When I asked my peers and my professors if they’d ever heard of this type of work, two things happened. The first thing is that they said no, they hadn’t. The second thing they said, which is probably what you’re thinking, is, “Well, can’t computers do that?” And in fact the answer to that is no.
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I’m going to take you through a project that I started back home in Kenya that aims to collect vinyl that people just have chilling around at home. Basically we used to have the only pressing plant in East Africa between 1976 and 1990, and we used to press about a hundred and thirty thousand LPs every year. But right now there are lots of people who have those, but they’re not doing anything with them.
People will ask me, “How do you deal with this feedback? Does it hurt you?” And my response is yes, it does. Because if it didn’t hurt me, then I think I would lose the capacity that I have to write stories that connect with people. If I become immune to the hurt and to the pain, then I can’t write something that moves someone.