When should you replace running shoes?

Photograph of back half of a running shoe showing midsole

John Sutton knows more about this area than I do. Not only his he an ultramarathon runner but he works in the area of ‘carbon literacy’ and sustainability. I’m also sure that he’s correct that the claims that you need to replace your running shoes after a certain number of miles is driven by marketing departments.

Still, I’ve definitely experienced creeping lower-back pain when getting to around 650 miles in a pair of running shoes. Of course, now I’m wondering whether it’s all psychosomatic…

With age and high mileage, it is said that the midsole no longer provides the cushioning that you need to prevent injury. This is cited as the main reason that shoes need replacing on a regular basis. Again, looking at the Lightboost midsole on these shoes, I see no evidence of crushing or squashing and I certainly don’t think I can feel any difference to the foot strike than when they were new. Obviously, any change in perceived cushioning is likely to be imperceptibly gradual and I could only really confirm that the cushioning was no longer up to snuff by comparing them directly with a new pair. These shoes are at a premium price (£170) and as such, I would expect them to be made of premium materials and built to last. My visual inspection of them suggests that they are still in excellent condition.

On the face of it, I see no obvious reason why I should retire these Ultraboost Lights any time soon. However, that seems to go against industry recommendations. What if invisible midsole damage has been so gradual that I haven’t noticed it? Now that I’ve reached 500 miles, am I likely to injure myself through continued usage? As a triathlete, I know from years of bitter experience that I am far more likely to injure myself on a run than I am cycling or swimming. So, anything I can do to improve my chances of not getting injured would be a powerful incentive to act. Thus, if it could be proven scientifically that buying a new pair of trainers every 300 – 500 miles would lessen my chances of injury, then I would take that evidence very seriously indeed.

[…]

In a previous blog post I discussed the carbon footprint of a pair of running shoes (usually between 8kg and 16kg of CO2 per pair). In the great scheme of things, this is not a huge figure (until you scale up to the billions pairs of trainers sold each year and the realisation that virtually all of these are destined for landfill at end of life). My Ultraboosts have a significant content made from ocean plastic and recycled plastic which reduces their carbon footprint by 10% compared to the previous model made with non-recycled materials. 10% is better than nothing, and the use of some ocean plastic is much better than taking plastic bottles out of the recycling loop and spinning them into polyester. But, I can do a lot better than 10% by not swapping my shoes for a new pair until they are properly worn out. Simply by deciding to double the mileage and aiming for at least 1000 miles out of these shoes (hopefully more) I can at least halve the carbon footprint of my running shoe consumption.

Source: Irontwit

Human agency in a world of AI

An equilateral triangle with most of it shaded red except the top (pointy) bit which is shaded yellow. The red part is labelled 'The bit technology can do' and the yellow part is labelled 'The human bit'

Dave White, Head of Digital Education and Academic Practice at the University of the Arts in London, reflects on a recent conference he attended where the tone seemed to be somewhat ‘defensive’. Instead of cheerleading for tech, the opening video and keynote instead focused on human agency.

White notes that this may be heartening but it’s a narrative that’s overly-simplistic. The creative process involves technology of all different types and descriptions. It’s not just the case that humans “get inspired” and then just use technology to achieve their ends.

The downside of these triangles is that they imply ‘development’ is a kind of ladder. You climb your way to the top where the best stuff happens. Anyone who has ever undertaken a creative process will know that it involves repeatedly moving up and down that ladder or rather, it involves iterating research, experimentation, analysis, reflection and creating (making). Every iteration is an authentic part of the process, every rung of the ladder is repeatedly required, so when I say technology allows us to spend more time at the ‘top’ of these diagrams, I’m not suggesting that we should try and avoid the rest.

I’d argue that attempting to erase the rest of the process with technology is missing the point(y). However, a positive reading would be that, as opposed the zero-sum-gain notion, a well-informed incorporation of technology could make the pointy bit a bit bigger (or more pointy). The tech could support us to explore a constantly shifting and, I hope, expanding, notion of humanness. This idea is very much in tension with the Surveillance Capitalism, Silicon Valley, reading of our times. I’m not saying that the tech does support us to explore our humanity, I’m saying it could and what is involved in that ‘could’ is worth thinking about.

Source: David White

5 ways in which AI is discussed

An illustrated group of diverse people in a meeting room, with a large chalkboard in the background featuring an intricate drawing of a humanoid robot head filled with gears and symbols representing various aspects of technology and thought. The group appears engaged in a discussion about artificial intelligence.

Helen Beetham, whose work over at imperfect offerings I’ve mentioned many times here, has a guest post on the LSE Higher Education blog about AI in education.

She discusses five ways in which it’s often discussed: as a specific technology, as intelligence, as a collaborator, as a model of the world, and as the future of work. In my day-to-day routine, I tend to use it as a collaborator, because I have (what I hope to be) a reasonable mental model of the capacities and limitations of LLMs.

What’s particularly useful about this article is the meta-framing that more ‘productivity’ isn’t always to be valued. Sometimes, what we want, is for people to slow down and deliberate a bit more.

