Ten blue links, just when I thought I was out edition
There’s a lot of AI in this edition. Sorry. One day I’ll stop talking about it, probably when silenced by the machines. For those whose interests are less one dimensional, I’ve included some actual culture towards the end.
1. Google zero is icumen in
As Nilay Patel writes, “the entire business of the modern web is built around Google”. We, as publishers and makers of stuff, have allowed the ludicrous situation where a single company has effectively enclosed the web. And it’s not like we weren’t warned. But as Nilay also writes, and I’ve written about extensively, that era is coming to a close. The consequences of this will be huge and painful but the key point for publishers is simple: don’t let it happen again.
2. Reader, they are letting it happen again
Oops.
3. “Publishers lack strategic patience”
Focus on your audience. Do great journalism. Get it to your readers. Don’t sell your Crown Jewels. Jessica Lessin, who has built a successful subscription business based on exactly this process, notes that publishers lack strategic patience, which is one of the reasons they constantly jump into bed with tech platforms then wonder what happened when the platforms treat them as suppliers and not partners. This is completely correct: publishers are not good at strategically cultivating a long-term relationship with their audiences. That would require investment and hard work, rather than focusing on short term revenue.
4. Who amongst us etc etc
And that’s why you end up with companies like AdVon, which specialises in in producing cheap AI-generated affiliate content which gets published on well-known brand sites. How do brands like USA Today or Sports Illustrated end up putting something which is obviously going to damage brands over the long time on their sites? Because they have no long term strategy.
5. Now this makes sense
“A new theory: somewhere in the Silicon Valley universe there’s a cadre of techies who have eidetic memories and they’re feeling them start to slip. Panic time.” Wendy Grossman (who you should read every week) makes me feel a bit seen. I was arguing earlier in the week about how Microsoft’s Recall feature was a boon to people like me who are getting to the point in their lives where memory isn’t as much of a given as it used to be. Is it a good feature? Unknown until we have hands on with the code and implementation. Is the principle that machine learning should happen on-device a good one? Yes.
6. Black boxes you can trust
Now this will be interesting: Apple is rumoured to be planning to implement a black box system for cloud-processed AI features. Given the company’s PR line on privacy, this would make sense – and might actually put some pressure on others to do the same.
7. Fixing old computers is the hotness
The Canon Cat is one of the more fascinating old computers, designed by Jef Raskin after leaving Apple and probably much closer to his original vision for the Macintosh than Steve Jobs’ cut-down Xerox Star. This article goes through restoring one, which means diving deep into the hardware with some interesting historical asides.
8. Under-sung hero of the week
Isabella Blow.
9. “We conflate all these scales of harm”
A fascinating interview that I had missed with RF Kuang, who talks about everything from so-called cancel culture to why she’s very bad at taking holidays (something we share).
10. What was new is old now
I never really got on with New Atheism, for the same reason that I never really got on with hardcore rationalists: it smelled like macho bullshit dressed up in pseudo-scientific clothing. The recent trend of new atheists turning out to be ardent supporters of transphobia and hostility towards pro-Palestinian activists makes me think my gut feeling about them was correct. New atheism was always a conservative and reactionary movement, led by privileged white men as convinced of their own infallibility as the hardcore religious they spent so much energy opposing. “New Atheism will continue to haunt us for as long as we refuse to acknowledge that the way things are always includes the possibility that things could be different.” Amen to that.
