NB: A young friend has brought to my notice what this gizmo says about me – its a farrago of lies and half truths. This machine makes me two years older than I am (which is old enough thank you); and attributes to me new-age kind of mumbo-jumbo statements which I have never made. ChatGPT… Read More Noam Chomsky says ChatGPT is a form of High-Tech Plagiarism
Guardian revelations about the scale and reach of deliberate misinformation prove the need to reset our internet Peter Pomerantsev In 1996, John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and guru of Silicon Valley’s hippy-tech idealists, wrote a stirring utopian manifesto about the future of the internet. Addressing the leaders of the world order gathered… Read More The web is a Blade Runner nightmare, but there is a way to stem the tide of lies
First posted June 19, 2016 Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism by Judy Wajcman Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age by Bernard E. Harcourt Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art by Virginia Heffernan Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Mood and… Read More In the Depths of the Digital Age: Edward Mendelson reviews five books on psychological life in the age of the internet / We Are Hopelessly Hooked: Jacob Weisberg
Tess McClure in Auckland On Thursday, the prime minister said abuse or threats to her and her family had not been a decisive factor in her decision to resign, and that she simply “no longer [had] enough in the tank to do it justice”. Prominent New Zealand political leaders and public figures, however, say that “constant vilification,” abuse… Read More Jacinda Ardern: political figures believe abuse and threats contributed to PM’s resignation
Stephanie Kirchgaessner A prominent pro-reform law professor in Saudi Arabia was sentenced to death for alleged crimes including having a Twitter account and using WhatsApp to share news considered “hostile” to the kingdom, according to court documents seen by the Guardian. The arrest of Awad Al-Qarni, 65, in September 2017 represented the start of a crackdown against dissent by… Read More Saudi Arabian academic on death row for using Twitter and WhatsApp
Anton Cebalo Ever since a notorious chart showing that fewer people are having sex than ever before first made the rounds, there’s been increased interest in the state of America’s social health. Polling has demonstrated a marked decline in all spheres of social life, including close friendships, intimate relationships, trust, labor participation and community involvement. The continuing… Read More Is America suffering a ‘social recession’?
Emine Saner It was when Mehret Biruk lost two hours of her life to Instagram that she knew the time had come to escape. What had she been looking at? She couldn’t even remember in the moments immediately afterwards. Instagram, she recalls thinking, was “winning the war on my attention”. The irony was that Biruk… Read More What it’s like to have a social media detox
A number of prominent journalists who have reported on Twitter and its new chief executive Elon Musk appeared to have been suspended or banned from the platform. The Twitter account for a rival social media company, Mastodon, where some Twitter users have migrated after Musk’s takeover of Twitter, also appeared to have been suspended. In a series… Read More The ‘free speech’ advocate suspends accounts of several journalists who had reported on Elon Musk
After decades of spectacular “move fast and break things” growth, Zuckerberg’s empire is now looking a little fragile. Meta’s share price has fallen by more than 70% this year. Moneyspinners Facebook and Instagram are losing market share and Gen Z users to fresher rivals like TikTok and Snapchat. Apple’s changes to data privacy last year also decimated revenues – its introduction of an… Read More Is Facebook losing its $100bn gamble on virtual reality?
Jeremy Gilbert Alex Williams The Musk-Twitter apocalypse is a symptom of a much bigger crisis. To avoid a bleak future we have to bring the big platforms under our control Within the tech world, the most significant development of the past two years has been the collapse of the profit-making model described by Shoshana Zuboff… Read More Big Tech is failing. The future of democracy depends on what happens next
After the truth-shower 