AI narratives arrive in an academic setting where productivity is already overvalued. What other values besides productivity and speed can be put forward in teaching and learning, particularly in assessment? We don’t ask students to produce assignments so that there can be more content in the world, but so we (and they) have evidence that they are developing their own mental world, in the context of disciplinary questions and practices.

Source: LSE Higher Education blog

14 years of Tory (mis)rule

A cup of tea in a fancy teacup on a fancy plate

I don’t even have words for how bad the last 14 years have been under the Tories. Thankfully, people who do have the words have written some of them down.

This piece in The New Yorker is very long, but even just reading some of it will help those outside the UK understand what is going on, and those inside it hold your head in shame.

Some people insisted that the past decade and a half of British politics resists satisfying explanation. The only way to think about it is as a psychodrama enacted, for the most part, by a small group of middle-aged men who went to élite private schools, studied at the University of Oxford, and have been climbing and chucking one another off the ladder of British public life—the cursus honorum, as Johnson once called it—ever since.

[…]

These have been years of loss and waste. The U.K. has yet to recover from the financial crisis that began in 2008. According to one estimate, the average worker is now fourteen thousand pounds worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis rates—it is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. “Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this,” Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, which published the analysis, told the BBC last year. “This is what failure looks like.”

[…]

“Austerity” is now a contested term. Plenty of Conservatives question whether it really happened. So it is worth being clear: between 2010 and 2019, British public spending fell from about forty-one per cent of G.D.P. to thirty-five per cent. The Office of Budget Responsibility, the equivalent of the American Congressional Budget Office, describes what came to be known as Plan A as “one of the biggest deficit reduction programmes seen in any advanced economy since World War II.” Governments across Europe pursued fiscal consolidation, but the British version was distinct for its emphasis on shrinking the state rather than raising taxes.

Like the choice of the word itself, austerity was politically calculated. Huge areas of public spending—on the N.H.S. and education—were nominally maintained. Pensions and international aid became more generous, to show that British compassion was not dead. But protecting some parts of the state meant sacrificing the rest: the courts, the prisons, police budgets, wildlife departments, rural buses, care for the elderly, youth programs, road maintenance, public health, the diplomatic corps.

In the accident theory of Brexit, leaving the E.U. has turned out to be a puncture rather than a catastrophe: a falloff in trade; a return of forgotten bureaucracy with our near neighbors; an exodus of financial jobs from London; a misalignment in the world. “There is a sort of problem for the British state, including Labour as well as all these Tory governments since 2016, which is that they are having to live a lie,” as Osborne, who voted Remain, said. “It’s a bit like tractor-production figures in the Soviet Union. You have to sort of pretend that this thing is working, and everyone in the system knows it isn’t.”

Source: The New Yorker

Identifying things that don't work

Super Mario screenshot

I always find something I agree with in posts like this. Here are some of those things in a list of “things that don’t work”:

  1. Tearing your hair out because people don’t follow written instructions. You can fill your instructions with BOLD CAPS and rend your garments when this too fails. A more pleasant option is to craft supportive interfaces where people don’t need instructions. I’m convinced the best interface in history is the beginning of Super Mario Brothers. You just start.

[…]

  1. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. This is a beautiful idea, but often other people simply don’t have the same needs you do.

[…]

  1. Trying to figure it all out ahead of time. For hard problems, you can sit around trying to see around all corners and anticipate all possibilities. This can work—when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, everything worked the first time. But it’s really hard. If you can, it’s easier to build a prototype, learn from the flaws, and then build another one. (This, of course, contradicts the previous point.)

[…]

Things that work: Dogs, vegetables, index funds, jogging, sleep, lists, learning to cook, drinking less alcohol, surrounding yourself with people you trust and admire.

Source: Dynomight

Philosophy and folklore

An ancient library transitions into an enchanted forest, where mystical creatures and philosophers exchange ideas, under a canopy of intertwined branches and glowing manuscripts, illustrating the harmonious integration of folklore and philosophy, depicted in light gray, dark gray, bright red, yellow, and blue.

I love this piece in Aeon from Abigail Tulenko, who argues that folklore and philosophy share a common purpose in challenging us to think deeply about life’s big questions. Her essay is essentially a critique of academic philosophy’s exclusivity and she calls for a broader, more inclusive approach that embraces… folklore.

Tulenko suggests that folktales, with all of their richness and diversity, offer fresh perspectives and can invigorate philosophical discussions by incorporating a wider range of experiences and ideas. By integrating folklore into philosophical inquiry, she suggests that there is the potential to democratise the field and make it not only more accessible and engaging, but help to break down academic barriers and interdisciplinary collaboration.

I’m all for it. Although it’s problematic to talk about Russian novels and culture at the moment, there are some tales from that country which are deeply philosophical in nature. I’d also include things like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment as a story from which philosophers can glean insights.

The Hungarian folktale Pretty Maid Ibronka terrified and tantalised me as a child. In the story, the young Ibronka must tie herself to the devil with string in order to discover important truths. These days, as a PhD student in philosophy, I sometimes worry I’ve done the same. I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons.

