Jeremy C.’s article What the Old Internet Was and Why it was Better will be on my mind today. Partially because it has some fantastic turns of phrase, partially because it explains a few of the legal and regulatory misfires that have led the internet to be what it is today, and partially because AI economics and wildly inflated valuations are the background radiation of life in 2026. Someone once said to me, “Remember, everything on the internet was put there by someone who wants it to be there. The…
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We named robots after forced labour. Then told them to be polite.
Bryan Carter’s stimulating essay about the ways LLM chatbots are designed to respond to us mirror certain trauma response left me troubled. We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the social impact of AI. This explores below the surface.
Remember The Learning Company?
The end of edutainment software wasn’t a natural evolution of the industry. It was brought about by greed, and orchestrated by one of my least favourite fellow Canadians.
Hank’s Very Valid Crashout
Something Hank Green and I have in common is a distaste for grifters and liars. Debunkings are a guilty pleasure for me. This one is a tour de force from Hank, dismantling a video from a Bloomberg reporter whose “explainer” serves a very specific agenda.
“Software Brain”
I’ve talked about the way that technology is becoming increasingly hostile to its users, and how so much of it feels kind of fake. While that’s not entirely what Nilay is talking about here, it does dig into the mindset that produces that outcome.