Techocalypse

I’d be even more aware from now on! I’d remember that machine learning has been defined by the people who want me to believe it works the way they say it does. But an algorithm can’t really observe anything. So it can’t really measure my behavior, and so it can’t really discover anything for me, or about me!

Are overnight oats ads proof that Instagram is changing reality?

This is what a frictionless world looks like. Everything accelerates, until you forget what it means to try.

kyla scanlon • The Most Valuable Commodity in the World Is Friction

Many things in modernity are brain dead, but I can’t think of anything worse than the short form dystopias of TikTok and Instagram. They’re materially making people dumber, breeding addict behavior (particularly in the young) and ultimately ruining the lives of normies. It’s depressing to think about the countless kids who might have started garage... See more

Adam Singer • TikTok and Instagram are intellectual poison

There have to be some kind of longer-term, more drastic impact of the attention-shattering of our human experience. Too many tabs, to much switching from one stream of consciousness to another, not enough…work?

There are huge environmental and societal issues in today's computing, and permacomputing specifically wants to challenge them in the same way as permaculture has challenged industrial agriculture. With that said, permacomputing is an anti-capitalist political project. It is driven by several strands of anarchism, decoloniality, intersectional... See more

permacomputing

Well, I’m hard already.

Addressing those who are critical of using the technology in this way, Zuckerberg said, “If you think that something someone is doing is bad, and they think it’s really valuable, most of the time, in my experience, they’re right and you’re wrong, and you just haven’t come up with a framework yet for understanding why the thing that [they’re] doing... See more

We’ve all bought into technosolutionism, but we can opt out.

So, I just haven’t figured out how to make AI work with my life? Lame.

“The villain here is not necessarily the internet, or even the idea of social media,” she writes. “It is the invasive logic of commercial social media, and its financial incentive to keep us in a profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction.” The business model of platforms like this — which rely on advertising and clicks and “engagement”

Jenny Odell • How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook

I personally think it makes people less attractive, authentic and worth connecting to. Anything that strips us of our imperfections is missing the point. The AI images, music and video are another. Of note, I actually think the meme uses are fine (it’s entertainment, not art, and that’s something else).

Adam Singer • The rise of AI nihilism

Again, the majority of Australians are sceptical about the productivity mantra. When they hear that word they see cost-cutting rather than shared benefit.

Peter Lewis • How can Australians make sure AI delivers on its hype? By proudly embracing our inner luddite | Peter Lewis

The reading brain, once forged by sustained attention and deep engagement, is now adapting to an environment built for speed, distraction, and artificial fluency. What we are witnessing is not the end of reading, but rather the end of the essential consolations that reading affords us. Reading, but in ultra-processed form.

Carl Hendrick • Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us

The result of an ROI driven culture - how can we get instant benefits out of spending our time in the here and now?