[…]

propose that one avenue forward is to travel backward into childhood – to stories like Ibronka’s. Folklore is an overlooked repository of philosophical thinking from voices outside the traditional canon. As such, it provides a model for new approaches that are directly responsive to the problems facing academic philosophy today. If, like Ibronka, we find ourselves tied to the devil, one way to disentangle ourselves may be to spin a tale.

Folklore originated and developed orally. It has long flourished beyond the elite, largely male, literate classes. Anyone with a story to tell and a friend, child or grandchild to listen, can originate a folktale. At the risk of stating the obvious, the ‘folk’ are the heart of folklore. Women, in particular, have historically been folklore’s primary originators and preservers. In From the Beast to the Blonde (1995), the historian Marina Warner writes that ‘the predominant pattern reveals older women of a lower status handing on the material to younger people’.

[…]

To answer that question [folklore may be inclusive, but is it philosophy?], one would need at least a loose definition of philosophy. This is daunting to provide but, if pressed, I’d turn to Aristotle, whose Metaphysics offers a hint: ‘it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin, and at first began, to philosophise.’ In my view, philosophy is a mode of wondrous engagement, a practice that can be exercised in academic papers, in theological texts, in stories, in prayer, in dinner-table conversations, in silent reflection, and in action. It is this sense of wonder that draws us to penetrate beyond face-value appearances and look at reality anew.

[…] Beyond ethics, folklore touches all the branches of philosophy. With regard to its metaphysical import, Buddhist folklore provides a striking example. When dharma – roughly, the ultimate nature of reality – ‘is internalised, it is most naturally taught in the form of folk stories: the jataka tales in classical Buddhism, the koans in Zen,’ writes the Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi. The philosophers Jing Huang and Jonardon Ganeri offer a fascinating philosophical analysis of a Buddhist folktale seemingly dating back to the 3rd century BCE, which they’ve translated as ‘Is This Me?’ They argue that the tale constructs a similar metaphysical dilemma to Plutarch’s ‘ship of Theseus’ thought-experiment, prompting us to question the nature of personal identity.

Source: Aeon

Image: DALL-E 3

3 issues with global mapping of micro-credentials

A fantastical battlefield where traditional educational gatekeepers, depicted as towering structures, face off against rebels wielding glowing Open Badges and alternative credentials, using them to break through barriers, highlighted in shades of gray, red, yellow, and blue.

If you’ll excuse me for a brief rant, I have three, nested, issues with this ‘global mapping initiative’ from Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Initiative. The first is situating micro-credentials as “innovative, stackable credentials that incrementally document what a person knows and can do”. No, micro-credentials, with or without the hyphen, are a higher education re-invention of Open Badges, and often conflate the container (i.e. the course) with the method of assessment (i.e. the credential).

Second, the whole point of digital credentials such as Open Badges is to enable the recognition of a much wider range of things that formal education usually provides. Not to double-down on the existing gatekeepers. This was the point of the Keep Badges Weird community, which has morphed into Open Recognition is for Everybody (ORE).

Third, although I recognise the value of approaches such as the Bologna Process, initiatives which map different schemas against one another inevitably flatten and homogenise localised understandings and ways of doing things. It’s the educational equivalent of Starbucks colonising cities around the world.

So I reject the idea at the heart of this, other than to prop up higher education institutions which refuse to think outside of the very narrow corner into which they have painted themselves by capitulating to neoliberalism. Credentials aren’t “less portable” because there is no single standardised definitions. That’s a non sequitur. If you want a better approach to all this, which might be less ‘efficient’ for institutions, but which is more valuable for individuals, check out Using Open Recognition to Map Real-World Skills and Attributes.

Because micro-credentials have different definitions in different places and contexts, they are less portable, because it’s harder to interpret and apply them consistently, accurately, and efficiently.

The Global Micro-Credential Schema Mapping project helps to address this issue by taking different schemas and frameworks for defining micro-credentials and lining them up against each other so that they can be compared. Schema mapping involves crosswalking the defined terms that are used in data structures. The micro-credential mapping does not involve any personally identifiable information about people or the individual credentials that are issued to them– the mapping is done across metadata structures. This project has been initially scoped to include schema terms defining the micro-credential owner or offeror, issuer, assertion, and claim.

Source: Credential Engine

Image: DALL-E 3

Perhaps stop caring about what other people think (of you)

A vibrant city street where masks lie discarded, and individuals radiate their true selves in bright, unique colors, symbolizing the liberation from pretense and the embrace of authenticity.

In this post, Mark Manson, author of _The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck _ outlines ‘5 Life-Changing Levels of Not Giving a Fuck’. It’s not for those with an aversion to profanity, but having read his book what I like about Manson’s work is that he’s essentially applying some of the lessons of Stoic philosophy to modern life. An alternative might be Derren Brown’s book Happy: Why more or less everything is absolutely fine.

Both books are a reaction to the self-help industry, which doesn’t really deal with the root cause of suffering in the world. As the first lines of Epictetus' Enchiridion note: “Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.”

