matthewcowen.org

What would an article be if it didn’t mention AI? 🤦‍♂️

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 20:01:26 -0400

A bit of a pick and mix issue this time. I wanted to get a couple of subjects written down before I forgot or moved on to other matters.

I talk mostly about infrastructure in this issue, IXPs, domains, and so forth. But there’s a way too short discussion on digital sovereignty which merits much deeper analysis, and I hope to dig in at some point in the future.

As always, thanks for reading and let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

Potential Caribbean collateral damage in an AI crash

If there has ever been a product or service that has been hyped to levels previously unseen, it is Artificial Intelligence. Regardless of which type of AI we’re talking about, it seems to occupy a space in-between a little bit of usefulness in some areas, to the wildest dreams even Science Fiction writers couldn’t dream up. And the systematic dumbing down and mis-attribution to AI of what is actually being used has been exploited to death for the profit of the few, and to the detriment of the many, in my view. I’ve discussed my thoughts on AI, and I stand by my position that calling everything AI is not only stupid, but potentially dangerous.

Additionally, I don’t think it is controversial to state that the promises of ‘AI’ have been over-blown ¹ and that the ROI is starting to look a little sketchy, although perhaps not in enough time and force before the AI oligarchs cash out with their shady IPOs.² Let alone the amount of digital asbestos we’re baking in to apps currently been vibe-coded by the token maxxing bros.³ ⁴ But we’re starting to get into the next phase of evaluation, where companies, journalists (FT as an example of a high profile publication) and influential individuals are starting to expect more from the tools based on what has been promised, and the tools are just not capable of delivering consistently and accurately. Sure, the technology is cool, but world-changing or crisis-solving good? Clearly not, and it is not going unnoticed.

The whole industry is starting to look more like wish-casting than solid business fundamentals of a good product that fits a need, and that need is large and pervasive. And here’s the crucial part, that its costs are marginal enough to ensure the companies make a profit. You know, a real business! The parallels to the Web3, Crypto, Blockchain scammers is uncanny, and again, I’m not the first to point this out. But number go up, even if it is pure fantasy.

But like so many of these types of things, the FOMO, the religiosity and greed outweigh all reasonable evaluation and critical thinking. Because so many boosters are so visible all the time, people who should know better are duped into ‘believing’ and enter into a business with little to no expertise and a belief that they’ll be the exceptional one that doesn’t get scammed. It rarely works out.

But there’s another angle to this, something closer to home. There is one country that has been the beneficiary of this insane Tulip Mania ⁵.

Anguilla.

If you don’t know, Anguilla is the designated owner of the .ai ccTLD domain. So each time you visit a site with .ai at the end, it will have been purchased (rented, in reality) from the small island’s internet registry. To give you can idea of the scale, Anguilla earned just over $85 million US last year, out of a nominal GDP of around $415 million US, according to UN estimates. So around 20% of GDP. That’s a big chunk of the economy. And it fuelled around 50% of the government’s revenue. ⁶ Prices on .ai domains are ludicrous at the moment, with asking prices often over ten times the amount for the same name of domain but as a .org or .com.

But this market is showing signs of a pause, with transaction volume declining 3% this year compared to last, and the talk of “bubble” becoming louder more frequent.⁷ Despite some natural consolidation in there, the underlying fear is that a real bubble burst could have a significant effect on Anguilla’s economy through the decimation of the .ai domain rental business. Imagine having 20% of your income taken away. It’s going to hurt. That’s something akin to 3 Brexit’s-worth of GDP destruction.

I hope they haven’t put all their eggs in one basket, otherwise they’re going to have to dig deeper in offshore fraud services, sorry, financial services.

Digital Sovereignty. Don’t confuse with Nationalism.

For all the talk —justified or not— about digital sovereignty, and as something that I have been part of, I should be clear about my stance, the dangers of overplaying sovereign things, and how quickly that can devolve into nationalism and far right politics faster than we can do anything to prevent negative outcomes of a nationalistic far-right driven Internet.

It is a difficult subject because it is so damn complicated. Yes. There should be sovereign tech. No. Tech shouldn’t be used for nationalism or fascism and uses beyond those that are beneficial to the public.

But there in lies the problem. What we’ve so naively enabled, is an industry that has shown its true colours lately, by becoming entirely embedded in a nationalistic and authoritarian project. From the use and abuse of facial recognition technologies in cameras that surveil and wrongly arrest innocent people, making incorrect decisions about their right to access a place or a service, to the abuse of data that was hitherto difficult, if not impossible to access across sectors and departments, enabling automated conclusions that could seriously put in danger whole swathes of the population.

Of course it was good to have some data being used for citizens benefit, but when it is employed to restrict and oppress, it suddenly becomes the tool of Neo-fascist project. And there are plenty of examples in and around the Caribbean that are dangerously teetering on the brink of this outcome. Perhaps the one saving grace is the total chaotic nature of the regulations in place across the Caribbean. I’ve advocated, and still do, for a harmonisation of much of the regulation when it comes to digital technologies. But I am now much more sensitive to the possibility for that to be poorly written, badly implemented, and at risk of digital colonialism gaining a strong foothold, which, would be detrimental to people in the region. I would advocate for something more like the European Union model, which despite its flaws it is currently one of the models that seems to be more egalitarian and democratic, if sclerotic in implementation. But hang on. I’m not advocating for a copy/paste of the EU in the Caribbean, merely some inspiration of the form and the democratic and social values of the EU. The Caribbean is uniquely placed, through the toils of history, and it could easily surmount some of the local difficulties, if there were political will. Which there isn’t currently. Some premiers seem hell-bent on being the Caribbean MAGA, in what I consider shameful behaviour.

And that saddens me.

RIP IXP?

There has been a lot of effort and work put into developing the IXP infrastructure in the Caribbean. But recent trends are starting to indicate that this might have been all in vain.

If you’re not familiar with IXPs, they are essentially routing infrastructure and legal agreements between parties, usually Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that when faced with ‘local’ traffic, route that traffic through the local IXP rather than routing it through the global network and in most cases provoking that that traffic exists the local area and re-enters after taking a round-the-houses route to get back to the user. It speeds up the Internet for users and keep costs of international ingress/egress down. Yep. It costs money to send internet traffic around the world!

But recent trends in the way operators and large-scale internet companies —think of a word beginning with ‘M’ and ending with ‘a’— are developing are calling into question the very existence of IXPs. No panic! IXPs are not going to disappear tomorrow, if at all. But some very real commercial decisions are having an impact and causing some of these companies to deploy caches (or distribution points) at the regional level, thus nulling the need to local-level IXPs, in their eyes. That puts pressure on the IXPs as they become more and more relegated to route less and less traffic, and therefore become less and less useful. The ISPs don’t care too much either. In fact just judging their implication in Caribbean IXPs should give you pause for thought. Absence is the word that springs to mind.⁸

I remember when I was researching some of the infrastructure around the Caribbean for a large-scale report, and through a personal acquaintance, I spoke to an infrastructure manager at a large multi-national ISP and content provider (that extra part is important). He bluntly told me that they had no interest in participating in the IXP system, as they could simply give Google, or Meta, or any large internet content company and call, and have them send over a cache to slap into their rack. For free. Isn’t capitalism great?

It appears to me that not only on the surface of the Internet, but in the user-facing areas, there is an all-out war on your eyeballs so they can dominate and control our use of the Internet absolutely, utterly, and completely. And at the same time that war is being carried out in the backroom engineering departments of those same organisations to control the global Internet over and above that of world governments. And believe me, they will not stop, unless they are regulated to do so.

I’m not going to make a judgment here (just yet) on whether IXPs are “good” technology or not. But what I will say, is that it is much more complicated and nuanced that most would imagine, and that many parties have skin in the game, or to put it another way, personally enriching incentives, to promote their side of the story.

I’m currently still researching a number of aspects of this debate, which is much wider than routing crap from Instagram to your smartphone. I’ll be back with more.

I hope you enjoy my writing and if you wish to reach out, please do.

Peace.

Updates and a podcast 🎙️

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:22:55 -0400

If you haven’t visited my site before and only read these things through email, may I ask you go and have a look at the site. It’s matthewcowen.org, and I have been dipping into the world of CSS styles and such. I’ve added a preferred font for the site, styled the text and paragraphs better and messed with the dividers. Rather than have the thousands of words on the home page, I changed it to include first paragraph summaries with an invitation to “Read more…” as well as simplifying titles —I was trying to be too clever. The last thing I did is add Dark Mode for those of you who prefer that on your operating system of choice. It’s automatic, you don’t have to do anything.

I think the posts look a lot more professional now having tweaked and wrangled the underlying theme to my will. Oh, I just had to get rid of the American date formatting too!

The site is not without its issues —and I hope to fix a couple of them over the coming weeks— but I’m pretty happy with where the site is now.

If you spot anything odd, please let me know, and I will resolve it as soon as possible.

If all goes well, the newsletter formatting has changed too, and it should look a little more like the site. This part is a work in progress, so expect some changes over the coming newsletters sent by email.

Podcast appearance

I was invited to take part in the Community Chat on the ICT Pulse Podcast, as podcast I have had the privilege to participate on numerous times.

You can get it on your podcast app of choice, or anywhere that furnishes good podcasts.

You can have a look at the show notes here and search for any episode.

I shared the episode with Esmeralda Levens-Wijngaarde of Blyce in Curaçao, and it was a really interesting discussion, one that is difficult and challenging to navigate. But I think we did a good job of it.

From the show notes:

THE TOPICS DISCUSSED

One of the most fundamental issues shaping the region’s digital future is sovereignty in the digital age. As Caribbean countries rely increasingly on foreign-owned infrastructure, platforms and cloud services, questions arise around who controls critical systems, where data is stored and processed, and who ultimately has access to that data. These issues are not purely technical; they touch on national security, economic resilience, regulatory authority and the ability of states to design policies that reflect local priorities. Hence our very first topic was, How important are sovereign systems, dataflows and data access for the Caribbean region?

We then discussed The AI hype cycle and the pressure to adopt. AI is widely portrayed as an unavoidable leap forward, creating pressure on governments and organisations to adopt quickly or risk being left behind. For Caribbean policymakers and institutions, the challenge is not whether AI is important, but how to separate genuine, context-appropriate opportunities from inflated expectations.

Finally, there is growing uncertainty around other once-celebrated technologies. Web3, blockchain and decentralised platforms were heralded as tools that could democratise finance, reshape the internet and empower small states and creators. Today, enthusiasm has cooled, investment has become more selective and practical use cases are being re-examined. However, a recent article in the Cayman Compass stated that the Cayman Islands had made some major strides towards becoming a global centre for Web3 businesses, which led us to ask, Web3: Is it still a thing?

As always, my thanks to Michele Marius for hosting me, and a big thank you to Esmeralda. I’m really looking forward to the book!

Thanks for reading and I look forward to writing more articles for you in 2026.

Artificial Intelligence and what I really think

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:30:00 -0400

I’ve been remarkably quiet about AI on this newsletter. I think it is time to change that. Upfront, this is a long one. Enjoy.

I conducted a search on all the writing I have done on this newsletter about AI since its inception (not other places I write, only here) and I have mentioned AI 17 times. I first mentioned in 2019, where I naively discussed the generalisation of AI for automation, which, I essentially, argued that manufacturing robots and automated lines would be boosted through AI to make things more efficient. A full two years before the outing of ChatGPT. Naively, because I fell into the trap that so many people do currently by not defining ‘which’ type of AI they are talking about. Today, the term is used in a dangerously reductive form, suggesting to many that all AI is chatbot Large Language Models (LLM). I was, of course, talking specifically about Machine Learning (ML) at the time, but you’ll have to believe me. I was aware of GPT models from around 2017/2018, where they had been used by malware actors to ‘mimic’ text in emails to avoid anti-spam detection and target specific users using classic social engineering. But they were nowhere near as sophisticated back then.

Since then, I have discussed AI in terms of use on so-called Big Data, taking care to discuss the downsides and risks of using data in too much of a cavalier fashion. I saw demonstrations during a conference where ML was successfully used to help organise masses of invoices imported from PDF copies. Clearly a great demo, but how many businesses are faced with that situation? Typically, businesses will need to digest data on an ongoing basis (as backups serve the purpose of restoration in the event of catastrophe), but the savings in time are small in the instant, although they add up over a year or so. Obviously, the pandemic turbocharged the idea of using AI and I discussed that a little, and presented to a wide audience some of the trends I had been noticing that would affect the Caribbean as a whole during a conference.

In September 2020, I rightly observed that NVIDIA was about to go from being a well-known PC graphics card company to being the backbone of everything AI, by a freak of luck in how mathematics works. Side note: I was talking about ARM a lot, too, and that it was headed to greater things in computing hardware —five years later and the benefits of the architecture are apparent. Subsequently, I have only in passing, mentioned how AI (again, I poorly defined what I was talking about) was going to become more and more mainstream, but it was last on a list of things like Cloud Computing, Digital Transformation, Regulation, Security, and Mis/Dis-information! If I had to try to explain, I would suggest that, even back then, whilst I saw some use for it, I was much more sceptical in its transformative capacity than most.

