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Socialist AI
(Image – Life is sharing, CC-BY some geezer called cogdog, who he?) I’ve been reading Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine recently. It’s an engaging account of the Luddite rebellion, which is well researched and told, but what really brings it to life are the direct comparisons he makes with Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the mill owners, who use technology to accrue capital in the hands of a few, and take agency from working people. The fact that “luddite” is a derisory term instead of championing people who fought for their livelihood and humanity is a victory of those same entrepreneurs. Anyway, as was the intention of the book, it…
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Room 101 for 2025
Maren celebrated the 101st episode of her podcast recently, and I was the invited guest. We riffed off the idea of Room 101. If you don’t know this it borrows the idea of Orwell’s Room 101 which contains your biggest fear, which was converted into a light entertainment radio and TV programme where people nominate pet peeves to go into Room 101 so we don’t have to experience them anymore. Going into the new year we volunteered what we would like to put into Room 101 for 2025. Here were my options: Anything “bro” – I was watching the US coverage of the election back in November, and I knew…
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December 24 round-up
We went to the coast for a week over Christmas, and had an unexpectedly sunny day on Boxing Day, the drinks in the picture above were outside a pub in Tresaith. The end of an eventful year, during which I left the Open University, became semi-retired, got engaged and had to do a lot of emergency care for elderly parents. It seems odd now to think I was still working at the OU 12 months ago, the human ability to adapt to a new context and take it as the new norm is always a surprise. And speaking of new norms, 2025 looks set to be a shitfest right, so…
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The Enshittification Engine
(Spot on image, update from his earlier version by Chaz Hutton https://www.instagram.com/p/DDbmv-yNijL/) When explaining the concept of enshittification, Cory Doctorow sets it out as the manner in which platforms die “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” It speaks to a general degradation of experience, of the thing that once drew you to a service or platform becoming increasingly lost, amidst adverts, trolls, bad user experience, and principally through a lack of care for the users. This can be done…
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Summary execution
In one of our dog walking chats, Maren and I were talking about AI (I know, I know), and she was saying she didn’t really see the benefit of it in most circumstances. I was trying to be the AI pragmatist and responded that “it’s good for summarising documents”. To which Maren replied “but I don’t want that, I want to read the thing”. And Audrey has made a similar point in her newsletter pointing out that the summarised version of knowledge is “more efficient, to be sure. It’s also much, much safer.” The Apple Intelligence adverts you may have seen also make the ability to create quick summaries the main…
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Vinyl of the year
It’s been a very good year for vinyl, with lots of top-of-their-game releases from favourite artists and a few new ones I’ve discovered. I’m stealing Pitchfork’s use of RIYL (Recommended If You Like) this year, so here are ten of the new releases I’ve enjoyed the most this year: Bill Ryder-Jones – Iechyd Da. RIYL: sitting on the sofa wearing a hoodie and eating cheese puffs while watching epic movies in the afternoon; finding patterns of beauty in smoke eddies. Brittany Howard – What Now. RIYL: Microdosing at a barbecue; nu-retro vintage clothing. Hurray for the Riff Raff – The Past is Still Alive. RIYL: Reading Cannery Row on an…
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Monthly round up November 24
(My post-apocalyptic survival skill is making pies) I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the whole US election fallout this month. So let’s get that out of the way. Amongst many depressing things that has been noticeable since that night in November is the complete failure of traditional political commentating. They are still applying the idea of the rational voter, so end up effectively asking questions such as “what policy of the deranged, self-declared tyrant really appealed to you?” or “where did the Democrats campaign go wrong in failing to appeal to the supporters of a man who thinks Hannibal Lecter is real?” I’m no US political analyst but this doesn’t…
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Echo chamber? Sign me up!
As the great Xodus to BlueSky gathered pace over the past fortnight it was fun (ie, not fun at all) to see the entirely predictable “it’ll just be an echo chamber in BlueSky” pieces. Because they are attempting to legitimately monitor content lots of trolls feel hard done by. “Come back” they say “the racists and misogynists just want to chat”. Before all the Mastodon gang pile in, I want to stress that this isn’t necessarily a pro-BlueSky piece, more an anti-X one. I’ve seen enough enshittification to know that BlueSky will probably go that way on day too. But for now, let us enjoy the frothing from the Musk…
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30+ Years of Ed Tech – 2024: AI Slop
Continuing my annual series of selecting one educational technology that became significant that year. I’ve covered AI in a few previous entries, but this year’s entry returns to it I’m afraid, and namely the rise of the term and the content it describes – AI slop. The term AI slop initially referred to that ridiculous artwork of Jesus and prawns (to be fair, these are weirdly quite funny), but can be broadened to encompass all AI generated content that is of low value. AI slop is a great term, although it’s not clear who came up with it. White supremacist Steve Bannon boasted of their policy of combat the media…
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It goes darker still
There are times when being proved right is the worst thing you can imagine… In the run up to the US election I had lots of conversations with my daughter, who studied US politics. She thought Harris would win based on proper rational analysis. I thought Trump would win based on a nasty feeling. My rationale was this – the US hasn’t gone deep enough into the crap yet for there to be a consensus that Trumpism is a bad thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, it really should have come to that conclusion, but when you see that even the Jan 6th insurrection is not sufficient to stop Trump…