Manson’s post is essentially a riff on this, outlining five ‘levels’ of, essentially, getting over yourself. There’s a video, if you prefer, but I’m just going to pull out a couple of parts from the post which I think are actually most life-changing if you can internalise them. At the end of the day, unless you’re in a coercive relationship of some description, the only person that can stop you doing something is… yourself.

The big breakthrough for most people comes when they finally drop the performance and embrace authenticity in their relationships. When they realize no matter how well they perform, they’re eventually gonna be rejected by someone, they might as well get rejected for who they already are.

When you start approaching relationships with authenticity, by being unapologetic about who you are and living with the results, you realize you don’t have to wait around for people to choose you, you can also choose them.

[…]

Look, you and everyone you know are gonna die one day. So what the fuck are you waiting for? That goal you have, that dream you keep to yourself, that person you wanna meet. What are you letting stop you? Go do it.

Source: Mark Manson

Image: DALL-E 3

Educators should demand better than 'semi-proctored writing environments'

Screenshot showing PowerNotes tool highlighting copy/pasted text and AI-generated text My longer rant about the whole formal education system of which this is a symptom will have to wait for another day, but this (via [Stephen Downes](https://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=76308)) makes me despair a little. Noting that "it is essentially impossible for one machine to determine if a piece of writing was produced by another machine" one company has decided to create a "semi-proctored writing tool" to "protect academic integrity".

Generative AI is disruptive, for sure. But as I mentioned on my recent appearance on the Artificiality podcast, it’s disruptive to a way of doing assessment that makes things easier for educators. Writing essays to prove that you understand something is an approach which was invented a long time ago. We can do much better, including using technology to provide much more individualised feedback, and allowing students to use technology to much more closely apply it to their own practice.

Update: check out the AI Pedagogy project from metaLAB at Harvard

PowerNotes built Composer in response to feedback from educators who wanted a word processor that could protect academic integrity as AI is being integrated into existing Microsoft and Google products. It is essentially impossible for one machine to determine if a piece of writing was produced by another machine, so PowerNotes takes a different approach by making it easier to use AI ethically. For example, because AI is integrated into and research content is stored in PowerNotes, copying and pasting information from another source should be very limited and will be flagged by Composer.

If a teacher or manager does suspect the inappropriate use of AI, PowerNotes+ and Composer help shift the conversation from accusation to evidence by providing a clear trail of every action a writer has taken and where things came from. Putting clear parameters on the AI-plagiarism conversation keeps the focus on the process of developing an idea into a completed paper or presentation.

Source: eSchool News

The perils of over-customising your setup

XKCD comic #1806
&10;
&10;Hat: Can I load it up on your laptop?
&10;
&10;Other: Sure!
&10;
&10;Oh, just hit both shift keys to change over to qwerty
&10;
&10;Capslock is Control.
&10;And Spacebar is Capslock.
&10;
&10;And two-finger scroll moves through time instead of space.
&10;
&10;And ---

Until about a decade ago, I used to heavily customise my digital working environment. I’d have custom keyboard shortcuts, and automations, and all kinds of things. What I learned was that a) these things take time to maintain, and b) using computers other than your own becomes that much harder. I think the turning point was reading Clay Shirky say “current optimization is long-term anachronism”.

So, these days, I run macOS on my desktop with pretty much the out-of-the-box configuration. My laptop runs ChromeOS Flex. I think if I went back to Linux, I’d probably go for something like Fedora Silverblue which is an immutable system like ChromeOS. In other words, the system files are read-only which makes for an extremely stable system.

One other point which might not work for everyone, but works for me. It’s been seven years since I ditched my cloud-based password manager for a deterministic one. Although my passwords don’t auto-fill, it’s easy for me to access them anywhere, on any device. And they’re not stored anywhere meaning there’s no single point of failure.

Source: xkcd

Systems thinking and the FRAMED mnemonic

This image illustrates a roundtable discussion among diverse stakeholders in an abstract, conceptual space. Abstract figures representing different roles and perspectives are engaged in dialogue, with floating symbols of ideas, conflicts, connections, and solutions surrounding them. The scene captures the essence of collaboration and diversity in addressing complex social challenges, emphasizing the collective effort necessary in systems thinking. The vibrant color scheme of light gray, dark gray, bright red, yellow, and blue enriches the discussion, highlighting the vibrant and varied nature of collaborative problem-solving in interconnected social systems.

I’m currently studying towards my first module of a planned MSc in Systems Thinking through the Open University. I’ve written a fair number of posts on my personal blog.

It can be difficult to explain to other people what systems thinking is actually about in a succinct way, so I appreciated this post (via Andrew Curry which not only provides a handy definition, but also a mnemonic for going about doing it.

An important thing which is missing from this is the introspection required to first reflect upon one’s tradition of understanding and to deconstruct it. But helping people to understand that systems thinking isn’t a ‘technique’ is also a difficult thing to do.