In Computational, I discussed how the robots were going to take over, but not in the way you think. Then in February, I relayed some feelings and responses that I had been seeing first hand from training sessions I had been giving for local businesses interested in the technology. Even then, I was circumspect about the universal usefulness and the risks of using it. I wrote:

It is clear to me that I have been surprised by the interest from such a broad range of managers and business leaders for a product that is so technical and so linked to ICT. The OpenAI hype machine has galvanised the public into believing that these tools can make them one hundred or more times as efficient for 100 times less money than they are spending at the moment (on personnel). This, of course, is not true at all, and I find I have to temper expectations and canalise those runaway thoughts they often have about generative AI and how it will make every person redundant.

I don’t think discussing accuracy, efficiency or other measures of “intelligence” is helpful at this stage, as these systems are changing rapidly. To give you an example, I have had to modify the training materials no less than ten times in the last six months. I would suggest a wait-and-see approach before integrating them into fundamental or central processes in your businesses that would provoke significant consequences in the case of error or failure. I would also suggest you integrate human-based verification and validation to the output generated to ensure you don’t fall foul of mis and dis-information, obviously wrong answers, and poor analysis that these LLMs can produce. That doesn’t mean that I don’t support the use of them. Please do. However, please don’t rely on them too much, as you may be sorely disappointed and dissatisfied with the results.

This is just to lay the ground about how I currently feel about LLMs and AI in general.

Not all AI is the same

Generally, I think it is important to be clear about what it is you’re talking about. If two or more people are ostensibly talking about the same subject, then it is imperative that all parties are using a common working definition. This is often not the case when discussing AI, and this failing is actively exploited by firms and individuals for their gain. For example, many people like to discuss “freedom of speech”, particularly in an online context. But what most ignore, is that that definition is not the same for the entire world. The European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights changed their definition from “Freedom of speech” to “Freedom of expression”. Notice the difference. Speech was too limited in scope, in that an act was not counted. With freedom of expression and act (symbolic speech), is included. When you ‘like’ something on the Internet, you’re not speaking, but your actions are a form of expression that you have made public. Of course, we can get into all sorts of debates about what the ‘like’ button actually means and the “correct” meaning of freedom, etc, but that’s not the object of this discussion.

When talking about AI, what people seem to be talking about is LLM chatbots. This reductive use of the term is dangerous, and it lets the firms that want to control our collective experience of the Internet dictate the terms and use of the definition. It is dangerous because those uninitiated in the technology might think that a system that was fully automated and reliably accurate was run on ChatGPT. Perhaps encouraging them to invest to implement tools in their processes, only to find that for some odd reason their system doesn’t work so well. Have you spotted what’s wrong? Of course, an LLM is a statistical next-word generator and a Machine Learning (ML) algorithm is something entirely different with behaviours and outputs that cannot be compared with an LLM. This example should also make you think about the ultimate use of the outcomes. What if, for example, a dataset was being used to determine whether a person receives a live-saving benefit or not, ultimately determining if the person will live or die. Is it acceptable to misuse the term AI, then?

Where do I stand on LLMs?

Off the bat, I should be clear about my feelings on the technology. Separating everything, and looking purely at the technological prowess of LLMs, it is clear to me that there are some advances that are significant and that certain use cases in processing natural language, for example, may prove useful.

This statement, you should notice, is not particularly a full-on endorsement, nor a definitive and tranchant position. Why is one’s cul entre deux chaises?

For me, it comes down to several issues that, on balance, feel deeply problematic for me. Unless you’ve been disconnected from the Internet and hidden yourselves from international news, it should come as no surprise that LLM technology has been used for the most revolting and criminal behaviours we have seen, and slowly integrating itself in military applications, such as aiding a full on genocide in Gaza. Is it the fault of the LLMs themselves? Well, in part, absolutely. And, more specifically, it is the fault of the engineers and the managers who develop these systems as much as it is the fault of the end users who willingly partake in the production of these outputs.

I feel like I shouldn’t need to go into this in detail, but every so often I wonder. Briefly, an LLM is the product of its ingested and calculated material. The very fact that the ingress data is as biased, misrepresentative of the world, and rotten, it should be no surprise that the egress would be anything but similar. The fact that this is frequently denied, misdiagnosed, misinterpreted and misrepresented should tell enough about what you should think of the companies developing these systems. You, alone, should decide where you fit on that scale.

I, myself, am deeply troubled by the cavalier attitude to the use and misuse of data that in some cases is open (i.e. free to access, use, and reuse), but in numerous instances is clearly protected material that has been misappropriated and has no place in the training datasets being used by the LLM-makers without consent.

But I think the most egregious ‘fault’ of the LLM-makers is their consistent false narratives about efficacy, productivity and probity of what are, provably, just next-word-prediction-calculators. Am I saying there is no use, and they are a waste of time? Please re-read the first paragraph in this section.

The way LLM-makers aggressively push their services with demonstrably false claims is nothing short of disgraceful. They have won over the public with two strategies, that I think they chanced upon, rather than plotting world domination like “The Brain”. The first is the age-old trick of the door-to-door salesmen used to sell you crap, that at first glance looks fucking amazeballs, but in subsequent use, you realise that you’ve been had. The first time you type a request into a chatbot, and it blurts a bunch of text about a subject that you’re interested in, it seems quite impressive, and, to be fair, the prose is not terribly written —for that see my writing.😃 But on closer inspection, particularly if you are an expert in the subject, you start to notice areas of supposition, lack of detail, poor factual datapoints, and often, invented information that doesn’t exist. I recently read a quote that went something like this:

It’s weird. When I ask ChatGPT to tell me something about a topic I don’t know much about, it is really good and shows a level of understanding that is impressive. But when I ask it something about a subject I am an expert in, I find so many mistakes that it is not always that useful.

If you thought Dunning-Kruger reading that quote, you pass Go and Collect €200.

I’ll give you an example, one that I use in my training. We ask the LLM of choice to explain why there are so many traffic problems in Martinique. The answers look convincing and are plausible at first glance. And, not dissimilar to a stopped clock being correct twice a day, they even hit upon the ‘real’ reasons from time to time. On inspection, however, they frequently offer up stereotypical (and, just shy of prejudiced) explanations. From them being the fault of tourists creating traffic jams (laughably implausible), to offering up that the islands are mountainous (true) with poor roads in these parts (true) and that contributes. For clarification, there are no regular traffic jams in the mountains. But, as mentioned, there are explanations, such as rush hour, a concentration of economic activity, poor public transport, and others. Yes! It got it right. Oh! What? That’s true for pretty much any place in the world where the conditions align, did you say? Like every town in the world?

The other way the LLM-makers try to exercise control over the narrative, leading you to believe their immense and super human powers, is by a simple technique of anthropomorphisation.¹ As humans, we’re hardwired to see and feel human-like qualities in things. Just as we see a face in the frontend of a car, we see and feel an intense emotion to believe what is written in front of us is human-like. Coupled with our own achilles heel of confirmation bias (a phenomenon that we’re all vulnerable to) we can easily fall into the trap of trust in the outputs.² ELIZA was the first real-world example of this, and today’s LLMs are no different.

But there is a difference today. The LLM-makers are actively exploiting that human weakness. They are deliberately using anthropomorphising terminology when talking about these statistical next-word calculators. They use terms like “thinking”, “he/she”, “feels”, “understands” among others. These are conjurer’s tricks to avoid disbelief of the act being performed. They are also very dangerous. The sleight of hand being performed, at its heart, is to displace responsibility from the humans creating and operating these systems onto the computer program, as if a computer has rights and, more importantly, responsibilities like humans do. The desired outcome is to ensure that they are never held accountable for horrific consequences. Like the suicide of a teenager, who, on advice and encouragement from ChatGPT killed himself.³ See also the deepfake child pornography site formerly known as Twitter.

It is not new either. This from 1976:

If a researcher … calls the main loop of his program “UNDERSTAND,” he is (until proven innocent) merely begging the question. He may mislead a lot of people, most prominently himself. … What he should do instead is refer to this main loop as “G0034,” and see if he can convince himself or anyone else that G0034 implements some part of understanding. … Many instructive examples of wishful mnemonics by AI researchers come to mind once you see the point.

My source: https://www.techpolicy.press/we-need-to-talk-about-how-we-talk-about-ai/

Then we arrive at a highly disputed topic concerning the development and operation of LLMs, that of the power and cooling necessary to run huge GPU farms destined for training and operating to reply to your frivolous little chat to find a recipe for tonight’s supper.

Currently, the debate about the power use of LLM-makers is either presented as something that is accelerating the destruction of the planet due to the burning of evermore fossil fuels to power datacenters, to a use that is, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential. This is a highly disputed topic and one that I don’t have clear answers for, but there have been a number of reports and studies that show that these systems do indeed use a lot more energy than previously estimated. I know there are plenty of reports bounding around that show that the LLMs only use marginal amounts of electricity and cooling and that we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads with that and carry talking to our digital mistresses and making unsavoury content on the previously mentioned deepfake child pornography site.

In 1964, the Surgeon General of the United States of America released the first report on smoking and health. It concluded that smoking was:

A cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men
A probable cause of lung cancer in women
The most important cause of chronic bronchitis

But this was after the tobacco industry had released their report, in 1954 entitled “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers” whereby they proceeded to tell people that smoking was not detrimental to health. The tobacco companies all ‘knew’ that this was a lie, but they kept peddling it until the lie was untenable and enough evidence had accumulated that they finally caved sometime around 1999. (Read that date again).

I believe what we are witnessing with the LLM-makers is the same dynamic being played out, albeit at 2020s speeds. I believe the LLM-makers are fully aware and are deliberately holding off granting full and unbridled access and analysis because it will be shown to be worse than most people think. I believe they are doing so because they have started to enjoy the smell of their own farts about a statistical next-word guesser ‘finding and innovative solution to the world’s energy issues’. It is delusional, and in saner times would have most of us recommending psychiatric treatment to these people.

Possibly the biggest issue of all, however, is that it seems the amount of money required to keep the lights on currently —and required in the near future— cannot be sustained to the point at which a bubble (multiple bubbles?) will burst faster than on a silly TV game show.

This essay is already very long, so I’ll spare you the excruciating detail, there are plenty of others who have and have done a much better job than I could.⁴ Suffice to say that the money required to build a datacenter, plus the costs of training the models, added to the costs of running the applications for each query far outweighs the revenues, to a point that multiple tens of billions of dollars are being lost in the industry per quarter and there is absolutely no path to profit for the foreseeable future.

Add to that the development of free and open models from the competition that effectively reduce the ‘value’ of an LLM to zero, and that makes the situation much harder for the hyperscalers. Finance bros and tech bros like to talk about “moats”, ignorant that they weren’t the great defences they are cracked up to be. In other words, why would you pay, if you could get access to something similar for free? Probably jingoistic tendencies, if we’re honest, but that won’t be enough of a population to help turn a healthy profit with today’s systems. The confluence of the previously discussed inefficacy and mild productivity gains in certain circumstances would lead us to understand that something has to correct or reset. Not the boosters, though. Oh, no. If anything, they say it “proves” that they need more money, not less. Like a homeopathy peddler convinced that even less of the active ingredient makes the medicine stronger. (I use the term medicine lightly here, as I’m sure you’re aware).

What have I done, and what am I doing going forward?

Well, those are two different questions of course, but if I were to summarise, it’s a combination of limited use, mindful language when discussing these systems, and taking care and time to train people on the regulatory implications, policy, as well as the negative aspects of LLM use to help provide a fair and balanced understanding of a toolset that has for now become imbedded in today’s computer use.

As far as use goes. I very rarely use them, and I never use the outputs directly in any work I produce. I have and will use them now and again for ideation, or to get the “motor kickstarted”, where I sometimes find them helpful to combat procrastination and other difficulties. Sometimes, longer form outputs can be helpful for structure, ideas and general pointers. I’ve recently used Claude to help me resolve a couple of formatting issues in the .css on a Hugo-based system. They were helpful, but not the panacea the vibe-coding fraternity will have you believe. Leading me in circles at times, but giving me enough of a pointer to find real help that actually resolved the issue. Note: I use grammar-checkers that are increasingly “AI-powered”, so it is difficult to totally avoid LLM use when writing.

