Harold Jarche

plus de vendredi

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After many years of publishing my Fridays Finds, I have given up. Even Mastodon has made their user interface so opaque that after an hour I could not find the favourites I had marked for the last month. They were available on my phone app but I cannot be bothered trying to transfer each favourite from the phone to the desktop, where I usually write my posts. So it’s the end of an era. The first Fridays Find was posted in 2009 and there have been a total of 458, all in the archives.

Perhaps a listen to Who broke the Internet would be appropriate. I am writing much less here in public because I do not want my work scraped by the large language models that feed the likes of Chat GPT.

Here is a lovely photo shared on Mastodon to close this series.

Au revoir mes amis.

A thin ridge of dark, broken limestone is crowned by golden larches and deep‑green pines, where a small pale cabin sits near the edge catching low sunlight. Behind them rises an immense vertical wall of stratified rock, its slate‑blue surface etched with diagonal veins, folds, and fractures that create a dramatic, textured backdrop. The cliff face fills most of the frame, looming in cool shadow and emphasizing the scale contrast between the tiny treeline and the towering, glacially scoured mountainside.
“A reminder of how small we are next to the forces that shape the Earth”. — Tomasz Susuł

smarter and more empathetic

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

The Hater’s Guide To The AI Bubble

The Magnificent 7 stocks — NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Apple, Meta, Tesla and Amazon — make up around 35% of the value of the US stock market, and of that, NVIDIA’s market value makes up about 19% of the Magnificent 7. This dominance is also why ordinary people ought to be deeply concerned about the AI bubble. The Magnificent 7 is almost certainly a big part of their retirement plans, even if they’re not directly invested …

… In simpler terms, 35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs. If NVIDIA’s growth story stumbles, it will reverberate through the rest of the Magnificent 7, making them rely on their own AI trade stories.

And, as you will shortly find out, there is no AI trade, because generative AI is not making anybody any money.

“via Science Direct — Ceiling fans changed the particle trajectory downwards and reduced aggregated concentrations of particles in the breathing zone were reduced by 87%. Ceiling fans strongly affected the indoor airflow pattern and also showed a potential to reduce the exposure risk to horizontally directed coughs.” —@AugieRay

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it’s all just liking and sharing

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Look, I know AI is controversial, but just for a moment, let’s set aside our preconceived notions, our biases, the environmental impact, the massive cost to train and run models, the labor exploitation, the intellectual property theft, the inaccuracies, the mania it causes in users, the destruction of search, the deskilling of professionals, the devaluation of creative work, job losses, and lack of economic value from enterprise implementations.

Wait, what were we talking about?”
—Max Leibman

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financial waterboarding

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“they called it trickle-down economics because ‘financial waterboarding’ didn’t poll well with focus groups” —JA Westenberg

“If you aren’t using AI, you run a very real risk of falling behind in the race to produce voluminous mediocrity while slowly forgetting how to do your own job.” —Max Leibman

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scalable stupidity

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The internet didn’t make us stupid. It made stupidity scalable.” —J.A. Westenberg

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” —George Orwell, ‘1984’

“you can give someone a fish and then teach them to fish. It’s a lot easier to learn how to fish when you’re not starving.” —ebel aurora

“Employers: Everyone must return to the office, because we work best when people collaborate face-to-face.
Also: We’re going to replace everyone with AI.”
—Jeff Johnson

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sensemaking through the slop

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The image below is one I have often used in explaining sensemaking with the PKM framework. It describes how we can use different types of filters to seek information and knowledge and then apply this by doing and creating, and then share, with added value, what we have learned. One emerging challenge today is that our algorithmic knowledge filters are becoming dominated by the output of generative pre-trained transformers based on large language models. And more and more, these are generating AI slop. Which means that machine filters, like our search engines, are no longer trusted sources of information.

As a result, we have to build better human filters — experts, and subject matter networks.