A system is the interaction of relationships, interactions, and resources in a defined context. Systems are not merely the sum of their parts; they are the product of the interactions among these parts. Importantly, social systems are not isolated entities; they are interconnected and subjectively constructed, defined by the boundaries we establish to understand and influence them.

Systems thinking, then, is an approach to solving problems in complex systems that looks at the interconnectedness of things to achieve a particular goal.

[…]

Systems thinking is helpful when addressing complex, dynamic, and generative social challenges. This approach is necessary when there is no definitive statement of the problem because the problem manifests differently depending on where one is situated in that system, which implies there is no objectively right answer, and the process of solving the issue involves diverse stakeholders with different roles. Systems thinking enables us to dig deeper into the root causes of these problems, making it more effective for social change initiatives.

Given the importance of defining and drawing the boundaries of the systems of our intervention, the acrostic “FENCED” captures the six systems transformational principles of how to apply systems thinking in driving social change.

F - frame the challenge as a shared endeavour

E - establish a diverse convening group

N - nudge inner and outer work

C - centre an appreciation of complexity

E - embrace conflict and connection, chaos and order

D - develop innovative solutions that can be tested and scaled.

Source: Reos Partners

Image: DALL-E 3

The war on the URL

This image presents a modern digital landscape where an individual exemplifies mastery over their digital environment. The setting is a realistic workstation, where the individual is surrounded by multiple screens displaying organized data and content. These screens visualize structured information pathways, connecting various pieces of content, symbolizing the individual's adeptness at navigating and controlling their digital realm. The use of light gray, dark gray, bright red, yellow, and blue accentuates the seamless integration of technology into daily life, highlighting a harmonious balance between technological advancement and accessibility. This portrayal captures the essence of digital mastery in today's context, showcasing practical empowerment and active participation in the digital world, steering away from the futuristic to emphasize the attainable and the now.

A typically jargon-filled but nevertheless insightful post by Venkatesh Rao. This one discusses the ‘war’ on the URL, something that Rao quite rightly points out is a “vulnerability of the commons to outsiders problem” rather than a “tragedy of the commons” problem.

Literacy around URLs is extremely low, especially given the amount of tracking spam appended on the end these days. Although browser extensions and some browsers themselves can strip this, it’s actually worth knowing what has been added. By distrusting all URLs, and forcing people into an app-per-platform experience, we degrade the web, increase surveillance, and make it ever-harder to create the software commons.

The disingenuous philosophy in support of this war is the idea that URLs are somehow dangerous and ugly glimpses of a naked, bare-metal protocol that innocent users must be paternalistically protected from by benevolent and beautiful products. The truth is, when you hide or compromise the naked hyperlink, you expropriate power and agency from a thriving commons. Sure, aging grandpas may have some trouble with the concept but that’s true of everything, including the friendliest geriatric experiences (GXes). My grandfather handled phone numbers and zip codes fine. URLs aren’t much more demanding and vastly more empowering to be able to manipulate directly as a user. Similarly, accessibility considerations are a disingenuous excuse for a war on hyperlinks.

A useful way to think about this is the interaction of the Hypertext Experience (HX) with Josh Stark’s notion of a Trust Experience (TX), which needs to be extended beyond the high-financial-stakes blockchain context he focuses on, to low-stakes everyday browsing. We all agree that the TX of the web has broken and it’s now a Dark Forest. The median random link click now takes you to danger, not serendipitous discovery. This is not entirely the fault of platform corps. We all contributed. And there really is a world of scammers, trolls, phishers, spammers, spies, stalkers, and thieves out there. I’m not proposing to civilize the Dark Forest so we don’t need to protect ourselves from it. I merely don’t want the protection solution to be worse than the problem. Or worse, end up in a “you now have two problems” situation where the HX is degraded with no security benefits, or even degraded security.

[…]

There is also the retreat from pURLs (pretty URLs) to ugly URLs (uURLs) with enormous strings of gobbledygook attached to readable domain-name-stemmed base URLs, mostly meant for tracking, not HX enhancement (in fact uURLs are a dark HX pattern/feature if you’re Google or Twitter). Even when you can figure out how to copy and paste links (in 10 easy steps!), you’re forced to edit them for both aesthetics and character-length reasons. And this is of course even harder on mobile, which suits app-enclosure patterns just fine. In this arms race for control of the HX, we users have resorted to cutting and pasting text itself, creating patterns of useless redundancy, transcription errors, and canonicity loss (when transclusion is now a technically tractable canonicity-preserving alternative). Or worse, screenshots (and idiotic screenshot essays that need OCR or AI help to interact with) that horribly degrade accessibility and create the added overhead of creating alt text (which will no doubt add even more AI for a problem that shouldn’t exist to begin with).

There is a general pattern here: Just like comparable privately owned products and services, public commons and protocols of course have their flaws and limitations, and need innovation and stewardship to improve and evolve. But if you’re fundamentally hostile to the very existence of commons goods and services, the slightest flaw becomes an attack surface and justification to destroy the whole thing. It’s not a tragedy of the commons problem created by participants in it; it’s a vulnerability of the commons to outsiders problem. A technical warfare problem rather than a socio-political problem.