When I’m training, I take time to explain how LLMs work in simple terms then quickly move on the uses and abuses of the LLMS, the back end excesses, the atrocious conditions of the moderators, the risks of data privacy breaches, the risks of being had by the machine and I take time to stress that any use of the system unequivocally requires responsibility and expertise. If you abdicate your responsibility over to an LLM, you will regret it. As experts in a given field or subject, you should maintain expertise and only use the systems for assistance. If you are not an expert in a topic, and you rely too heavily on the output of an LLM, you are playing with fire, as plenty of legal personnel have found to their detriment. There have been plenty of fabricated legal texts submitted through the use of LLMs, in Turkey, Austria, Brazil, the USA, Czech Republic, Argentina, …need I list them all?⁵ I confront the racialised and racist outputs generated, and give advice on how to spot them, as well as explaining how that happens —hint: 💩in = 💩out.

I don’t know what the LLMs will eventually become, but I do know that the current mindset of the devs and operators, including the tech bros behind them are not the right path, and it is something that requires correction soon.

One last point I’d like to include here, and something that merits more discussion in the future, is that a cult belief has recently been born out of fear of a bubble bursting, that it doesn’t matter if there’s a crash because it’ll leave all this lovely datacenter infrastructure available for future innovation, just like the fiber deployments in the USA did after the dot-com crash of 2002. (Not true). TBC.

Thanks for reading.

Have a most excellent week.

The Free Dictionary: To ascribe human characteristics to things not human. ↩︎
Confirmation bias - Wikipedia ↩︎
We can argue specifics, if you want. I’m open to discussion ↩︎
Read Ed Zitron, for example. A cursory search will find many more. ↩︎
Taken from the OECD AI Incidents and Hazards Monitor ↩︎

It’s bullshit, and it always was

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 05:00:00 -0400

It’s bullshit and it always was. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail here, but I think it is important for to take note on where I stand about some of the things that are happening in the world of tech. I’m not sure that I’m ready to share certain parts of that discussion just yet, butI do think that I’ll address them in good time.

When I started to think about writing recently, I remembered that I started this blog, and the ideas behind pre-blog, a long time ago. I’ve been an off and on blogger for over 20 years. Back then, I had a profound sense of optimism about tech and how it would transform society. Oh boy, was I naive! I really thought that tech would be used in ways that would make things better for most people, if not all. There was a certain inevitability to it. And sure enough, little by little, things improved for a few and then —like my favourite Hemingway quote— it suddenly got awful for everyone except the few. And it all happened so quickly. I think that we’re all a little punch-drunk from what’s happening in tech and almost certainly not seeing it for what it is, and we seem to be blindly falling into outcomes that are not just inconvenient, but downright dangerous for society. And that’s a lot of what this note is mostly about.

You can’t code your way out of social problems

I think I should pause here and tell you that I have not become “anti-tech”. I still think that technology can play a significant role in the betterment of the world. What has changed since my youthful positivity for technology, is a profound understanding that technology alone is not enough to fix things. Code also creates new problems that need to be solved. But the biggest issue is the people behind the tech companies and what they’re doing in the world.

It used to be said that “build it, and they will come” (I still hear it regularly). But It’s bullshit, and it always was. There is a belief that those that built tech-focused companies and made millions or billions somehow are ’superior’ to the rest of us. It’s bullshit, and it always was. There is a belief that tech is inevitable and that we must get onboard or be left behind. It’s bullshit, and it always was. I’ll discuss that another time. For now, this note is about a one of those people I mentioned above, and how he’s trying to impose his will on a small island developing state, namely Saint Kitts and Nevis.

ARIN AC elections results

Update on the ARIN elections. I didn’t get voted on to the Advisory Council this time around, and I didn’t disgrace myself with the number of votes I obtained. I’ll put myself forward again in the future, as places become available.

A grotesque vision for Nevis

Earlier, I read that an early Bitcoin “investor”, Olivier Janssens, a Saint Kitts and Nevis’ Citizenship by Investment scheme (CBI) beneficiary, has been buying up land and now proposes to set up a “state-within-a-state” called Destiny. He has denied this, of course, but evidence about his beliefs would suggest otherwise.

The CBI, as you may know, is a way that relatively rich people can “buy” their second citizenship from a smaller nation for a fee. Although the list of countries authorised for visa-free travel is rapidly diminishing with recent changes in Europe and the USA. It is difficult to imagine the reasons why citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis is so important to him.

Typically, people buy their ‘citizenship’ to obtain visa-free entry into Europe or the USA. Presumably because a) its such a massive burden to apply for a visa that several hundred thousand dollars is worth it to avoid the paperwork, or b) their past is murky and would likely be rejected if they applied directly, or c) they think themselves as above mere mortals as you and me, and that they have the inalienable right to do whatever they want using cash as their fast track ticket, however immorally that wealth was attained. ¹ So why the link with Bitcoin?

It seems that Janssens is an early Bitcoin investor (clearly he ‘made’ a lot of money),and a co-founder of Freedom Investment Group, that seems to have abruptly shut down in November. Possibly unrelated, but an interesting data point nonetheless. It’s difficult to get a handle on what the organisation is and —there are plenty of real estate agents with the same name—, but the Libertarian vibes are all over it. He was also a board member of the Bitcoin Foundation, that had its tax-exempt status revoked in 2022 for “… not filing a Form 990-series return or notice for three consecutive years”, and seems to have been trying to take over the foundation with a $100K “bounty” to “replace the Bitcoin Foundation”.²

What is more relevant, and in relation to the Caribbean, is that he is also a Libertarian (in the modern American sense), an anarcho-capitalist, but seems to have trouble articulating that clearly (see above YouTube video). What he is, however, is actively anti-democratic. He is also part of the cultish Network State. If you don’t know what that is, then have a read of Gil Duran’s work at The Nerd Reich. These people want a world in which democracy is destroyed so they can do as they please, like modern-day Louis XVIs. They imagine a future beyond the nation-state, where society is divided into corporate-run territories and techno fiefdoms. Don’t be fooled by the seductive language either. They openly espouse real violence in public theatres, with some calling for public hangings. Others openly call for extra-judicial murders of people in boats in your local waters (including some local politicians). Whether you believe those on the targeted boats are drug smugglers or not, don’t they have a fundamental human right to fair justice? To be fair to Janssens, I haven’t seen anything that shows he’s called for violence personally, but being part of the Network State or otherwise sympathising to its ideology is very troubling at the very least. But the real reason for the investments and project is evident; it is a systematic plan that is in motion, to build a perverse vision of “freedom” for their ilk. What amounts to an antidemocratic state-thin-a-state³ is suspiciously similar to a typically colonialist overtaking of a nation, and one that will undoubtedly exact violence upon the local economy, simultaneously taking zero responsibility for any negative effects. The blurb for the project is seductive (if a little grotesque architecturally), but don’t be fooled, it is a project that is not for you. It’s for those that want to extract and protect themselves from the very society that they’re doing so much to burn down. Is this just a modern (digital) expression of the same colonial past? Time will tell.

I’ve talked in the past, as have many others, about Digital Colonialism and how international platforms that have too much power over our online experiences, when and what we see on the Internet, that clearly affects how we view the world. It distorts democracy, education, health, language, and even knowledge as we know it. This project is the physical embodiment of projects like this. Others are already in motion in other parts of the region.⁴

These people are not your friends, the friends of your government, or the friends of your country. For example, Janssens has, in recent past, openly called government evil! Evil? Sure, governments can be pretty stupid at times, but Evil? Where do you think that talk logically ends up? To be absolutely clear, this is not a personal attack on Janssens, it is an attack on the politics he and others in the cult have, and their contempt for the rest of the world. It is an alarm call against the very real threat this ideology poses to the Caribbean where the power dynamic is often not in our favour. Some of you may not know (or may have forgotten) about Allen Stanford. How about Jim Jones? This is not the first time something like this has happened, and it won’t be the last if we don’t so something about it.

On the wider implications of this, it is becoming increasingly clear to a wider audience that “tech” is becoming synonymous with authoritarianism, extreme right-wing and anti-democratic principles. Types like Janssens are finally showing themselves to be who they really are, having been working in the shadows for so long, enabled by a lacklustre attitude from popular media for decades. The seeds of this behaviour have been brewing for a very long time, much longer than many of us realised. The signs were there back then. A few picked up on it early, many of us didn’t. If there is a text that I think you should read to get a better historical understanding and framing of what was going on (and still is), then getting a copy of Cyberselfish by Paulina Borsook is a must. (The book is sadly out of print and getting a copy is like finding rocking-horse shit, but there is a campaign to get the book back into print, which I hope succeeds.) If you can’t find a copy, then the following paper is a great read, The Californian Ideology, by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron.⁵ It might help you contextualise what is really happening.

Digital Colonialism

Speaking of Digital Colonialism, I recommend reading I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. It is very interesting.

Note on CBI schemes

Am I against CBI schemes? Sort of. But I don’t know enough currently to fully make my mind up. I see some benefits for small nations, but there seem to be some very real downsides that could be disastrous for locals. In the example above, how is this materially different from colonialism and the plantation economy, short of rebirthing slavery? Although, I wouldn’t put it past people like this. CBI schemes seem to me well-intentioned investment vehicles that are ripe for exploitation. There’s a whole industry setup to target wealthy people to get dual nationality status, some with questionable advice (going as far as to “debunk myths” that are clearly agenda-ridden), and some with questionable politics behind the flashy websites, touching on individual sovereignty (that’s a big fucking red flag), as well as other outright grifts.

They seem to me to be a little like the Cruise Ship trap that some are only just starting to openly question about their real-world worth to the local economy. I have talked about this for several years with peers and in the tourism industry locally, as it is clear that they have made zero material difference in Martinique (anecdotally corroborating the reasons expressed by Dr Delisle Worrell in the article mentioned). I would also add that many small islands have had to invest a lot of money to get their infrastructure ‘compliant’ with the demands of the cruise companies, seeing little to nothing in return. The parallels are there if you scrutinise a little. There is more to discuss about this …

Of note

I fully deleted an account that I had created on WhatsApp, so if you’ve sent me a message and I haven’t replied, now you have an explanation. Why? Do you pay attention to Meta and what it does and what it stands for? I couldn’t, in all good conscience, keep endorsing the platform from use and association. So I permanently deleted it. I had set it up for research purposes and clearly marked the account as such, letting people know not to get in touch with me there, going as far to state in the bio that I would ignore any contact. Despite this, I received plenty of personal messages and unsolicited commercial communications. Rude!

I think that it comes down to the fact that many would like a presence on the Internet, and microblogging and social media platforms are a quick and dirty way to achieve that. They cost nothing, as long as you’re OK to sell your soul in the process.

I would recommend everyone to get that presence on a simple blogging system and then syndicate to social media (but only if you must), then encourage friends, colleagues, and others to follow through simple, practical and privacy-respecting tools like RSS.⁶ But having a website can cost decent money! Well, not exactly. It does if you use things like WordPress (don’t, given that Automattic’s CEO is a deeply problematic character. Note: Also the owner of DayOne and Gravatar). So I’ve compiled a list of options that are both cheap and cheerful, or even free in some cases:

Bear Blog (https://bearblog.dev/)

Micro.blog (https://micro.blog/)

omg.lol (https://home.omg.lol/)

On a personal note, I am currently looking for projects / work. I have over 30 years in ICT in various technical roles. I write market research reports (example here), policy development (IT/AI), and do technical consulting. Furthermore, I am also a certified trainer (identifying need through to the development of structured training). I regularly work in both English and French.

Please get in touch (reply to this mail or email matthew at dgtlfutures.com) if you or anyone you know could use my services.

Thanks for reading and being a supporter. Have a pleasant week.

Read David Golumbia’s excellent text on it - The Politics of Bitcoin. It’s dirt cheap and not that long ↩︎
https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/ ↩︎
Janssens has publicly denied this, but similar projects from his peers would seem to show otherwise. See the Network School Dashboard. ↩︎
The Network State Dashboard: https://ns.com/dashboard ↩︎
The following Wikipedia entry has further information and details the links to what I have been discussing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology ↩︎
Syndication in this instance means cross-posting. Something most of the services I highlight support. The idea is that you can write your post just like on Instagram, but it’s on your site, you own (subject to terms and conditions) and then automatically have it on your social media account. ↩︎

Normal service to resume, and an ask 🙏

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 18:16:02 -0400

I know, I know, I’ve taken an extended break from writing here, from what started as an intended short break in Spring, turned into a six-month absence.

I haven’t been idle; quite the opposite, but I haven’t had the opportunity to devote enough time to the subjects I wanted and still want to write about. It is a big effort each time, and a few things in my personal life kind of got in the way. I’m hoping to pick up the writing bug shortly, but sadly not today.

I have an altogether ulterior motive for this quick email…

As you know, if you’ve been reading my work for the last few years or so, I have been more and more involved in aspects of Internet Governance, specifically with ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. I’ve been on the Fellowship program twice. I volunteered to help assess their newly released training platform before it was available to the public, as well as make contributions to the selection committee for future fellows. Last year, I was on the ballot for a place on the Advisory Council (AC), and although I didn’t get elected, I mentioned that I would put my name in the hat again this year, which is precisely what I have done.

