New Avenues
A fab post by Robin Sloan [1] on finding new ways of relating online:
Here’s my exhortation:
Let 2023 be a year of experimentation and invention!
Let it come from the edges, the margins, the provinces, the marshes!
THIS MEANS YOU!
I am thinking specifically of experimentation around “ways of relating online”. I’ve used that phrase before, and I acknowledge it might be a bit obscure … but, for me, it captures the rich overlap of publishing and networking, media and conviviality. It’s this domain that was so decisively captured in the 2010s, and it’s this domain that is newly up for grabs. …
I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet. Now, at last, in 2023, I want to tell the tech CEOs and venture capitalists: pipe down. Buzz off. Go fave each other’s tweets.
It’s inspiring stuff. If you can’t repurpose, rework, rebuild relating then what is the point of all of this?
Sloan’s exhortation ought to be seriously heeded by users of the now ubiquitous LMS in formal education.
Search Scholarly Materials Preserved in the Internet Archive
From the post:
Looking for a research paper but can’t find a copy in your library’s catalog or popular search engines? Give Internet Archive Scholar a try! We might have a PDF from a “vanished” Open Access publisher in our web archive, an author’s pre-publication manuscript from their archived faculty webpage, or a digitized microfilm version of an older publication.
Let’s destroy the planet
Via Jason Kottke:
Creative coder Neal Agarwal has launched his newest project: Asteroid Launcher. You can choose the asteroid’s composition (iron, stone, comet, etc.), size, speed, angle of incidence, and place of impact. Then you click “launch” and see the havoc you’ve wrought upon the world, with all kinds of interesting statistics.
And yes you can drop one anywhere in Oz!
Delegating work to machines
A fair chunk of the Twitter world and blogosphere appears to be celebrating, complaining, or doom-saying as ChatGPT fever spreads. Unlike COVID-19 and its variants this AI won’t be easily stopped. There appears no m-RNA-like approach to slow any of this down. The digital ecosystem has spawned an interesting contagion. I found myself collecting bits and pieces about it all.
The number of apps (see this catalog) and amount of commentary is more than large. It’s like trying to catch a runaway train using roller skates. If you want to keep an eye on new apps and a selection of commentary then Ben’s Bites is handy.
Another thoughtful post from Henrik Karlsson and GPT wrangling [2]. The argument he makes about augmenting thinking resonates with how I think about this weird word prediction beast on steroids, aka ChatGPT. Henrik links to a post by Matt Webb.
I was drawn into the speculating and tweeted (7.12.22)
Am musing about the increased production of text online due to the use of LLMs. If we cope by using LLM-based apps to summarise text, are we moving into an endlessly expanding loop akin to the paper clip maximiser?
Right now thee is a lot of noisy prognostication. Yes guilty as charged. It reminds me of Carolyn Marvin’s wonderful book, When Old Technologies were New. It’s an analysis of humans anticipating and framing the advent of things like electricity and the telephones.
A lot of the thinking about AI, particularly in education seems to look a lot like horseless carriage thinking, i.e. it’s just like what we had before but with a digital tweak [3]. So we cling to classical, industrial models of formal education and keep aiming for better models of students, teachers and wonder why the models don’t behave all that well.
I am working on a draft for the implications of these developments for research in the sciences of the social. The usual tribes of boosters, doomsters, critics and the end of schooling can be found in the many posts. It’s likely to be a fun ride, at least for the moment.
Personally, like George Siemens, I think this is a biggie. To me, it is akin to the availability of the first word processors or being connected to the Internet for the first time and paying for email or to the time when the first search engines made their debut. We know how much things changed when the cost of search approached zero. We are living through the moment when the cost of accessible predictability is doing the same.
I keep being drawn back to Drew McDermott’s classic paper, ‘Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity’, so much wishful naming. Much more to say, but don’t hold your breath waiting for the draft paper.
How to speak honeybee
An account of the work of Karl von Frisch. Lessons everywhere. And if honeybee is not for you you might find a touch of kiwi a bit of fun: Taika Waititi reading a letter about a speeding ticket is well worth the time.
[1] Ht @vgr
[2] Which is apparently called prompt engineering. I like the wrangling better.
[3] Code for domesticating the new technology.
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