Think about the last time someone tried to describe a piece of music to you in words:
“It’s kinda like Billie Eilish, but even softer, with a piano line… okay wait, just listen to it…”
That moment where words give up and point you to the actual thing (music in this case) isn’t a failure of language. It’s a reminder of what language really is: a compressed representation of experience. And like any form of compression, it throws things away, like tone, texture, spatial layout, or the general vibe of something.
For most of AI’s recent history, we’ve treated this compression as a requirement. Search and retrieval have mostly worked on the principle that if it wasn’t written down in text, it didn’t count.
You have a podcast? Transcribe it.