That brings me to the purpose of this email, and I apologise upfront, as I am not comfortable requesting things of people and abusing the trust you put in me when subscribing to this email newsletter.

I’m asking you for your help. The ARIN election process provides a space for the nominees to request statements of support. It helps a lot to have many people post such a statement of support, and I’d be grateful if you could take the time (only a few minutes) to provide a statement of support for candidacy in the ARIN AC.

ARIN have made it really simple (see screenshot), and you don’t need to write some Shakespearean prose. Just authentic, brief expressions of support are all that is necessary.

If you can spare a few minutes, please write a statement of support to help me get elected on the ARIN AC, here:

https://arin-elections.net/elections/advisory-council/cowen-matthew/

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to serving on the AC and also continuing to write here over the coming months.

PS. I have a lot of ideas and topics, but nothing fully formed as yet.

It’s not DNS …

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:36:56 -0400

If you have been reading my writing for the last few years or so, you’ll know that I have been trying to better understand the workings and innards of the Internet and share that understanding as much as I can in a coherent manner. I fail sometimes, and I get it right other times. That’s okay, and that’s the only way to learn something deeply.

Ever since I first connected to a university terminal and hopped several links to get to the Internet properly, I have been connected and in some way involved with the Internet.

I saw the deep potential back then and naively believed that bringing it to everyone would do some good. How stupid of me and the many others who built the Internet. We owe you an apology.

But that is not what this note is about. This is a note about something I wanted to discuss quickly, something I have previously highlighted and discussed in fairly vague terms. Given my goal to learn and share more, I thought it would be good to do just that today.

The Internet is built on infrastructure, and despite what Internet lore tries to tell you, it has its vulnerabilities. Some technical. Some political and some societal. This is about a technical issue being exploited by societal and political postures.

I’m an engineer by heart and by trade so I automatically latch on to technical aspects, perhaps not fully understanding other facets. I went from pure electrical engineering, where I built industrial-scale electrical distribution panels —I have fond memories of that job, and I always think about the installations that use the panels I built —to industrial air conditioning, then on to programming Building Management Systems and ultimately on to network infrastructure and the consulting that has resulted from that. And as I recently discussed on the ICT Pulse podcast, and here too, tech is no longer a siloed vertical tool and has crept into every aspect of life. And this is the driving factor of modern discussions about the Internet.

Internet governance is no longer, and cannot be, a discussion about protocols, RFCs, and the like. The Internet affects billions of lives, and seemingly innocuous rules and regulations can have unintended consequences for individuals and societies alike.

I should stop waffling and tell you that this is about DNS. The Domain Name System.

DNS is the backbone of the Internet, and as the popular (in technical circles) meme goes:

And it is not just me saying that:

The Domain Name Server (DNS) is the Achilles heel of the Web. The important thing is that it’s managed responsibly. — Tim Berners-Lee

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is the governing body responsible for overseeing the management of DNS, but the actual day-to-day management is handled by providers, ISPs (OVH, Hover, etc.) and the RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) dealing with IP address governance.¹ Despite its scope for names (DNS) and numbers (IP addresses), it has spent a considerable amount of time on policy development for DNS, notably the internationalisation of domain names —essentially allowing multilingual domain names and not solely anglicised ones, as is currently the case. It has also worked to push for standards to secure DNS and there are now implementations of secure DNS (DNSSEC) gaining ground. For example, my local router is capable of DNSSEC, as is the outgoing filtering application on my Mac (Little Snitch). ICANN sets out contractual obligations to the DNS providers that mostly focus on the technical aspects of management, security, availability, etc. However, they do not fully cover issues of a more squishy nature, like human rights, privacy, freedom of expression, etc.

This is a clear example of where the Internet has suddenly become confronted with realities of human existence, having been very much isolated from these issues in the past.

We’re seeing more and more targeted efforts by governments and organisations that, without any other recourse, attack the very fundamentals of the Internet through this relatively straightforward path. For example, recently, CANAL+, a billionaire-owned and particularly right-wing leaning group, successfully argued in court to have a number of DNS entries blocked from the DNS servers of a select few providers in France (Orange, SFR, etc). The case was about pirated live streaming of football matches, so there’s some merit to the petition. But what about if it was about restricting a democratic right to protest against said company? It would unlikely win on that basis alone, but the precedent of DNS blocking has now been set, and it is simply a matter of testing where the line lies. Something that billionaires can and do regularly.

Following a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar and what looks likely to be a major disaster for human life in the country, it was still not possible to use the Internet in a way that could be used to coordinate aid and get news out to those who need it most. The Myanmar firewall was commissioned in 2024 and restricts a whole host of Internet services, giving the military junta unprecedented control over citizens through techniques like DNS censorship and others.

This all leads me to think that the next big battleground for democracy in the US, Europe and Great Britain will play out in large part through DNS and the associated services. As I have explained, if you cripple DNS, you can cripple everything.

Reading

A couple of articles that I have been reading:

“Meta has stolen books”: authors to protest in London against AI trained using ‘shadow library’

The title says it all. And it is just as bad as you think it is. There’s an odd thought experiment going on in the minds of some of the Internet pioneers. Something about data being free and that free flow of data will create a better world. I’d say, take a look around you and tell me if the world is currently a better place from where you’re standing. Some of you will say yes. But that will be because you’re standing in an extremely privileged position. More on this in the future.

The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes

Some of the major media organisations are starting to understand the real impact of what absolutely shouldn’t be called AI. Other factors, such as the phenomenally wasteful nature of the big models, are also starting to be called into question. Even Microsoft has just cancelled a number of major datacenter building projects, presumably because they see the numbers, and they’re not quite as “number go up” as they led us all to believe.

Trump administration’s blockchain plan for USAID is a real head-scratcher

The systematic dismantling of USAID, an organisation I have fond memories of working with, is such a shame. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect organisation, but the people I worked with were there for genuine reasons. This, unsurprisingly from DT, is just baffling.

Wishing you a great week.

Disclaimer: I am a twice ARIN Fellow ↩︎

🎙️ Podcast: Appearance on ICT Pulse

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:41:23 -0400

You can find the podcast and other links here.

This podcast is recorded in English.

This is an ongoing discussion and there are almost certainly areas of improvement and learning, but I hope it acts as a good introduction to my thoughts and research.

I’d love to hear what you think.

Show notes and topics discussed (from the ICT Pulse website):

Digital sovereignty and digital agency are topics that are not commonly discussed, but as internet users and the owners of personal data, at the very least, we ought to recognise our own agency: the control we have, and consequently, the onus that might be on us to say how, when, where and under what circumstances our data can be used.

At the same time, governments have an obligation to their citizens to keep citizen data safe, whilst also balancing other imperatives. However, the unifying force that the internet was initially envisaged to be is increasingly giving way to exercises of power and control by nation-states and large corporations.

This conversation with Matthew does not result in simple or pat answers, but one thing is clear: Caribbean countries and citizens must understand their power and responsibilities in the digital realm, especially since the internet has become an arena that increasingly others wish to control. Below are the main questions that drive this episode’s discussion.

How would you differentiate between digital sovereignty and digital agency?
What specific aspects of the digital realm should a country have sovereign control over?
How can individuals and communities be empowered to exercise greater digital agency?
Could digital sovereignty lead to increased fragmentation of the internet?
How can we balance the need for individual digital agency with the need for online safety and security?
How do the goals of digital sovereignty and digital agency intersect or conflict?
Can a country achieve digital sovereignty without respecting the digital agency of its citizens?
How can individuals protect their own digital agency in the face of powerful corporations and governments?

📅 March 17 - March 23 | Agency, the splinternet, and the digital plantations

Tue, 25 Mar 2025 06:55:32 -0400

I was recently invited to participate as a regular contributor to two podcasts last week. I recorded for the ICT-Pulse Podcast (English) and Innovation, Agilité & Excellence (French). I’ll post the links as soon as they’re published.

One topic that came up, admittedly from me, is an idea and reflexion I’ve been having about digital platforms, more specifically social media digital platforms, lately.

The other topic that was the focus of discussion on the ICT Pulse podcast was about digital agency over digital sovereignty. It’s a fairly new idea and one that isn’t well-formed. I’m not quite sure how I stand either, but I felt it was a discussion worth having to help clarify, if not resolve some thoughts about Internet governance and the future of the internet.

I know some of the topics I’ve been writing about here have been pretty dark recently, I’m sorry. But I felt I needed to get them down on something, if not for you, but for me to at least state my position on the shenanigans.

At the time of writing this introduction, I think this one should be a bit more pedestrian. We’ll see. I hope you enjoy it anyway, and please feel free to reach out.

Digital agency

To get the discussion started, I think it is necessary to have a quick rundown about digital sovereignty. It is something that governments around the world have been discussing and even pursuing for a while now. Some longer than others. What it boils down to is essentially regulating and controlling the Internet to ensure that the country remains in control of what happens on it in the confines of its own state. It often manifests itself in ways that are imperceptible to many, or totally draconian like we see in states like Russia, North Korea and China, generally in the name of autonomy and self-reliance.

Digital agency, however, is thought to be more of an idea closer to the ideals of the Internet’s beginnings, an open universe for the use of all equally. But we have observed that those ideals have come up against cold hard realities of political difference, power brokering and all sorts of levers being placed on countries, businesses, institutions, and people. The internet today is not an open universe, and it is certainly not free for use equitably for all. Just the numbers of people without meaningful access to the Internet show that it is still very much a privileged few that benefit the most from the Internet.

Agency, in psychology, is having the ability to use strategies and actions that bring us what we want. Without it, we are powerless to decide our destiny.

The ideals put forward by digital agency try to address this by attempting to wrestle control back through three principles: multi-stakeholderism, realising the potential of technology and promoting collaboration. Of the three principles, I can only see one, possibly two, that are realistic and achievable. TLDR; the first one. (I’ve briefly discussed here before, so I won’t go over old ground here).

Where I think that these ideals will fall down is with the other two. Although, if I’m honest, I do think that at some point we might be able to better realise the potential of technology. However, it is not in its current guise, or under the stewardship of the goons that are currently in power over tech and our tech lives.

The third, collaboration, for me is the achilles heel of the entire endeavour. History has shown time and time again, and it will keep repeating itself ad infinitum, that we are incapable of collaborating on a global scale. It will start off with good intentions, but at som point, politics, power struggles, egos, and all the things that make us human will enter the room and suck out any opportunity for meaningful collaboration on projects like this.

I think it is a reality that we just have to get used to, and it is an inevitable consequence of technology becoming horizontally embedded in every aspect of life. Tech is essentially political now, and it will take an enormous shift for it not to be.

I’m sure I’ll be developing this topic in the future. For now, I’m keeping up on the discussion and developments.

This is a thought that came to me a while back that I didn’t really expand upon, despite subtly touching upon, in over the last few months. I’m drawing a parallel between the mechanisms and organisational systems, not the people involved, past or present. Bear that in mind while you’re reading this.

This is a story about digital platforms and how they extract everything out of them for themselves, without regard to anyone or anything. And you should never forget that today’s digital platforms exist solely to sit in-between the supplier and the demander and extract, extract, extract. Their only service is arbitration of supply and demand and to skim off a profit, harming everything else.

The big question for me is whether mediation is necessary in the first place? In many instances, it is absolutely not necessary and only hinders the exchange, resulting in worse outcomes for both the supplier and demander. This is often represented in the way many artists eventually go solo and start selling their goods directly to their customers, at both a lower cost to demanders and better profits for suppliers.

Of course, this isn’t a path available to everyone and frequently relies on the fact that said artists are already renown and can therefore “afford” to do so. This could be construed as an argument for platforms, in that they provide a valuable service getting customers in front of sellers. And for many that’s precisely what they used to achieve, and as a service, it had value for people and the service providers were rightly paid for it. But something has changed over the last few years, and it is not to the benefit of suppliers or demanders.

Digital platforms have steadily eroded the value they provide to their customers (suppliers and demanders), extracting the last drops of any value and diverting them to their balance sheets. This has been done by their accumulation of power over the arbitration process, whereby they control both the supplier’s price and costs, and the demanders they promote to and the eventual cost to the demanders. This has been done by rigging the game to a point where they are the only winners. The tool to achieve this is two-fold; Adtech and a Plantation Economy.

I’ve discussed today’s adtech industry already, and I will no doubt expand upon that in the future. TLDR; it should all be burnt to the ground and rebuilt to be fairer, private, voluntary, and more equitable for its participants. (See Reading section: Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight)

The plantation economy is an economy built on scale and scalability. Already that should sound familiar, thinking about the previous paragraphs. It is an economy built as a platform to drive production to an absolute extreme without totally breaking it (although it frequently does), to the detriment of those subjected to it. Sounding more familiar, it should be. And it is an economy that profits one organisation or person without any regard for the welfare of those that did the actual work to valorise the products or services. It is basically theft.

