We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed while seeing Palestinians accounts shut down by Microsoft for no clear reason, a look at the global suppression of LGBTQ+ speech and the endless AI scraping.
To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.“
You are seeing aspects of this with a new Swiss law for the public sector, researchers using AI chat bots against scammers and the wrongful arrest of a black man down to facial recognition, knocking on to wider reform.
Crowd strike: the result of move fast break society?
Ian thinks: There is so much about the worldwide outage due to Microsoft and Crowd strike. Zitron zooms out and points fingers at shareholders supremacy , recent tech layoffs and the silicon value of move fast and break things.
What is the difference between Green growth and Degrowth
Ian thinks: In this thoughtful discussion Hickel outlines a number of key concepts of degrowth including, the assumption the rich countries should continue to increase growing for the rest of the century. Plus the metric of growth based on GDP, was never developed for this purpose warned the creator of it.
We let tech take politics out of innovation?
Ian thinks: This talk from Republica is raw and will caused a lot feelings. Deep down under the skin of the talk is the underlying understanding Tante has some very good points including the fact “we let tech take the politics out of innovation.”
Negotiability is needed in car privacy
Ian thinks: This video builds on the huge data privacy problem of modern cars. There is a huge problem of negotiability with the contracts you sign. Access to emergency service is important but that shouldn’t mean data being shared with an unknown amount of data brokers. Its time for a change.
Can alternative business models survive in the future?
Ian thinks: This short documentary about John Lewis and Waitrose is quite telling as their business model feels so obscure now, especially in the face of stakeholder capitalism or as others call it Shareholder Supremacy. You can see the same of public service broadcasting and likewise their are lessons and difficult decisions which need to be made before its too late.
The LLM craze / bubble
Ian thinks: Interesting but sweary rant from a senior data scientist about the AI bubble and C-suite’s fascination with it. Good points made counting the business narrative of you need AI for everything.
Human Data Interaction needs to be a standard
Ian thinks: While watching this video about keeping contacts private, I couldn’t stop but think the whole notion of how apps, services and platforms interact with our personal data must change. Human data interaction is a step towards this but it needs standardisation and adopted very soon, because putting the burden on users through scope storage, permissions or installing GrapheneOS isn’t sustainable.
Welcome to the digital afterlife?
Ian thinks: The notion of a digital afterlife will either fill you with dread or joy. But what ever side you come down on, it’s clear existing power laws like enshitfication, surveillance capitalism, etc will be in full effort. Legal reform in this space to give agency to the user is essential and must come soon.
Influencer, human traffiker, and finally jailed
Ian thinks: The story of Kat Torres is a hard one to watch but a important one to see. There will always be influencers but could human scale social networks change this, I wonder?
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