Good morning. I hope youāre doing well. Iām writing this at the end of a busy week that hasnāt left me much time to think about a specific subject, so this will probably be both short and a little unstructured.
After a lull in activity, it seems the Atlantic is firing up for a busy end-of-season. To remind you, Hurricane season is from June to November, with a peak in early September and a spike in October. Iām looking forward to the end of this season.
Source: NOAA - 30th September 2024
One of the things that I have prioritised over the last few years is the importance of reading articles over short posts on Social Media. Iām not particularly active on Social Media; in fact, I only have three accounts, and only one of them is on a major platform. I have a āprofessionalā account on LinkedIn, where I cross-post this article from time to time (Iāve automated it now, so it should be more frequent), and I have an account on Mastodon and one on Bluesky.
I tend to use these latter accounts for a little news and a little research. By curating a list of things Iām interested in, I avoid the usual traps of gamed social media that optimises for āengagementā (i.e., advertising) over real connectionļæ¼. My timeline tends to contain research papers and news articles from major and minor publishers. The downside is that I have a never-ending mass of documents and articles to read, which is impossible to do in the time I have.
To give you an example, hereās a list of the articles and documents I set aside to read in the coming days and weeks:
CYBER-ACTIVISM WITHIN THE GLOBAL DIGITAL DIVIDE: A CASE STUDY OF PERU - This Master thesis is from 2014. Iām interested in how we used to think about these topics a decade ago, and Iām wondering if things have changed and, if so, how.
Towards a Digital Politics of Multiplicity: Social Media Networks and Global Justice Politics - A paper from 2021 to help me think about Social Mediaās positive aspects. Iām a little net negative on social media. Having another perspective helps calibrate my thoughts.
THE CYBERSPACE MYTH AND POLITICAL COMMUNICATION, WITHIN THE LIMITS OF NETOCRACY - Another old-ish paper (2017) in Internet terms, but another one delving into the history of the Internet and the implications of its self-built myths.
The Politics of Cyberconflict - This is a long one, and Iām not sure I will get to read it all. But the title interested me, so I added it to the list. Itās another older paper from 2004, but again, it is helpful to understand how we thought of the Internet 10 to 20 years ago.
This is in addition to all the news articles and blog posts Iāve bookmarked for further reading:
āWe will coup whoever we want!ā: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros - The Guardian
An interesting analysis of fair use and generative models āĀ Baldur Bjarnason
Hacker plants false memories in ChatGPT to steal user data in perpetuity - Ars Technica
Signalās Meredith Whittaker: āI see AI as born out of surveillanceā - Financial Times
In other news concerning the Internet, the Web Foundation has announced that it has shut down. The foundation was the brainchild of none other than Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of hypertext and the web as we know it now. The foundation championed an inter-connected and decentralised web, only to have it steamrolled by the big social media companies with destructive business models. It is not the end for Tim. Heās going to concentrate on the Solid Protocol. I havenāt looked into it yet, so I donāt have an opinion. Itās on the list.
Itās probably a good point to remind you that, no, the free market didnāt innovate the Internet. It is entirely a project brought about by public funding, from the networks to the applications running on top.
Of note
Iāve started messing around with the site that hosts this text to try to customise it to my liking. Iāve made a couple of tweaks, and I hope I can do more in the future.
In order, I have modified the section divider in the text of these articles to show three stars (only on the website for the moment). Iāve always liked that look, but I couldnāt figure out how to modify the code to do that easily, so I gave up and prioritised other things. This weekend, I decided to make an effort and figured it out with some help from people on the forums. Thank you to them.
I renamed the Reading section āWorking Library.ā I like this term better because it better reflects what Iām doing with this list of books. The list is a bit of entertainment and a lot of learning, so it is more than a simple reading list.
The next big task is to improve the email newsletter template. It is rather rudimentary and utilitarian at the moment. That suits me fine, and I donāt expect to make it into one of those ghastly marketing ānewsletters.ā I just think it could do with a little spruce up here and there.
One thing that I should reiterate, if you didnāt know, is that both the website and the newsletter collect zero data on visitors. I have no idea if Iām writing into the void or not. I simply donāt know if the emails are being read or even if the site is being visited. Zero. The only way I can tell that the email is, in fact, being sent is the odd out-of-office message I get back from a subscriber.
I prefer to respect your privacy.
Hitting reply on the email will land in my inbox. Feel free to reach out.
Entering the last quarter of the year, thinking, āWhere the hell did the year go?ā. Have a great week.