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working for capitalists

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The automation of human work is an ongoing objective of our capitalist systems. Our accounting practices amortize machines while listing people as costs, which keeps the power of labour down. The machines do not even have to be as good as a person, due to our bookkeeping systems that treat labour and capital differently. Labour is a cost while capital is an investment. Indeed, automation + capitalism = a perfect storm.

Recently, The Verge reported that the CEO of Shopify, an online commerce platform, told employees — ‘Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.’ The underlying, completely misinformed assumption being that large language models and generative pre-trained transformers are as effective at thinking and working as humans.

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public secrets

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Secret Canada is a freedom of information project from The Globe and Mail.
Information is the bedrock of democracy. Freedom of information laws give you the right to obtain records held by public institutions. This project helps you navigate Canada’s access system.”

Kids keep getting sicker as evidence for COVID immune damage builds

If we were to see immune damage manifesting at a population level, it would look like what we’re seeing today: big waves of common illnesses. Unusual spikes of uncommon illnesses. Course reversal for previously declining and eliminated illnesses. An unexplained, global wave of sickness.

“I spent 5+ years as a billionaire’s wordsmith, which meant knowing him intimately enough to write in his voice.

I think the thread running through most of them is not a belief in their own basic goodness but rather contempt for everyone else, including and especially their peers. Expressing that contempt with plausible deniability was part of my (usually) unspoken mandate.

Contempt and duper’s delight. Those were the last thrills once $$ reached a point of diminishing returns.” —@kims

The life of a bicyclist is worth $1150…. apparently.

“Christopher Shawn Basque of Chilliwack, B.C., pleaded guilty in North Vancouver Provincial Court to one count of driving without due care and attention on Friday. The court ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine and a $150 victim surcharge.”
RIP to this poor woman who was just riding a bike.”

Dump truck driver pleads guilty in fatal cyclist collision in North Vancouver

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a new understanding of my confusion

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In my last post on adapting to chaos I asked — what changes in our sensemaking practices should we incorporate to adapt to a world that is often more chaotic than complex? I received 12 comments here and another ten comments on LinkedIn. Confusion was one theme commented upon and Chris Corrigan referenced an excellent post on that topic — escaping confusion.

In the domain of Confusion the first and most important action, I believe, is an awareness that you are there. Without awareness you are lost. Any action that you undertake from that place is likely to be based on conditioning without any sensitivity to your context and that can be incredibly dangerous. In fact if you look at Dave’s central domain map you will see that Confusion is adjacent to the Clear, Complicated, and Chaotic domains. The division of the central domain into Confusion and Aporia implies that you cannot get to Complex from Confusion without taking what Dave [Snowden] calls the Aporetic Turn.

Nollind Wachell, with whom I had many discussion on Google+ several years ago, commented that,  “In effect, often true growth and development doesn’t occur without some form of pain and suffering because it’s needed to wake a person up, slow them down, and help them perceive and see things that they were blind to before. Something that I think needs to happen (ie an awakening) in not just America but in many places around the world, Canada included.” Perhaps we need the shock of confusion in order to move toward Aporia and then wake up. Nollind also suggested a 2007 MPRA paper, Triple-Loop Learning as Foundation for Profound Change, Individual Cultivation, and Radical Innovation.

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adapting to chaos

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I’m finding it difficult to write here these days. And I have written a fair bit as this is post #3,685. Given the turmoil with our American neighbours it’s hard to focus on much else. Just in my professional networks on both sides of the border I personally know people who have lost their jobs, their clients, and any ability to plan for the near future — all in the past month.

I should be writing a book. I even have a publisher. But I won’t. At least not at this time. Most of my thinking time is focused on the aggressive behaviour of our once-ally, the United States, and the continuous threats to our sovereignty. The fact that Trump was re-elected still shocks me. It shows how flawed the US electoral system is, and I know that we have enough of our own flaws here in Canada. I spent most of my initial career as an Infantry officer, training to fight the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. It seems that my later years in life may be fighting, at least economically, the Russian regime and the American administration that supports it.

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