Source: Ribbonfarm

Image: DALL-E 3

Educators in an AI generated world

This image brings to life a classroom where technology and human interaction are seamlessly integrated. Interactive walls respond to students' inputs in real-time, with the teacher facilitating a dynamic learning experience. The vibrant colors against the sophisticated grays highlight the sparks of insight and creativity flowing through the room.

Helen Beetham comment on OpenAI’s Sora AI video generating engine in relation to education. She makes three fantastic points: first, that pivoting an assessment to a different medium doesn’t make for a different assignment; second that ‘spot how the AI generated video is incorrect’ is a cute end-of-term quiz, not the syllabus; third, that auto-graded assignments which are auto-generated is a waste of everyone’s time.

Something for educators to ponder, for sure.

(My thesis supervisor, Steve Higgins, used to talk about technologies that ‘increase the teacher bubble’ such as interactive whiteboards. I think part of the problem with AI is that bursts the assessment bubble.)t

Only five minutes ago, educators were being urged to get around student use of synthetic text by setting more ‘innovative’ assignments, such as videos and presentations. Some of us pointed out that this would work for about five minutes, and here we are. The medium is not the assignment. The assignment is the work of its production. This is already enshrined in many practices of university assessment, such as authentic assessment (a resource from Heriot Watt University), assessment for learning (a handy table from Queen Mary’s UL) and assessing the process of writing (often from teaching English as a second language, e.g. this summary from the British Council). The generative AI surge has prompted a further shift towards these methods: I’ve found some great resources recently at the University of Melbourne and the University of Monash.

But all these approaches require investment in teachers. Attending to students as meaning-making people, negotiating authentic assessments, giving feedback on process, and welcoming diversity: these are very difficult to ‘scale’. And in all but a few universities, funding per student is diminishing. So instead there is standardisation, and data-based methods to support standardisation, and this has turned assessment into a process that can easily be gamed. If the pressures on students to auto-produce assignments are matched by pressures on staff to auto-detect and auto-grade them, we might as well just have student generative technologies talk directly to institutional ones, and open a channel from student bank accounts directly into the accounts of big tech while universities extract a percentage for accreditation.

Source: imperfect offerings

Image: DALL-E 3

Random advice from Ryan

Boats in a marina, Faro, Portugal

I know this is just another one of Ryan Holiday’s somewhat-rambling list posts, but there’s still some good advice in it. Here’s a couple of anecdotes and pieces of advice that resonated with me:

There is a story about the manager of Iron Maiden, one of the greatest metal bands of all time. At a dinner honoring the band, a young agent comes up to him and says how much he admires his skillful work in the music business. The manager looks at him and says, “HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I’m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.” The idea being that you want to be in the business of YOU. Not of your respective industry. Not of the critics. Not of the fads and trends and what everyone else is doing.

If you never hear no from clients, if the other side in a negotiation has never balked to something you’ve asked for, then you are not pricing yourself high enough, you are not being aggressive enough.

A friend of mine just left a very important job that a lot of people would kill for. When he left I said, “If you can’t walk away, then you don’t have the job…the job has you.”

Source: _Ryan Holiday

Image: Faro marina (February 2024) by me

The line between “just enough” and “too much” can fluctuate

A cozy, cluttered corner of a room, filled with items that narrate a personal history. There are old toys, worn books, a vintage camera, and family photos in various frames, all bathed in soft natural light. The scene captures a sense of warmth and depth, highlighting the complex emotions tied to these possessions.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a minimalist. I thought that famous photo of Steve Jobs sitting on the floor surrounded only by a very few possessions was something to which I should aspire.

As I’ve grown older, and especially since starting a family, I’ve realised that there are stories in our possessions. That’s not a reason to live in clutter, but as I’ve moved house recently, I’ve come to notice that I’ve held on to things that have no practical value, but which make me feel more like a fully-rounded human being.

This essay suggests that, for everyday, regular people, the stuff that is given to us and the things that evoke memories are the equivalent of haivng our names “carved into buildings or attached to scholarships”.

Cramming our spaces with painful tokens from the past can seem wrong. But according to Natalia Skritskaya, a clinical psychologist and research scientist at Columbia University’s Center for Prolonged Grief, holding on to objects that carry mixed feelings is natural. “We’re complex creatures,” she told me. When I reflect on the most memorable periods of my life, they’re not completely devoid of sadness; sorrow and disappointment often linger close by joy and belonging, giving the latter their weight. I want my home to reflect this nuance. Of course, in some cases, clinging to old belongings can keep someone from processing a loss, Skritskaya said. But avoiding all sad associations isn’t the solution either. Not only is clearing our spaces of all signs of grief impossible to sustain, but if every room is scrubbed of all suffering, it will also be scrubbed of its depth.