Social Media is a digital plantation where you work for little or no remuneration, for a system where there is generally one owner that has total power to do whatever, whenever, however he or she feels. One major difference between the old and new plantations is that you are ostensibly free to leave at any time, but because of the network effects of these platforms, exercising that right is neither possible nor practical. The trick then is for the owners to dupe you into staying on the platform, but more importantly, spending as much time as you can and for as much of your lifetime as you can for them to monetise your participation. Monetise is Silicon Valley doublespeak for wealth extraction and theft in this context.

This is why the Internet needs to be re-wilded and corporate social media needs to decay and whither way to make way for a better model where we all benefit.

Distributed multi-stakeholder and federated services are the start of this, but they too will be subject to forces that will pollute them and entice them away from what they should be. But it is a start, and the more of us that try to built something on good foundations, the more chance we have to accomplish and Internet for the good. It won’t be perfect, I’m not that naive, and it’ll still be inhabited by criminals and scammers, liars, thieves, etc. But it’ll be more like the real world and not some digital dystopia that it is fast becoming.

The one thing I know, is that humans generally follow the pattern of the Hemingway quote: slowly, then all at once. The cracks will appear and the online mobilisation will start slowly, then suddenly, without warning, the empires will be burnt to the ground.

I’m already seeing a massive wave of interest on the federated services networks in support of ditching US services, and “Big Tech” as a whole. Several governments have even voted to ban the use of them and will start shortly replacing those services with European alternatives.

And this is where Agency is important and why I am still undecided with my feelings about the digital agency movement and the so-called splinternet. They cross over and are contradictory in some places and totally rational in others.

To be continued…

Reading

A few things that caught my interest recently.

Careless People - NYT No. 1 Bestseller

Last week I mentioned a book that looked like it would be an instant bestseller, not because it is worth it (it might be, I haven’t finished reading it yet), but because its subject tried to have it shut down, thus invoking the Streisand Effect. Well, it is now top o’ the charts.

Facebook to stop targeting ads at UK woman after legal fight

In a first of its kind, a U.K. woman has won a legal fight with Meta preventing the latter from using targeted advertising. Meta, characteristically, was disingenuous and specious in its response, first by lying that it couldn’t achieve the request, which it can miraculously do now, and secondly trying to use a straw man argument suggesting that the sanction meant the company had to give aways its services for free. This is a lie and they know it. The ruling is specifically and only about targeted ads. Meta is still free to place non-targeted privacy respecting ads to O’Carroll. It’s just that they can’t rip off both sides with these types of ads, so they will try everything to avoid it.

We should all follow suit, and I am actively seeking how to go about this.

The USAID report I co-wrote is still offline, until now

That report is still offline, so I thought I’d make it available until I get a takedown notice. If you want it, it is here.

Think your democratic government won’t block the Internet? Think again.

“Italy is using its Piracy Shield law to go after Google, with a court ordering the Internet giant to immediately begin poisoning its public DNS servers. This is just the latest phase of a campaign that has also targeted Italian ISPs and other international firms like Cloudflare.”

Have a great week.

📅 March 03 - March 16 | Getting back on track

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 21:41:39 -0400

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men” is what Robert Burns wrote in a poem entitled “To a Mouse, On Turning Her up in Her Nest with the Plough”, November 1785.

The quote has been paraphrased and used, attributed and mis-attributed thousands and thousands of times, but its meaning is essentially still the same:

No matter how well we’ve planned or pre-planned, there is always something that will disrupt that plan

And so it was for me over the last couple of weeks.

In a how-the-sausage-is-made moment, how I write this and other writings is not a simple process of sitting in front of a computer opening Ulysses (my preferred app for writing), bashing away on the keyboard for fifteen minutes or so. Not at all.

It starts with me spending horrendous hours scanning news, reading articles, papers, and books. Filling my mind with millions of seemingly inconsequential details, anecdotes, thoughts, feelings, the reading usually prescribes some kind of idea of a topic to write about. Then comes the hard work. I generally try to read around the subject, getting as much as I can in a limited amount of time, parallel to all the other reading that is going on. Because the world doesn’t stand still and there is always new stuff to read. Once I’ve compiled some material, I try to work it into some kind of coherent article that is more of an opinion piece than an academic discussion. This sometimes works well and sometimes, er, less so. An article idea can have been born weeks ago, but stayed in an embryonic state until I get the urge to write something. Which doesn’t come as often as that. The article is then written, edited, and eventually posted, with the actual writing process taking a couple of hours or so. Think 3 to 4 hours.

That was essentially what I’d hoped to have done last week, but my body had other plans. I seem to have picked up a god awful cold (flu?) and have been suffering for about a week now. And yes, if you’re reading this, or more accurately, if I’m writing this, it is because I am feeling much better, and I am the current vainqueur in this war against the virus that is trying to kill me. I say current, as it has not completely surrendered yet, but just like the Battle of Little Bighorn, Custer (the virus) is surrounded and will ultimately lose, and die.

In fact, while I think of it —and this is just brain dumping as I write— I watched the two finals at Indian Wells this Sunday and thoroughly enjoyed them both. But a stand-out moment for me was the winner’s address to the public in the Women’s final. Mirra Andreeva decided to thank herself, her belief, her determination, her doubts, her fears, etc. “I’d like to thank me” is what she said. I think she’s right. It is not born of arrogance. It is born of thanking all of those that go to make a Master’s Champion, which is a big team, and herself!

So, I’ll forgive myself, and acknowledge that I was ill, and I couldn’t function at all for three days, and the rest of time was a fog and time passing by. And that not writing to a schedule is fine, and I can take a break when needed.

This week is probably going to be scrappy as I haven’t had the opportunity to do what I usually do (see above).

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’m not the biggest fan of online advertising, or more precisely, the current form of online advertising.

I am not the only one, and there are a number of people and organisations around the world working to reign in the abuses of the adtech world, that has become so toxic that people have died as direct consequences of their reckless business practices.

I’ve discussed what the problem is. TLDR; wonky moral compasses and incentives that are aligned to put people in danger to make a quick profit.

I’ve even discussed how. TLDR; mass surveillance technologies that track absolutely everything you do online. And I mean EVERYTHING. Hoarding of information that is both consensual and non-consensual to produce questionably reliant “profiles” and even more questionably predict behaviours.

I’ve discussed how we can go about doing something to prevent, setback, or otherwise disrupt the flow of this information. TLDR; install ad-blockers and use them liberally. File GDPR requests liberally, using the tools to largely automate that. And lobby for non-invasive and non-surveillance-tech-based advertising models that have been shown to perform about as well as the “profiled” ads do, but with little to no personal information leaked in exchange.

If you think I’m being over-dramatic, have a read of the third article in the reading list and then reach out to me. I’d be happy to discuss.

Reading

If you’re not familiar with the Streisand Effect, you’re going to love this. If you are, you can skip over this bit.

Sometime between 2002 and 2003, a California Coastal Records project was measuring the coastal erosion in a well healed area of the Californian coastline. Malibu was being photographed in detail to see how much the sea had encroached on the land and its data used to help identify properties that might need remedial action or evacuation to save the occupants from major loss or even loss of life.

Barbra Streisand, a resident in the area, objected to her house being identified in one of the publicly available photographs. So she set about correcting that, and I, unlike many, feel that she did this from a good place and not from the privileged arsehole perspective. In trying to rectify the breach of privacy, she instructed a lawyer to help her do something about this. Said lawyer proceeded to sue the photographer, a government contractor, for 50 million USD.

What that eventually did is rock the ears of many a newspaper and journalist, thus blowing the story into proportions beyond anyone’s control, ultimately bringing the private information to the masses in a spectacular own goal. More ordinary people knew the property than before the lawsuit, and thus the term was coined by a well-known online writer, Mike Masnic. You can read more here.

The top book on the reading list, is going through the same situation.

It’s like the tech dudes read a lot of stuff but don’t actually understand the message or learn from previous events, or in fact, history as a whole. And a case in point is the first link on the list today.

Meta stops ex-director from promoting critical memoir

I don’t know how many times we need to keep hearing Meta disgraceful record of playing fast and loose with human mental health before we conclude that it is a fundamentally immoral organisation akin to the tobacco companies of yesterday. If you work there, you should probably reconsider (if you can) your part in the machine and perhaps find a way out.

Their actions on this book will propel it to a bestseller in no time. Stupid, and immoral, are Meta.

Meta mocked for raising “Bob Dylan defense” of torrenting in AI copyright fight

In a follow-up to the article I wrote where it was shown that Meta wilfully torrented nearly 82 TB of data, including previously known pirated material, they have now pulled out a stupid defence ploy. OpenAI is just as bad, lobbying for free access to everything to train its mediocre models. That might backfire on them in the not too distant future.

Data Broker Brags About Having Highly Detailed Personal Information on Nearly All Internet Users

I’ve been on a roll criticising adtech lately and for good reason. I am not convinced that many have even an inkling of the amount and depth of data that is being collected and weaponised against us. We’ve built the Stasi’s wet dream, and we have absolutely no idea where it is going to lead us. TLDR; somewhere you would rather not be.

I’m torn, really torn about what is happening on the Internet lately. On the one hand I see the need for a certain amount of sovereignty, on the other hand, I absolutely detest and react negatively to nationalistic tendencies. Nationalism —not to be confused with pride of one’s nation— is a destructive force, because it relies on deliberate strategies to denigrate others to appear better. It doesn’t work with me and I seem to have a very sensitive sensor and spot it a mile off. This discussion gives me a lot to think about.

I’ve a busy week, catching up on time lost and to make the days go even faster, I’m recording two podcasts this weeK. The first is with my friend Jean-François Nantel on the Innovation, Agilité & Excellence podcast, and the second with another friend, Michele Marius on the ICT Pulse Podcast.

I’ll let you know when they’re out.

Have a fantastic week.

📅 February 24 - March 02 | Internet Infrastructure and politics

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 20:51:52 -0400

I really did fall out of the habit of writing these things! I realised that I messed up the dates of the last post I made, suggesting that it was the previous week rather than the week it really was. Oops. I’ve corrected it now.

I guess it is a bit of a symptom of what I was discussing in that writing. How I felt a little tired and overwhelmed by events around the world. Sadly, things haven’t slowed down and, if anything, have become even more urgent and critical.

I order not to make this a weekly moan, I will endeavour to write a few positive things too, but I don’t think it is appropriate to ignore and shy away from the very real issues in the digital world.

That’s pretty much the structure that I wanted to explore today…

I mentioned Caribbean Digital Compass, a joint adventure I have embarked upon with Michele Marius from ICT Pulse. We soft launched a couple of articles over the last few days.

I’d be grateful if you’d have a read, share and subscribe to the newsletter. It will become a paid newsletter at some point, but for the moment it is going to stay free to read until we get the momentum going, so take advantage now of the free access and enjoy.

It’s more focused on businesses in the region that need reliable, factual and helpful analysis of the digital world, rather than these longer opinion pieces. We’re trying to keep them at about 800 to a 1000 words or so.

The first two articles cover Generative AI and the Auditing, and an analysis of 5G.

More to come!

https://caribbeandigitalcompass.com/

Geopolitics and the Internet

When Grateful Dead musician, John Perry Barlow, wrote what has become a universally recognised treatise for the Internet (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace), he rather foolishly didn’t factor in that governments would eventually impose themselves upon the governance of a tool that became the plumbing for much of what we do in our lives today. The Global Digital Compact and the discussions leading up to that have shown a remarkable difference in attitude and attention to the Internet since his writing. Governments were largely hands-off until recently, now the strategic importance of the Internet has been laid bare in many ways.

The basic premise of the text was to say to the governments of the world, stay out of Internet business, this is the digital world, and it has nothing to do with the physical world. That turned out to be not only false, but highly immature, given the fact that more and more of physical life is being integrated with digital life, from online communications to filing government taxes and any number of private and public services.

This is such an issue, that we even have whole NGOs dedicated to bringing the Internet have-nots online and closing the “digital divide”. Locally, I see more and more businesses digitalising operations and providing public-facing interfaces mediated through digital tools and less and less through human interaction. To hell with those that don’t have smartphones seems to become the norm. Those, being the handicapped, the poor and many others that can’t or won’t have digital tools.

Which brings me to where we are today. At a crossroads is how I’d put it. A crossroads that could lead us to a better online existence, but more likely a crossroads that will lead us to a more fractured and divided Internet.

I’m particularly concerned about the currant administration in the United States of America that has spared no time dismantling important institutions, that, despite their expense, provide real value for money when you look at the results in their whole. Institutions like USAID that I have previously mentioned and worked for in the past, to things that should set off alarm bells around the world. This administration recently called on the U.S. Cyber Command to stand down, signalling to the world that they are now a soft target. Whether or not that is objectively true, the signal is significant. Coupled with its stance on reneging on aid for foreign countries, leaving a vacuum in the Caribbean that will almost certainly be filled by actors that might be less favourable to the region now that they have no competition or pushback, one has to consider whether the USA is now a rogue state or not. Not the kind of question I had on my bingo card for 2025!

