Simon Terry has a short post on Microsoft’s new Copilot and how we should be careful in fully adopting some of these generative AI tools. LLMs [large language models] are improvements on past tools but are hardly perfect. In a world where the volume of information means many people scan everything, we need to remain… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Technology
capitalism > automation > gpt
In my last post I covered in detail how ideas become ideology. “Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest — that’s when things really get set in concrete.”—Charles Green (2009) Today, the underlying ideology is capitalism. It drives the actions of governments, such…
how ideas become ideology
Several times I have referred to this observation about how ideas connect to ideology. “Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest — that’s when things really get set in concrete.”—Charles Green (2009) Here are some examples of these shifts. Ideas lead technology Hedy… Read more »
watch the machines
I wrote the next two paragraphs in a blog post last year — we have met the enemy. A long time ago — pre-pandemic and pre-9/11 — I was flying on a commercial passenger aircraft. The flight was over-booked and as I was wearing my Army uniform, I was offered to sit in the jump… Read more »
it’s not not about the technology
Writing my essays at university was always a painful process. We were still allowed to write them, though more professors were requiring essays to be submitted typed. My essays were never good because I often left them to the last minute and hand-writing a better version was just too much time and effort. As much… Read more »
stepping in
In the book, Only Humans Need Apply (2016), the authors identify five ways that people can work with machines. They call it ‘stepping’. We are seeing an increasing need to do what they call ‘stepping in’ or using machines [and software] to augment work. In GPT-3 through a glass darkly I used the McLuhans’ media… Read more »
platform collapse
The robber barons of the 21st century are the platform owners. They have combined the power of network effects with a 20th century corporate capitalist, winner-takes-all approach. Amazon is choking the book publishing industry, Google is dominating advertising, and telecommunications companies are using their control of the pipes to directly compete with service providers. Now… Read more »
GPT-3 through a glass darkly
I have been using the tetrad (four sides) derived from Marshall & Eric McLuhan’s Laws of Media for several decades. I find it useful for examining emerging technologies, beyond the hype. For example, according to Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology at the University of Toronto, the Laws of… Read more »
Whither Twitter?
To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question. Certainly everyone has heard of the recent private acquisition of Twitter. Many people say they will leave the platform and some have moved to the federated Mastodon system. I have been on Mastodon since 2016 and it’s nice to see a bit more action there… Read more »
finding the wisdom of crowds
“Opinions have never been formed in a vacuum. They’re infectious, as people copy one another. And when this process is made visible it sets off public opinion trends. As more of the public square has moved online, we’ve seen how these can grow monolithic and bitterly factionalised, stifling potentially important public deliberation: take, for example,… Read more »
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