) for the Switch 2.

Often considered the greatest, and certainly the most generously reviewed game of all time, Nintendo have long been rumoured to be reimagining the game for the 3rd time, now almost 30 years after its original release. Speculation is rife as to whether the new Ocarina of Time will release on, or close to, its original US release date of 21st November 1998, a date which this year aligns almost precisely with the release of the most expensive entertainment product ever created: Rockstar's GTA VI. As the game industry clears its calendars to make way for Rockstar's entertainment Goliath, perhaps only Nintendo is brave (or stupid) enough to adopt the roll of the plucky David.

BBC: Lego has unveiled Smart Bricks - tech-filled versions of its small building blocks - which it says will bring sets to life with sound, light and reaction to movement. However, the new product range is causing unease among play experts, who say it risks undermining what makes Lego special for children in an increasingly digital world. Wired: Smart Play revolves around Lego's patented sensor- and tech-packed brick. It's the same size as a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but it is capable of connecting to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags and interacting with them in real time. By pairing these components, kids big and small can create context-appropriate sounds and light effects as they play with the Danish company's toys.

Aphantasia - an interesting variant in human experience (New Yorker archive link) Nick knew that whenever Zeman talked about aphantasia he was at pains to emphasize that it was not a disorder, or even a bad thing... Some people he interviewed were unbothered—there was definitely a range of responses—but others saw it as a curse.Many could remember very little about their lives, and even with the events they did remember they could not muster the feeling of what they'd been like. They knew that some things had made them happy and others had made them sad, but that knowledge was factual—it didn't evoke any emotions in the present.

When a phalanx of the top Silicon Valley executives—Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai—aligned behind President Trump during the Inauguration in January, many observers saw an allegiance based on corporate interests. The ultra-wealthy C.E.O.

Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology and culture.

Top highlightThe New Self-HelpThe Only Way to Resist the Attention EconomyQuitting Facebook isn’t the answerWe live in an age where there are many systemic abuses that should be refused. I propose that one great place to start is the abuse of our attention.

Dig, if you will, a small slice of Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour documentary about Prince — a cursed masterpiece that the public may never be allowed to see.

The Silicon Valley New Right and the Neo-reactionary quest to “disrupt” democracy.

The Silicon Valley New Right and the Neo-reactionary quest to “disrupt” democracy.

Ezra Edelman has made a nine-hour documentary about the complicated life and passing of the musician Prince, but disputes with the late artist's estate over his portrayal may mean it might never be seen.

I was nineteen, maybe twenty, when I realized I was empty-headed. I was in a college English class, and we were in a sunny seminar room, discussing “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” or possibly “The Waves.

Large language models like those offered by OpenAI and Google famously require vast troves of training data to work. The latest versions of these models have already scoured much of the existing internet which has led some to fear there may not be enough new data left to train future iterations.

To my own shame, I have become a jaded reader in recent years. By this I mean that my enthusiasm and curiosity, my drive to experience new worlds, have all been damaged by a persistent disjunct between reality and the speculative fiction I most enjoy.

When did you encounter your first paradigm shift? Not the phenomenon itself, but the term? Perhaps at an airport bookstore, where bestselling authors of books with titles like Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life and The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Succes

Daniël de Zeeuw: A combination of genuine concerns and moral panics over AI (often fueled by the tech moguls themselves) has reached a new high in recent years, particularly with the introduction of ChatGPT by OpenAI.

Doomsaying can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

The term Luddite is usually used as an insult. It suggests someone who is backward-looking, averse to progress, afraid of new technology, and frankly, not that bright. But Brian Merchant claims that that is not who the Luddites were at all.

On December 15, 1811, the London Statesman issued a warning about the state of the stocking industry in Nottingham. Twenty thousand textile workers had lost their jobs because of the incursion of automated machinery.

The video site isn’t just a platform. It’s infrastructure. Produced by ElevenLabs and NOA, News Over Audio, using AI narration.

 THE BAD NEWS is waiting for us on the first page of the first chapter of Octavia E. Butler’s 1998 science fiction novel Parable of the Talents.