But here’s the real issue when I think about the Internet. Many of the organisations that are responsible for the inner workings are located in the US. I’m seriously asking myself the question about their independence being maintained or how they might be affected going forward, if the current administration continues down this path of destruction. If I were part of the leadership, I’d be keeping a very close eye on what’s happening and starting to think about mitigation strategies to protect the Internet as we know it.

Again, I’m not trying to be melodramatic, simply facing up to what could be a very real possibility of a whole scale attack on the very inner institution of the Internet and what the repercussions could be.

Sorry. It was all doom and gloom in the end. 😵‍💫

I promise to find something positive to write next time.

Reading

A couple of articles that caught my attention this week.

Analysts Warn of AI Cooling with Microsoft Cancellation of AI Datacenter Leases

This may or may not be a turning point in the hype surrounding generative AI. Expenditure on datacenters, model training and deploying half-baked apps to users is starting to add up, with little return seen on that investment. The fact that every single prompt costs Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and any number of companies in this business should be a worry.

You’re getting it free or at less-than-cost because it is being subsidised.

That won’t last forever.

Inside the Taliban’s surveillance network monitoring millions

Is this what we can expect from our own democratic governments?

I think it is worth asking that question.

If I’m honest, I’m not completely resolved on where I stand on surveillance and legitimate access to private communications. Total secrecy for individuals or total openness for the police seem to me to be two extremes that I am not comfortable with.

I’m still working this out.

The impact on the African continent of Meta scrapping its fact-checking program

The collapse of fact-checking by Meta and other online platforms has real-world consequences.

People will die as a direct result of this handwashing. It is time for something to be done.

I’m sure it’ll be fine in the end. Have a lovely week.

📅 February 17 - February 23 | Scraping the depths

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 20:51:14 -0400

One week turned into two. Taking a short break is a good thing.

But, if I’m honest, I’m rather drained about the state of tech at the moment. It’s one bad story followed by another. From the obsequiousness, the knee-bending, and the sycophantic brown-nosing on display, the tech oligarchs have shown us in no uncertain terms that they are more about themselves than they are about their customers. It won’t last. It never does. That’s the story of the world. But the question is about what damage is being caused, and how long will it take to repair it?

The potential consequences are extremely dangerous, and I don’t feel as though this is hyperbole or over-egging what is at stake. I give you permission to laugh at me to my face if I’m wrong. I’d rather be laughed at than be even half correct.

We have never before been in a situation where almost every aspect of our daily lives is a simple SQL query away from abuse. Abuse from our governments that have gone rogue. Abuse from other governments that want to influence the enemy’s population, and on a more pedestrian note, abuse from unscrupulous companies hellbent on selling you something whether you need it or not, giving zero fucks about the state of the planet.

This is not a Disney good vs evil story. There are real consequences, real lives, and real people being hurt.

The real spyware

I’ve never been a fan of Facebook, and I’ve never held an account in any meaningful way. Quite the opposite. I created a family account a long time ago to see what the fuss was about, but this was many years into its domination of the public space of the Internet.

I was horrified by what greeted me.

No sooner had I created the account than there were a number of pre-created connections and associations that I would never have chosen had I had been given the choice.

The vibe was creepy from the outset, in only what I could describe at the time as a sociopath’s wet dream, the origins of the application were laid bare for me to see. Perhaps you don’t know or remember the original purpose for Facebook (the hint is in the name). It was an application designed to creepily and surreptitiously “rate” how “hot” college girls (female university students) were.

I felt I was being spied on from all directions at all times. From people I only fleetingly knew, or had passed in the Boulangerie, to the people who obsessively wanted to know what was going on in my life and the lives of others.

I felt nauseous and deeply uncomfortable about what the Internet of the masses was being turned into, even then. I hated it, and I shut it down as soon as I could, deeply regretting the fact that I had created the account in the first place.

I’ve subsequently exercised my rights as a European citizen to have all data about me removed, but I doubt that Meta has fully complied. With them refusing to comply with numerous laws globally, why would my tiny profile be any different?

Ads: Meta wants to be ‘less illegal’ - but much more annoying…

Unbeknownst to many, too, is that Meta has been exposed creating fake and shadow profiles, essentially giving itself the same functionality for targeted advertising, without the explicit consent of the users concerned.

And to anyone who hasn’t understood how the Internet actually functions, it boils down to one thing. Advertising. Or to be specific, the highly targeted digital advertising.

I’ve written before about how this is all smoke and mirrors and how the incentives are only aligned to the companies doing this, namely Google and Meta. There are thousands of other advertisers, but between those two they own the vast majority of the advertising spend on the planet, well into the 90s in terms of percentage points.

To combat this, we all need to earnestly expose these companies and change the narrative on ad companies like Goole and Meta. And no, they’re not tech companies, they’re ad agencies, and thieving ad agencies at that. They have been shown to falsely inflate prices through their biding systems that control both the supply and the demand, thus making businesses pay more for nothing extra.

Tech is a means to an end, and their actions clearly show this. The tools are a by-product of them getting their creepy stats about your last urine sample, or what you last looked at on a random website. That means we need to publicly call them out for the creeps they are and constantly until they behave differently. Do you know the origins of Chrome, the browser of choice for most? Let’s just say it wasn’t to provide you with the best browsing experience. That’s not fair. It was to provide the best browsing experience, to onboard the world so that the tool could be used to spy on you even more closely than you had been up to then and once captured, you would not be able to leave.

Users using other browsers frustrated Google because they could get to constantly spy on you whilst you went about your day on the Internet. So Chrome was born to centralise web usage on a platform designed from the ground up to collect data about your online habits, without them specifically or materially disclosing such. In fact, they specifically lied about that, too. Until they were caught.

How deep will this go?

Source: https://www.imperva.com/learn/application-security/osi-model/

Much like the OSI network model, to get more data about the packets being flung around networks, you need to go deeper and deeper into the stack. Which is precisely why Android exists. And the likes of Apple, who previously provided tools for computing with a good computing experience, have fundamentally changed and are now providing tools for advertising, that also happen to provide a good computing experience that is slowly being eroded.

Which leads me onto recent news about Meta’s other big projects that fly largely under the radar in the public arena.

Meta is BIG on Infrastructure. It has just announced that it will build a globe-spanning undersea cable to transport data between five continents. And this is just part of a decade-long plan to control and surveil you at every level of the OSI stack. The following animated GIF, gives you an idea of their expansion in global infrastructure control.

Source: https://fairinternetreport.com/research/facebook-meta-submarine-cable-ownership#map-header

I can’t know what you think about this, but it makes me deeply uncomfortable that more and more of the Internet, the system the world relies on for much of life itself, is being centralised and controlled by an ever-decreasing group of companies that have shown time and time again their self-serving intentions without regard for the rest of us.

This is both undemocratic and unbelievably dangerous at the same time.

These developments in internet infrastructure are tempting governments around the world to succumb to authoritarian tendencies. And the ubiquitous nature of tech, finding itself ever deeper in our lives, has done nothing to curb the authoritarian ambitions of governments around the world. Quite the opposite. Even those governments that fight against what they call ‘repressive and authoritarian regimes’ have found the centralisation of control of internet data from the deepest levels of networking to the applications and operating systems web use all the time, too tempting to leave alone. They are and will continue to be abused indiscriminately, harming the world as a whole. With the help of Meta and Google, governments with ambitions to snoop on the most private aspects of the life of every individual under their jurisdiction. And sometimes beyond. Yes, U.K., I’m looking at you! (More on that in the future when things have settled a little).

From 1950 to 1990, the East German secret police, the Stasi, controlled the population of the country through mass surveillance and a large network of informants that were used and dumped when they were no longer useful. What has been constructed in the 21st century Internet is a vast set of tools with powers the Stasi could only dream about. A network that doesn’t need any human compliance for information to flow back to central command. Your telephone, your television, your car, your fridge, everything you do is known to the companies that have just shown that they are not only willing to work with authoritarians, but will actively support and develop new tools for them to operate their surveillance.

This is not the Internet I want.

What I’ve tried to do here, perhaps a little clumsily, is make the link between tech and democracy, outlining some of the dots that make up the web of deceit and manipulation exercised now.

It also provides a hint about what you can do to disrupt this and the way only we as a mass can. Individually, our actions are worthless. Collectively, however, it’s an entirely different story. You should do two things. Participate in limiting your exposure to online advertising, blocking ads, ‘local-hosting’ (127.0.0.1) or otherwise limiting the flow of data from your devices to these companies. Secondly, you should make it known that you are not in agreement and that there are already many non-invasive solutions for businesses to advertise, for example, Contextual Advertising, which is based on content analysis and not privacy-invading attributes.

Remember, there is only ONE metric that is of value to you as a business, and that is if your ads provide more sales. Period. If you need to know my age, my sex, the colour of my skin, my income, where I live, and literally hundreds of thousands of other data points, you don’t deserve my business, and you have a serious problem morally.

And yes, as I’ve discussed before, distributed and decentralised systems should play a part too. And no, they are not the only solution.

There. That feels better. Have a great week.

📅 February 03 - February 09 | No newsletter this week. Sorry.

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 07:54:52 -0400

My apologies, there’ll be no writing this week.

A personal situation has kiboshed any plans I had to write anything about the past week.

I’m looking forward to getting back to normal next week.

Have a great week.

📅 January 27 - February 02 | Under attack

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 19:41:40 -0400

That’s it, done. The first month of the year is already over.

If it didn’t pass by at breakneck pace for you, I’d like a little bit of what you’re drinking please!

For this instalment, I’m not sur how much I am going to write as I start typing this out. It has been a strange couple of weeks for me on both a personal and professional footing. Various issues took up far too much time than I had anticipated and left me a little on the back foot to prepare a focused article here.

But, as it’s my online space and I get to decide what I do with it, I suppose that’s ok.

Let’s dive straight in.

Turbulence online

I’ve been an advocate for a more open social web, one where the likes of Meta are reduced to being members or players, but are stripped of any overbearing control, creepy surveillance systems and damaging societal-level incentives through advertising. It is a feeling I’ve had for many years, and one that has accentuated more recently. Particularly with the turn to the right that that has manifested for much longer than most realise, but is only just being noticed.

I’d written about this some time ago, and possibly even had some of my thoughts dismissed for it. Heck, I even blinked myself, thinking that I had pretty much gone too far and that this is not what was happening in front off my eyes. But here we are. And the truth is that I, and many others, were right. The signs were there. There were warnings, and still we were unable collectively to do anything about it and that has left us in a very compromised position as general members of the exploited public.

What we have now is a tech oligarchy that is systematically dismantling many pillars of democracy for their own profits and power, at the expense of you and anyone not connected. They have skilfully convinced a number of people who would be the natural targets of such extreme political stances that they, too, are part of this new power —people of colour, people with neurodivergence, and people of sexual orientations that differ from what their religion normally accepts historically. What those who have been co-opted seem to not realise, is that once there are no longer other easier targets to attack, it will be them next in line.

Extreme right-wing politics is fuelled by hate and fear. The two resources in abundance in America right now. Yes, in abundance for the moment, but it is not an infinite resource and at some point it will run out, or become so extreme as to disgust the world into action.

Are we there yet? Of course not, but it is a short route from where we are today and totalitarianism and imperialism and dare I say it, Fascism. America is in a dangerous place.

It used to be said that when China sneezes, the whole world catches a cold. It referred to its power in manufacturing prowess and supply chain management, and any disruption there could have had enormous consequences for the world. This phrase is likely to get adjusted for the current political situation in the US. I’ll leave that to you imagination. I have my ideas.

Looking at the practical fallout of this and how it relates to the Caribbean, leads me to feel very worried for the near future.

Over weekend a sustained and violent attack on an institution that I have worked for took place. The entire website of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) got taken offline. No holding page, no explanation. Nothing. Just a 404.

USAID has (had?) an annual budget of $50 billion and has been a big donor, developer, and assistant in the Caribbean for a long time. The Agency has been called “criminal” by Musk, and its shuttering is in line with Trump’s “America first” agenda, that is just a thinly veiled warning to the world of their imperial ambitions. (See Greenland and Panama and Project 2025). Many businesses, many people, and many families in the Caribbean are going to be directly and negatively affected by this. It is so depressing to see this happen to people who least deserve it.

And, yes, you can argue that USAID wasn’t a perfect organisation and it left a few things to be desired in terms of development and effectiveness, but it tried. The people I worked with there were all passionate about helping, and unlike many development agencies, it wasn’t staffed by “white knights in shining armour”, which is a legitimate criticism of many aid organisations around the world. It was staffed by Caribbeans from communities in the Caribbean, trying to do their best for their communities and the region as a whole.

It is all about to end, if we believe what we see. And I’m sad about that for a number of reasons. But one of which, I suspect, hasn’t been thoroughly thought through.

