the techno-social environment
It’s the social system technology is embedded in that matters
the techno-social environment
the web as we knew it is shoved off the page, a decades-old online civilization of websites reduced to training data for slick chatbots.
John Herrman • Will Google’s AI Plans Destroy the Media?
... See moreEven as recently as the 1990s, most people interacted with only their relatives, co-workers, and friends each day, plus maybe their local news anchor on TV. Now, though, those same Paleolithic brains are being bombarded with the thoughts of hundreds of strangers every hour. Modern communication in all its forms has put us in contact with more minds
If you don’t have your counterparty’s trust — or piggyback on someone who does — an exchange of ideas can’t even begin.
Casually, trust is like a currency in that way.
Casually, trust is like a currency in that way.
Mike Elias • Epistemic Reserve Notes
we run into problems precisely when we start treating technology as an end rather than a means to an end. This is not to say that we can’t be legitimately impressed with technical achievements on their own terms, of course, or admire the skill that makes them possible. But we do well to also judge technologies according to the greater ends they... See more
What Is To Be Done? — Fragments
The overall digital environment is dictated by tech companies with ruthlessly capitalist, expansionary motives, which do not provide the most fertile ground for culture. While the magazine fashion editor may periodically use their ability to pick out and promote a previously unheard voice, the algorithmic feed never will; it can only iterate on
... See moreKyle Chayka • Filterworld
We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn't make our lives easier. It makes them faster and more crammed with stuff.
Brett Scott • Tech Doesn’t Make Our Lives Easier. It Makes Them Faster
... See moreThis rearrangement of social and economic conditions around the pursuit of attention is, I'm going to argue, a transformation as profound as the dawn of industrial capitalism and the creation of wage labor as the central form of human toil. Attention now exists as a commodity in the same way labor did in the early years of industrial capitalism.
The
But it is not clear whether such systems – even if they work as advertised – can solve the problem of reliable knowledge in a balkanised public sphere. Just as commercial incentives led to fake content and filter-bubbles, LLMs likely face the same pressures in a world of sharply diminishing returns. Because the firms training them desperately need... See more
The sovereign individual and the paradox of the digital age | Aeon Essays
Today, novelty is overrated.
Does that mean novelty is always bad? No. Does that mean that novelty isn’t also at times a creative re-working of existing ideas in a new context? Also no. But today we are saturated with it, and it’s always worth examining whether the current saturation is actually serving us or whether we are simply being pushed... See more
Does that mean novelty is always bad? No. Does that mean that novelty isn’t also at times a creative re-working of existing ideas in a new context? Also no. But today we are saturated with it, and it’s always worth examining whether the current saturation is actually serving us or whether we are simply being pushed... See more