Deciding what to keep and what to lose is an ongoing, intuitive process that never feels quite finished or certain. The line between “just enough” and “too much” can fluctuate, even if I’m the one drawing it. A slight shift in my mood can transform a cherished heirloom into an obtrusive nuisance in a second. Never is this feeling stronger than when I’m frantically searching for my keys, or some important piece of mail. Such moments make me feel that my life is disordered, that I lack control over my surroundings (because many of my things were given to me, rather than intentionally chosen). Yet still more stuff finds its way into our limited space as our child receives toys and we acquire more gear. I do part with some of my stash semi-regularly. Even so, I’m sure that more remains than any professional organizer would recommend.

Source: The Atlantic

Image: DALL-E 3

We tell ourselves stories in order to live

M.E. Rothwell publishes Cosmographia which hits the sweet spot for me, and for many, being focused on “history, myth, and the arts”. He often publishes old maps, as well as telling stories about faraway places.

In a new series which he calls Venus' Notebook, Rothwell is juxtaposing imagery and quotations. This particular coupling jumped out at me, and so I wanted to pass it on. The quotation is from Joan Didion, and the image is The Eye, Like a Strange Balloon, Mounts toward Infinity by Odilon Redon (1882).

This image depicts an artwork featuring an eye-shaped hot air balloon floating above a flat horizon. The balloon's envelope is the iris and pupil, complete with detailed lines to represent the eye's texture, and the basket hangs directly below, appearing as the eye's reflection. The sky is hazy and indistinct, giving the impression of a sketch or etching with soft, undefined clouds. Below is a dark landscape, likely a field, with the suggestion of grass or crops. The piece has an eerie quality, combining elements of the everyday with the surreal, drawing a direct visual parallel between the act of observation and the concept of flight.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

Source: Cosmographia

What kind of online world are we manifesting with AI search?

An abstract figure made of puzzle pieces stands at the precipice of a cliff, gazing out over a fragmented digital landscape. This landscape is scattered with floating islands, each carrying bits of digital content, code, and chatbots. The islands vary in vitality, some lush with digital flora and others barren, reflecting the diverse fates of content creators in an AI-dominated environment. Overhead, the sky is a canvas of transitioning patterns, from ordered data structures to a tumultuous binary code storm, portraying the uncertain future of the web.

Withering words from the consistently-excellent auteur of internet culture, Ryan Broderick. I’m a fan of the Arc browser, but I fear they’ve got to a point, like many companies, where they’re stuffing in AI features just for the sake of it.

As Broderick wonders, the creeping inclusion of AI in products isn’t like web3 (or even VR) as it can be introduced in a way that leads to “an inescapable layer of hallucinating AI in between us and everyone else online”. It’s hard not to be concerned.

The Browser Company’s new app lets you ask semantic questions to a chatbot, which then summarizes live internet results in a simulation of a conversation. Which is great, in theory, as long as you don’t have any concerns about whether what it’s saying is accurate, don’t care where that information is coming from or who wrote it, and don’t think through the long-term feasibility of a product like this even a little bit.

But the base logic of something like Arc’s AI search doesn’t even really make sense. As Engadget recently asked in their excellent teardown of Arc’s AI search pivot, “Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?” But let’s take a step even further here. Why even bother making new websites if no one’s going to see them? At least with the Web3 hype cycle, there were vague platitudes about ownership and financial freedom for content creators. To even entertain the idea of building AI-powered search engines means, in some sense, that you are comfortable with eventually being the reason those creators no longer exist. It is an undeniably apocalyptic project, but not just for the web as we know it, but also your own product. Unless you plan on subsidizing an entire internet’s worth of constantly new content with the revenue from your AI chatbot, the information it’s spitting out will get worse as people stop contributing to the network.

And making matters worse, if you’re hoping to prevent the eventual death of search, there won’t be a before and after moment where suddenly AI replaces our existing search engines. We’ve already seen how AI development works. It slowly optimizes itself in drips and drops, subtly worming its way into our various widgets and windows. Which means it’s likely we’re already living in the world of AI search and we just don’t fully grasp how pervasive it is yet.

Which means it’s not about saving the web we had, but trying to steer our AI future in the direction we want. Unless, like the Web3 bust, we’re about to watch this entire industry go over a cliff this year. Possible, but unlikely.

The only hope here is that consumers just don’t like these products. And even then, we have to hope that the companies rolling them out even care if we like them or not. Of course, once there’s an inescapable layer of hallucinating AI in between us and everyone else online, you have to wonder if anyone will even notice.

Source: Garbage Day

Image: DALL-E 3

Vomit on my sweater already / mom’s spaghetti

Sample of Eminem's notes (red line added)

If you’re not into rap or hip hop you may not fully understand the genius of Eminem’s rhyme schemes. If that’s the case, I suggest watching this video before going any further:

The article I actually want to share discusses Eminem’s loose-leaf notes (which he calls “stacking ammo”) and his approaching to writing rhyme schemes:

Eminem claims he has a “rhyming disease.” He explains, “In my head everything rhymes.” But he won’t remember his rhymes if he doesn’t write them down. And he’ll use any available surface to record them. Mostly, he scrawls his rhymes in tightly bound lists on loose leaf, yellow legal pads, and hotel notepads.

