nostalgia for the “computer room” is often sentimentalism, but I do think the core dynamic it embodies - making the digital a discrete realm; something voluntary; partitioned from the ones rest of life, rather than intruding into every waking moment - is laudable
James Vincent
855 posts
author and journalist. wrote a history of measurement, BEYOND MEASURE; a New Yorker, Times, Economist book of the year. former senior editor @verge
- It's no surprise, but reading Curtis Yarvin's plan for his ideal polity (which includes a secret fraternity of airline pilots and a magic button that disarms all weapons) is like listening to an imaginative child explain how their lego fort is governed archive.is/4zSZT
- observations/assertions like this make me think about how infomatics - the modelling of the world through data rather than its "direct" observation - is becoming the dominant form of epistemology. the "fact itself" is being displaced by a model which recreates the fact
- can't wait for chatbots to be as diposable as LCD and the world becomes a constant hubub of inane personalities. getting motivational speeches from your toothbrush, arguing with your cigarettes about their health risks, getting cat-called by energy drinks in the supermarket
- if the AI moratorium makes it through, we really are heading down the accelerationist timeline in a bad way. AI regulation in the US (and in the west generally) will be in the hands of Big Tech and every trend we see now — for slop, misinformation, social substitution — increases
- Replying to @jjvincentas justin smith-ruiu has noted, the end of the old mode of science might be dated to 2024, when the nobel prize in physics was awarded to hopfield and hinton — not for any observation of the physical world, but for helping to model it using neural networks
- i saw Jacob Epstein’s Jacob and the Angel in person at the Tate Britain and was just blown away. quite impossible to convey its presence through pictures or words; just mesmerising physicality. the weight, the poses, the alabaster like deep space telescope imagery…
- i'd forgotten how melancholy this video is. shatner tries to explain to bezos the profundity of what he felt going up to space, but bezos is too distracted by the photo-opportunity, shouting over him: "give me a champagne bottle, i want one!"
- “Just as the crumple zone in a car is designed to absorb the force of impact in a crash, the human in a highly complex and automated system may become simply a component that bears the brunt of moral and legal responsibilities when the system malfunctions”The New York Times asked me for a new job that AI will create. I suggested "sin eater."
- w/r/t: recent outrage about fantasy-trope writers being caught with AI prompts in their texts. I think that if you treat books like fungible commercial units ('must have enemies-to-lovers, morally-grey, forced-marriage plot') then don't be surprised if authors do the same
- do i find the katy perry in space story depressing because it's yet another sign that space as a realm of dream and mystery is dying, enclosed by market forces, or because i just really dislikes katy perry's vibe and therefore everything she's involved with? bit of both i imagine
- the unavoidable, ugly truth is that big AI companies are killing the media industry: they're destroying the revenue streams of news, of publishers, of nonfiction titles - and this loss will impoverish the world and their own products
- Replying to @jjvincentyour parents hit by scam calls that mimic your voice; your children targeted by classmates using nudify apps; your bosses use spyware to monitor productivity. it's a slow degradation of living standards that benefits the wealthy who buy security and bolsters extremist politics
- i recently discovered a fantastic series from the 1980s on the mechanics of household appliances, all on youtube here youtu.be/CJlrbMHLBd4?fe… (for UK followers it's the work of tim hunkin, who runs Novelty Automation in london)










