-
Are Tech Stocks Overvalued?
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
A Response to Futurism's "CEOs Could Easily Be Replaced With AI, Experts Argue" and Similar Articles
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
I've seen a few articles like this one from Futurism: "CEOs Could Easily Be Replaced With AI, Experts Argue." I totally get the appeal, but these articles are more anti-labor than anti-CEO. Because CEOs can't actually be disciplined with threats of automation, these articles further entrench an inherently anti-labor logic, telling readers that losing our livelihoods to automation is part of some natural order, rather than the result of political decisions that benefit capital.
-
Why Is There an AI Hype?
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
Lots of skeptics are writing lots of good things about the AI hype, but so far, I've encountered relatively few attempts to explain why it's happening at all. Here's my contribution, mostly based Philp Agre's work on the (so-called) internet revolution, which focuses less on the capabilities of the tech itself, as most in mainstream did (and still do), but on the role of a new technology in the ever-present and continuous renegotiation of power within human institutions.
-
A Response to Mark Rober's Apologia for the Military-Industrial Complex in "Vortex Cannon vs Drone"
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
The video opens with Rober standing in front of a fancy-looking box, saying:
>Hiding inside this box is an absolute marvel of engineering you might just find protecting you the next time you're at a public event that's got a lot of people.
When he says "protecting you," the video momentarily cuts to stock footage of a packed sports stadium, the first of many "war on terror"-coded editorial decisions, before returning to the box, which opens and releases a drone. This is no ordinary drone, he says, but a particularly heavy and fast drone, designed to smash "bad guy drones trying to do bad guy things." He explains how "it's only a matter of time" before these bad guys' drones attack infrastructure "or worse," cutting to a photo of a stadium for the third time in just 30 seconds.
-
Mass Protests and the Danger of Social Media
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
In "If We Burn," Vincent Bevins recaps the mass protests of the 2010s. He argues that they're communicative acts, but power has no way of negotiating with or interpreting them. They're "illegible."
Here's a "yes and" to Bevins. I argue that social media companies have a detailed map of all protesters' connections, communications, topics of interests, locations, etc., such that, to them, there has never been a more legible form of social organization, giving them too much power over ostensibly leaderless movements.
I also want to plug Bevins's book, independently of my post. It's extremely well researched. For many of the things that he describes, he was there, and he productively challenges many core values of the movements in which I and any others probably reading this have participated.
-
The TikTok "Ban" and the Missing Leftist Response
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
[UPDATE] Nature's Folly: A Response to Nature's "Loneliness and suicide mitigation for students using GPT3-enabled chatbots"
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Daylight Savings and the Case for the Pre-Julian Calendar
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Reddit Will License Its Data to Train LLMs, So We Made a Firefox Extension That Lets You Replace Your Comments With Any (Non-Copyrighted) Text
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Need, Want, and Agency: Mapping the Digital User Experience
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
A Response to Nature's "Google AI has better bedside manner than human doctors — and makes better diagnoses"
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Guest post: The Playlist(s) Lie
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Digital Public Footpaths: A Policy Proposal for an Internet Right of Way
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
The Pornetariat: The Techno-Optimist Underclass
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
The Tyranny of Data and Its Digital War on Human Agency
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Why Are Teens Using TikTok for Mental Health Self-Diagnosis?
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist technology blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
A Statement on Technology in War
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Are Things Getting Worse? We Made A Website That Lets You Decide
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
One Year Update: Is This Thing On?
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
The Fractal Bloat
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
The Researchers Studying AI That Are Actually Producing Propaganda
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
Google Made Me Ruin A Perfectly Good Website: A Case Study On The AI-Generated Internet
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
(archive link) Infowars has picked up the story about kodama.ai, one of my example antisolutions
archive.md Bill Gates Funds Scheme to Chop, Bury Trees to Fight “Climate Change”Project aims to cut down tens of millions of acres of trees.
It seems this story is now going viral among "climate-skeptics" and the like.
I learned about this because I got a google alert that organic search traffic to my technological antisolutions post is way up. Turns out the conspiracy theory crowd caught wind of the company Bill Gates invested in that is cutting down and burying trees to sell carbon credits, kodama.ai, which I wrote about in that post. They're obviously going nuts about it.
These kinds of greenwashing schemes are functionally indistinguishable from climate denial, so it's really no surprise that people are confused and angry about it.
-
Cyberspatial Feudalism: Understanding Twitter's Rebrand, Worldcoin, and the Rest of Tech
theluddite.org The LudditeAn anticapitalist tech blog. Embrace the technology that liberates us. Smash that which does not.
-
A high profile technological antisolution in the wild
www.cnbc.com The big new Exxon Mobil climate change deal that got an assist from Joe BidenExxonMobil's first-of-its-kind relationship to capture carbon from other companies' factories could be the first in a wave boosted by Biden's climate policies.
The new Exxon carbon capture deal that Biden himself apparently helped broker is a perfect example. It checks all five of my criteria, but it really underscores the important of the fourth one: "It further entrenches existing power structures."
Carbon capture only exists because it allows capitalists to profit off creating the problem and its "solution." Technological Antisolutions maximize GDP in the climate emergency.
Original TA post: https://theluddite.org/#!post/technological-antisolutions-revisited
-
Microsoft and Maybelline have partnered to allow Teams' Enterprise users to virtually apply "digital makeup" using "AI-powered makeup filters.
www.theverge.com Microsoft introduces Maybelline beauty filters to TeamsEasy AI-powered virtual makeup for your work meetings.
It is now possible to exist in a permanent state of professionalism, safe from registering the humanity of our remote colleagues or divulging our own. Everyone in a virtual meeting should be a perfectly smooth-faced professional inhabiting a blurred void. Anything less would be unprofessional.
I hope they do voices next. We shouldn't be forced to listen to normal people's real voices in business meetings, especially women's, when we have the technology to do sexy voice filters.