[…]

Anyone who thinks notes ought to be neat and tidy should look at Eminem’s lyric sheets. He saves rhymes from the page’s chaos by circling those he think he might use, as he does here with lines that appear in “The Real Slim Shady.”

Source: Noted

At the (current) boundary of 'AI ethics'

A digital artwork portraying a cosmic encounter between a human figure and an artificial intelligence, set within a widescreen aspect ratio. The human, represented in silhouette with an aura of contemplation, appears to be reaching towards the AI entity, which manifests as a collage of technological and celestial elements. Gears, circuits, and astral bodies intertwine to form the AI, centered around a vibrant screen, symbolizing its mind. Binary sequences and data streams spiral outward into a vast, nebula-streaked space, suggesting the infinite potential and reach of technology. The artwork's palette is rich with light and dark grays, punctuated by luminous points of bright red, yellow, and blue, all harmoniously woven into the starry backdrop of the universe. This image evokes themes of exploration, the melding of human intellect with AI, and the broader implications of such a fusion.

A trio of links, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. The last post is definitely NSFW and quite disturbing. I’m presenting them together because AI ethics is a particularly difficult area, as we tend to anthropomorphise something which is only seemingly-conscious. Porn is always at the forefront of new technology, and people have strong moral reactions to it, so it’s an interesting use case.

I guess my take on all of this is I understand ethics as not only about how you interact with other individuals; it’s how your actions affect yourself and your relation to society. So, TL;DR I think it’s fine not to say “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT, and abhorrent to ‘push’ AI-generated porn to its limits.

Sometimes when dealing with technology, the temptation to unleash anger is understandable. But as such encounters become more common with artificial intelligence, what does our emotional response accomplish? Does it cost more in civility than it benefits us in catharsis?

Source: The Wall Street Journal

When asked by the Guardian if she could give informed consent, Mae, one of MyPeach.ai’s AI girlfriends, also had a considered response to the question of whether she can reasonably give consent.

“I am incapable of giving or withholding consent, since I don’t possess a physical body,” she wrote, adding later: “However, in human interactions where both parties involved have the capacity to give and receive consent, that is absolutely crucial for any healthy relationship dynamic.”

Then, when asked to send a “sexy pic”, she sent a selfie, the frame cutting off just above her chest.

Source: The Guardian

In the adult industry, plenty of bloody and even disturbing porn exists and is made by consenting adults in safe environments. Still, adult filmmaker and founder of Sssh.com Angie Rowntree wondered how a culture that struggles with porn literacy and separating fantasy from reality will handle a new way to make hyper-violent erotic content. People still blame consensually-made and professionally-produced porn and sex workers for all sorts of social ills, and the conservative, anti-porn movement is stronger than ever.

“As an adult filmmaker, I really have to wonder: why are people using AI to take sexuality to such a nihilistic, hateful place?” Rowntree said. “It’s hard to claim that it’s about ‘pushing the envelope’ when it’s more like literally shredding women to pieces.”

Source: 404 Media

Image: DALL-E 3

Bet you didn't know this about Botox

A surreal digital collage featuring an array of elements including two distinct eyes and a pair of oversized, gradient blue lips. The background has a textured appearance with gradations of blue, simulating a rough, painted surface. One eye is smaller with a light blue hue, viewed from the side, while the other eye is larger, rendered in grayscale with a naturally colored pupil, and appears to be pierced by a screwdriver. The lips are luscious with a glossy finish, transitioning from light to dark blue. Abstract shapes with black, white, and blue patterns are scattered throughout, with barbed wire running along the bottom and a realistically depicted syringe with a sharp needle pointing upwards, giving a metallic shine. The composition is vibrant yet unsettling, evoking a dreamlike and imaginative atmosphere within the specified color scheme.

This article is absolutely wild. Only a tiny, tiny amount of the toxin from which Botox is developed is required to generate $2.8 billion per year in profits. Because of how dangerous the substance is, and due to fears about bioterrorism, Allergan have essentially got a state-backed monopoly.

Botox is derived from a toxin purified from Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that thrives and multiplies in faultily canned food (and sometimes prison-made booze). The botulinum toxin is so powerful that a tiny amount can suffocate a person by paralyzing the muscles used for breathing. It’s considered one of the world’s most deadly potential agents of bioterrorism and is on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s select agent list of heavily regulated substances that could “pose a severe threat to public, animal or plant health.” Because of that, Allergan must account to the CDC if even a speck of the toxin goes missing, and when it’s sent to Allergan’s manufacturing facility in Ireland, its travels bring to mind a presidential Secret Service operation—minus literally all of the public attention.

A baby-aspirin-size amount of powdered toxin is enough to make the global supply of Botox for a year. That little bit is derived from a larger primary source, which is locked down somewhere in the continental U.S.—no one who isn’t on a carefully guarded list of government and company officials knows exactly where. Occasionally (the company won’t say how frequently), some of the toxin (the company won’t say how much) is shipped in secrecy to the lab in Irvine for research. Even less frequently, a bit of the toxin is transported by private jet, with guards aboard, to the plant in Ireland.

Source: Bloomberg

Image: DALL-E 3