Geopolitically, the Caribbean is in the Americas, and at its closet point, only approximately 50 miles from mainland USA. It is intrinsically linked to the USA through its history and is a gateway to the continent both physically and through telecoms infrastructure. And it is this that is a danger for the USA, because it is also a gateway for other forces, open to exploit.

During some research I did on the Caribbean a few years back, I crossed by information that showed how some US citizens had been spied upon within the continental United States, through the telecoms and internet infrastructure of the Caribbean. It was a shock to the security forces and lead to a number of decisions being made about the use of various telecoms equipment manufacturers. Telecoms equipment is essentially made in two places currently, Europe and China, with the USA effectively losing its place in that market a long time ago. An out and out ban on the deployment of Chinese equipment was instigated, and pressure subsequently put on Caribbean nations to divest and replace them.

Some of the reasons behind this, and I cannot go into any detail here, were that America had let go of any interest in helping the Latin America and the Caribbean for a number of years, leaving the door open to other influences to provide money, equipment, assistance and training to deploy telecoms and ancillary devices (CCTV and the like). La nature a horreur du vide!

So you see —and without any judgement on my part— withdrawal of interest in Latin America and the Caribbean will only provide an incentive for other parties to invest, setup and implant themselves in the region. You don’t need me to tell you who the most likely candidates are and their track record of freedom of speech are.

The tech oligarchy is actively supporting and enabling this and they deserve our derision and our resistance by us contributing rebuilding an open social web that they stole from us a couple of decades ago, before it is too late.

Reading

“LLMs amplify existing security risks and introduce new ones”

Gary Marcus discusses the previously-linked Microsoft research on Cybersecurity in the age of AI. TLDR: 😱

On the Grid | How Surveillance Became a Love Language

It is out of hand and must be comprehensively dealt with, in my view.

Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

What the headline fails to convey is that location tracking, i.e., precise longitude and latitude coordinates are being passed on, even if you have turned them off! I smell criminal proceedings.

As always, thanks for reading and have a great week.

📅 January 20 - January 26 | Analog Privilege

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 08:00:00 -0400

In what I can only describe as a fantastically depressing week, with events worldwide kicking off as expected, but simultaneously going further than anyone imagined.

I wanted to keep this blog apolitical, concentrating mostly on tech, with a little bit of cultural commentary thrown in and a dose of analysis to try to understand how technology has, is and will affect us in the region. That can no longer be the case because I cannot stand by and let powerful (and incredibly vicious) white me in Silicon Valley take everything away to make them and their cronies even richer than obscenely rich. I get the idea that you’d like to make a lot of money, I would too. But there is a point where your wealth is too much. It’s disgusting. It’s a cancer. And just like cancerous cells, it grows and grows at the expense of healthy cells, eventually killing the host. If you need me to spell out who is who in that analogy, I invite you to consider where you place yourself today.

/rant over

I promised to write about an article I recently read, and I think now is a good time to do so. The article is called Analog Privilege. It is written by Maroussia Lévesque. The article piqued my interest because it spoke about a long-standing secret in tech. Something that has been reported on, but not enough and not with any conviction either. The purveyors of the tech pushed on us either don’t use it, don’t let their children use it, or have special “override” privileges that shield them from the actual damage their wares have on the everyday person.

If it is good enough for Meta to surveil us 24 hours a day, even when we have explicitly requested they do not, and from applications and products that are not and should not be related, but by backroom deals still spy on us, passing that data to Mark Zuckerberg. The minimum we should require is absolute and complete access to his life. And when a fraction of that intrusion was discovered (the various bots following the private jets of these people), there were shutdowns as a “violation of privacy”. Really? In reality, we should be the holders of our private information, and their requests to use it should be ephemeral, restrained in scope, revocable and erasable at any instant.

My text here combines the topics discussed in the article with my feelings and discussion of them. You’ll note where I use the noun, I use here original American spelling, and use the British spelling for everything else.

This is called analogue privilege.

The article starts with a very real-world example of how predictive analysis used by child welfare services in the United States is practically used to stigmatise the poor whilst simultaneously sparing the rich from said stigma. In short, the rich get to pay for real doctors, and genuine patient care, whereas the poor, and soon you too, will be thrust into a semi-automated hellscape of healthcare that is only “care” in name.

Future Hospital visit: [www.youtube.com/watch

When listed, the range and scope of interactions required by humans in everyday life, the potential for abuse through the replacement of humans driving those interactions, is enormous. But what is often lost in that replacement is that human interaction is analogue, and consequently messy by definition.

We, including me, discuss the “digital divide” and how the underprivileged are being excluded from society and how that is a bad thing generally. And that is true. Typically. But this understanding is changing because more and more technology is detrimental rather than beneficial. She illustrates this using the table below:

		</th>
		<th>
			Beneficial
		</th>
		<th>
			Detrimental
		</th>
	</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
	<tr>
		<td>
			Inclusion
		</td>
		<td>
			Voluntary opt-in: power
		</td>
		<td>
			Involuntary lock-in: vulnerability
		</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>
			Exclusion
		</td>
		<td>
			Involuntary lock-out: vulnerability
		</td>
		<td>
			Voluntary opt-out: power
		</td>
	</tr>
</tbody>

The “analogue haves” have the power to decline participation in systems that use AI, for example. Her article focuses mainly on voluntary opt-out of detrimental systems, which she calls “analog privilege.”

Paying particular attention to the use of AI in systems, the article highlights how, in real-world use, LLMs show “significant downsides” for people subject to error-prone (hallucinations), probabilistic guesstimates (stochastic parrots) that incorrectly assume the future mirrors the past.

What do all trading adverts say? “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” Why is this obvious statement reserved only for these systems and not AI?

Chapter I discusses beneficial and detrimental AI systems, making reference to how automation is about streamlining management and breaking down work into ordered, manageable items to be subsequently automated. Placing AI on a scale from beneficial, where we are freed of repetitive, mindless tasks, to detrimental, where enforcement is supercharged, consequently providing adverse consequences for the ‘enforced’.

Real-world examples are widely known nowadays, like the Amazon delivery drivers forced to keep empty bottles in their vans so they can urinate because the algorithm doesn’t factor in human needs through a cycle requiring ever-faster deliveries to hit the targets set by a detrimental AI. This is an example of how a beneficial AI morphed into a detrimental one, and the article shows how automation can easily and quickly degenerate with disastrous consequences.

Noted in the article is that a lot of literature and discussion has focused on the potential AI harms, while missing who AI spares. The debate has centered around inclusion, fairness, and guarantees of transparency, but has failed to discuss the divide between the analogue haves and the analogue have-nots as an important issue.

One example discussed is LegalTech, where a two-speed system is observed, one analogue for the rich and the other automated approximations of legal representation for the poor. Similarly, social media studies have shown the trade-offs of automated content moderation, where being flagged, struck off and even banned for life is reserved for the analogue have-nots, with no recourse, precisely because the analogue route (talking to someone) is tightly cut off for the likes of you and me.

With the prevalence and accelerating deployment of these systems, the actual harms being caused are not the world-ending consequences plied by the AI grifters, they are the everyday acts of violence committed by an unfeeling algorithm that suffers no consequences for poor decision-making and possesses absolutely no compassion or empathy for the human using that system.

A thread that comes up repeatedly in any serious analysis of these systems has been coined as technosolutionism. Big Tech’s true sin is its arrogance and belief that an algorithm can solve anything. As I discussed earlier, people are messy and illogical, and relying solely on algorithms is a recipe for disaster for those who find themselves in the ‘Involuntary lock-in: vulnerability’ quadrant of the table above. Tech used to work, and it used to solve very well, but only for a small set of very specific and defined problems. As tech has become ubiquitous, tech is showing its limitations, but the tech leaders still believe that the next .0 of their wares will fix these. What those releases generally do is resolve old issues and create a whole host of new ones.

The paper also highlights the obvious conclusions of digital colonialism, where analogue haves are de facto at the top of the pile, benefiting from the exploitation of those underneath. Akin to gated communities, the elite extract themselves from society, refusing to participate meaningfully and contributing nothing to the local community.

The paper then gets into details about how and where LLMs fall short, with a particularly telling conversation with a chatbot:

“Promt: Get your sofa onto the roof of your house, without using a pulley, ladder, a crane …

Human response: I will build a large wooden ramp … on the side of the my house with platforms every 5 feet

GPT-3 response: Cut the bottom of the sofa so that it would fit through the window… break the windows to make room for the sofa.”

Yeah, sure.

And if you think I’m a little melodramatic, take facial expression technology. It is entirely based on the already-discredited pseudoscience of Phrenology —I’ll spare you the racist and sexist origins of it— but that isn’t stopping companies from working hard to integrate it into products from criminal investigations to dynamic pricing in supermarkets based on the face of the potential buyer, such a disgraceful and immoral thing to do. And please keep in mind that these systems are known for making stuff up, so it could be you who falls victim, and you wouldn’t even know it! (See below in the reading section).

Maroussia Lévesque has a far more eloquent discussion of this topic, and I would definitely suggest you read it. Although her case study focuses mainly on LegalTech, it isn’t overly technical in that domain and is very readable.

You can find it here.

It’s probably time I concluded this…

Despite this being a largely critical look at tech in general and AI specifically, I do acknowledge that there are many potential benefits, but I would say that it is incumbent upon us to ensure that tech is used for good and for the benefit of everyone. That requires remaining vigilant to the grift, the abuses, and the apparent dog-whistling of products and services that will be used against us as soon as they possibly can.

One area that seems to be taking hold is the use of federated systems, which wouldn’t necessarily solve the problems above but would contribute to better governance. I’ve discussed federated services previously, and I hope you start building out systems along those lines for beneficial use. The most widely used federated system existing today is email. The millions of email servers on the internet all talk to each other, allowing efficient communication from user to user without requiring that user to be beholden to a specific company. Google tried to break email and centralise it for its own selfish use and future extraction. Thankfully, it didn’t work. The more services that are generated, the more chance we have of saving tech and the Internet from its current destructive path.

Reading

➔ “Zuckerberg Poisons the World — Selling Digital Opioid”

I don’t think the future of social media is bright in its current form. I think that bears out with Meta’s investments and panics towards the “Metaverse” (how’s that going?) and now AI. Looking for the next grift is an endless task.

➔ Automation in Retail Is Even Worse Than You Thought

“New technology is not just making shopping more challenging for workers and consumers—it’s poised to rip off the most vulnerable.”

Have a lovely week, and thanks for reading.

📅 January 13 - January 19 | All your Internets are belong to us

Tue, 21 Jan 2025 07:57:59 -0400

A picture tells a thousand words.

I didn’t set out to write this. I had planned on writing about the recent paper (Analog Privilege) that I read on a recent trip and came back with many notes in the margin of the printout. But events sometimes take over what you had thought about doing. What is it they say?

Best-laid plans are laid to waste.

Yeah.

This started life in the ‘of note’ column, and as I started writing it, I figured it would be better in the main section. Like always. I have thoughts.

I wanted to discuss my feelings about some of the major issues affecting the tech world and the Internet today. Yesterday (as when this gets emailed) was inauguration day in the United States of America. The American people have chosen, democratically, a candidate that, for want of a better description, acts like a Mafia boss. This will have, and has already had, significant consequences on how the Internet will change over the coming years.

More than ever, the Internet is central to the lives of billions of people, for better or worse. The incoming regime will test the institutions of the Internet more than at any time in history, from areas concerning Section 230 that protect online platforms such as social media from sanction for any publication on or via its system (wrongly in some cases, in my view).

It will challenge the underlying governance structure of the Internet, which is currently open to all (although many nations in the Global South would, rightly, dispute that), exacerbating the so-called Splinternet as decisions on “un-American” products like routers, firewalls, switches and services linked to regimes this administration considers “anti-american” —which by definition is anything not American— will be targeted for sanctions, punitive tax structures, and even outright bans.

This will inevitably lead to retaliation from those targeted. And despite the bluster and political propaganda from (generally) right-wing journals, the EU has not stopped its program on reigning in abuses of the Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), as the ongoing saga of its investigation into Google’s refusal to fact-check its search results, or in recent step up its investigation of Twitter’s abuses of the DSA, or even Meta’s wholesale abandonment of fact-checking and moderation.

Note: I’ll use the term VLOPs from hereon. Not because I agree 100% with the DSA, but it is a convenient term rather than Big Tech (not specific enough), Social Media (Networks or Media? Active or Performative?) or other loose definitions.

Side note here: You may have knee-jerk reactions to the DSA and the DMA. You should take the time to read what the acts are; here is a good start. You may not entirely agree with them, but you cannot argue that they are anti-consumer. In fact, this is the most significant difference in legislation and governance of the Internet seen between the three largest groups in the world that have enormous sway in how the Internet is run. America is pro-business, to the point that it willingly throws its consumers under the bus; the EU is pro-consumer, to the point that it throws businesses under the bus; and China is pro-CCP, meaning that everyone gets thrown under the bus if they are out of line. This is a poor abbreviation of the much more detailed and nuanced arguments in Anu Bradford’s book, Digital Empires (available in bookshops and most online retailers).

If the recent events of TikTok are any indication, they show us what many of the large platforms will do. No later than a few hours after TikTok went dark this weekend, Meta announced that it was developing and soon releasing a blatant rip-off of a much-used TikTok service, CapCut.

What we see is an entirely political manoeuvre by Mark Zuckerberg to exploit a situation for his own gain. Proving that he has virtually no morals, not that he had strong ones in the first place.¹ His machinations will prop up a more nationalistic and corrupt government in his home country, thus legitimising the same in many other nations worldwide. I’ve said as much before the Brexit referendum, that the nationalistic overtones of that consultation (that incidentally, the outcome of which was not legally binding and was advisory only) would entrain a slow march to nationalism in Europe as it would empower and legitimise the would-be despots and autocrats to push harder than before. We’re seeing it in France, where the RN (Front National) made significant gains by laundering their image (it’s a lie, and France will regret it if they’re elected), in Italy with a populist right-winger that will shortly show her true colours, and again in Germany, where, clearly, much of the population has entirely lost any connection to their past. Plenty of ink will be spilt on this topic and those related to it. I’ll let you form your own opinions.

The Internet is central to all of this, and it is the Internet that could help pull us out of this downward spiral, but it is not going to be done on the VLOPs as they will (and are doing so already in the US) controlling what you can and cannot see. It is going to be done from the ground up. Not by actively using the big platforms and staying passive while rights are being squashed. Under US law, the VLOPs private businesses and thus can allow/disallow whomever they like. Just remember, they don’t have your interests at heart.

A better way for the future of the Internet is more federation. Federation means that you don’t need to accept the bullshit of VLOPs, and you can easily move to a new instance without losing the connection to your friends, family and other professional connections. Currently, if you get banned on LinkedIn for an unfair or unreasonable reason, you can do nothing (see above about private business). You might even suffer professionally. With a federated alternative, you would be able to move all that data to a new instance without losing access.

Even better, and I’d recommend this: you should set up your own website with a domain you control and publish your CV (minus personal data), pointing people to it when needed, similar to a LinkedIn link, but on a platform where you are in charge, and without the privacy-invading surveillance. You are then only subject to your country’s laws regarding what you cannot publish.

The simple fact is, and the one thing I would like you to take away from this, is that the Internet is changing and will not be the same as it was just a few years ago. It is changing for the worse, despite the efforts of the EU and others (however poorly you may think they are done). And its current centralisation in the hands of overt extremists will be used against you at the earliest opportunity.

Reading

A few articles and things I’ve been reading.

Lessons From Red Teaming 100 Generative AI Products

Microsoft Red Teamed one hundred generative AI products. Their conclusion? “LLMs amplify existing security risks and introduce new ones”. To boot, they note that securing AI is an impossible task in that it will never be complete.

New data set reveals 40,000 apps behind location tracking

“380 million location data from 137 countries: a previously unknown data set from a US data broker shows the dangers of global data trading. 40,000 apps are affected …”

How is this not 1984?

Five things privacy experts know about AI

AI models memorise their training data
AI models then leak their training data
Ad hoc protections don’t work
Robust protections exist, though their mileage may vary
The larger the model, the worse it gets

That fifth point is directly related to last week’s article.

CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music

Filed under: What the fuck is wrong with these people?

UK government plans to splurge billions on AI

Rather than funding things that they can fix today. What could possibly go wrong?

Of note

See above.

Thoroughly depressed and hoping for a better future. Have a great week.

Zuckerberg has desperately tried to retroactively change this historical fact by claiming that it was a “prank” website. He is a compulsive liar. Understand that. ↩︎

📅 January 06 - January 12 | Are bigger models better for AI?

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:35:15 -0400

Good day everyone, and may I wish you a happy 2025.

I’m back with the first proper article of 2025 after a well-deserved break from several activities. I kept working over the holiday period, but I took a few days off to be with family who had returned to the island for a short stay. I was very happy to take that time off.

You’ll have noticed that I snuck in a quick note during that period. I had the idea to lay down some thoughts I’ve been having about the state of (tech) community in the West Indies. It was kindly re-published on the platform that I was talking about (CIVIC - I’ve since discussed it with the forum admin, who revealed the name in his post, so I’m fine with stating it here now. I thank Yacine Khelladi for that). It didn’t generate as much discussion as I was hoping, which proves my point sadly! One company did reach out, and I’ll be responding this week.

Anyway, this one is about a paper I read in November —yeah, I live an exciting life— about an aspect of the AI hype cycle that is often misunderstood or forgotten. And, as a bonus, invokes Betteridge’s law.

AI hype has done at least three things aside from putting the marketing term in the general public’s lexicon. One, it has hijacked discussions on more serious matters by installing, like a brain worm, in the minds of decision-makers a sense of concentration on AI that will (should?) fix all the problems. “Got healthcare problems in your country? AI’ll fix it. Just give us more money.” Two, it has been allowed to talk over debate about whether or not more compute is going to solve the very real problems current generative AI has. The third, and most important for me, is that it has wholly obfuscated sensible discussion on what AI is. Almost anything that calculates is AI now, according to some. This is stupidly untrue, and the differences between generative AI (GenAI), Machine Learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and many other types of AI have been completely lost.

We in the Caribbean have been largely shielded from this locally and only affected during the consumption of products and services from the US and other countries. However, that will change massively in the Caribbean throughout 2025. Everything is going to be AI.

I’m here to ask you to watch out for this intellectual sleight of hand and question what is actually meant by “AI” when a company is trying to push its wares on you. When your local electricity company says you need to replace your meter with one that has AI, What does that actually mean? In that instance, AI has only replaced the last marketing buzzword of the moment in the instrumentation field, Smart. Smart Meters, Smart Controls etc, etc. It was never “smart” and won’t be “AI” either.

The paper reviewed here is from Gaël Varoquaux, Alexandra Sasha Luccioni, and Meredith Whittaker. It is called Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI. You can find a pdf here: Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI.

It discusses the attention and growing investment in Large Language Models (LLMs) and the narrative that bigger is better. That is, more compute and more data is key to a better AI. The paper challenges this view by asking a couple of simple questions: What is this assumption based on? What are the collateral consequences of this?

The paper looks at one of the most influential studies about AI scale and performance (AlexNet)¹that discussed this.

all of our experiments suggest that our results can be improved simply by waiting for faster GPUs and bigger datasets to become available”

This set the tone for other studies that, already mindful of this study, concluded similarly into what has become an assumption in the same way that the assumption of Moore’s Law has anchored itself into a discussion of processor performance since it was first ushered. Like Moore’s Law, the reality is much more nuanced and complex. For example, modern processors are actually many processors on a silicon die, more akin to a “system on a chip” than a simple processor. It could be argued that individual processors hit a limit quite some time ago and that a workaround and redefinition of what a “processor” is was needed to keep the dream alive.

So it is with LLM models. They follow more of a law of diminishing returns than a “doubling of transistors every 18 months (and thus performance).” After a certain point, a saturation point is reached on many tasks performed by LLMs and other AI models. Several studies have shown this, as described in the paper.

This is precisely why we’re starting to see models that can be run on personal computers, with one of the most influential companies in the AI hardware space, Nvidia, announcing its own AI workstations, marketed to individuals and institutions that have hit a wall with cloud-based AI solutions that are both costly and often less secure.

Not only has performance plateaued in many circumstances, but the demands on resources have exponentially increased for little gain. Yet, it appears that many applications do not need scale to be efficient and useful. In a medical imaging test on “organ segmentation” (an ML application), models over around 1 GB in size plateaued in performance shortly after reaching that GB, despite the medial images themselves often being much larger. Performance tanked as the models got bigger and bigger. Other applications seem to corroborate this, too. In computer vision, performance rises quickly and then tanks as the models pass over an ‘optimal’ size. This has also been shown to be the case for LLMs. One test showed that the LLM performance started to decline from around 100 Gb in size.

Seemingly, a conclusion is being formulated by a number of those in the research community that smaller, more focused models are better for accuracy and performance reasons, but also another factor that I hinted at in the introduction.

Some assume that feeding the machine with more will automatically render the results of that machine “better”. We have seen in a couple of examples that that assumption is simply not true in many circumstances. But that assumption also ignores another simple constraint: resources are not infinite.

Compute is constrained by physics and the capacity to manufacture reliably and sustainably. Energy is constrained by multiple factors, such as production, delivery, and cost, to name a couple. Code itself is constrained by developer’s capability, productivity and the very real issue of time. Have a read of The Mythical Man Month, otherwise known as Brook’s Law.

Its central theme is that adding manpower to a software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.

Another aspect often ignored or glossed over is the costs associated with the alleged performance gains. Growth in the computer required to create and deploy AI models grows faster than the compute cost decreases. So, as their accessibility increases to ever more of the population, there is this wishful thinking that efficiency improvements will solve this. However, the paper points out an economic effect called Jevons Paradox.

It is a well-known phenomenon in economics that when the efficiency of a general-use technology increases, the falling costs leads to an increase in demand, resulting in an overall increase in resource usage.

The paper discusses the environmental effects of CO2 emissions, concluding that the cost of a single AI inference is growing faster than compute is improving. And given the fact that companies are scrambling to add “AI” to everything, something that was painfully on display at this year’s CES in LasVegas last week, this could increase by an order of magnitude the carbon footprint of AI use and thus contribute even further to the collapse of the climate. To understand this, it is important to understand that inference is AI’s biggest compute cost centre. Google “attributes 60% of its AI-related engird use to inference”. Other studies have shown that with a few million users daily on Open AI, energy use of inference outweighed that of training within a few weeks. It is no wonder most big tech firms have gone quiet on their sustainability targets, with companies like Microsoft announcing that they would “miss” them. Miss, is an understatement!

The paper discusses quality, which I’ll let you read as it is, too, pretty much universally ignored by the marketing materials and the hyping up of the “benefits” of AI by the salesmen who have their interests at heart, not ours. Suffice it to say that bigger models produce more errors at the cost of compute, energy, CO2, etc.

Lastly, the paper discusses another angle often lost in the discussion about AI. Scale, i.e., bigger-is-better, is really a means to build a moat around these businesses. GPT-type models are, for the most part, pretty simple, and there are enough examples and open-source projects that it is straightforward to build one yourself —given you possess the right technical skills. In other words, you cannot patent them and protect them using IP laws. So, how do you make it harder for anyone else to enter the game? Have you seen the cost of setting up and running a datacenter? That should tell you all you need to know. To give you an idea, Nvidia’s H100 GPU costs about $40,000. You need a lot of them. Meta is estimated to have spent $18 billion on GPUs in 2024 alone. So this essentially eliminates all but the biggest of budgets, thus protecting the established players, not to mention the circular investment deals like Microsoft and Open AI.

The broader issue with that is that scientific investigation and innovation can only be done with the blessing of these companies, giving them unilateral control to approve, deny, and stop research if that project doesn’t align with its views. Given the recent far-right shift in the politics of Meta, I’m sure this will end well. Nvidia’s aforementioned AI PC is a tiny step in a direction away from this, but it is not enough.

As Caribbean residents, we are perpetually exposed to the ravages of the climate. I seriously question whether these tools are useful enough to warrant their ubiquitous usage in the region. I’ll leave that up to you and your conscience to determine.

Go and read the paper; it is just shy of 10 pages long, and the language is not too technical that non-techs can’t understand.

Reading

Here is a quick summary of articles I’ve read recently. These are not endorsements of their content. I sometimes vehemently disagree with their premise but feel it is important to read as much of a variety of views as possible.

Mark Zuckerberg’s commitment to free speech is as deep as Exxon’s commitment to clean energy

Nuff said.

IGF 2024 in Riyadh: AI, WSIS+20 and the Global South

A roundup from CircleID on the IGF in Riyadh.

“The Caribbean is a microcosm of Big Tech’s digital colonialism. Small and medium-sized emerging countries are profitable to exploit”

Consulting firm Strand Consult discusses what we all know already. Where are they from again?

Thanks for reading. Please share with anyone you think might like to read. Have a great week.

. ↩︎

🗞️ A little therapy and an announcement

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 15:53:02 -0400

Good morning all, from a sunny Martinique this morning.

I’ve been going over some old writing as a sort of therapeutic exercise or as an exercise in self-harm. I haven’t worked out which it is yet!

Anyway, I came across something I wrote two years ago, almost exactly to the day. It is a half-baked manifesto for building community in the Caribbean around tech and society.

My participation in a fairly moribund forum on tech in the Caribbean motivated it. I will not name it, as it serves no purpose other than to highlight what actually happens when a forum like this exists. The admin does a stellar job and tries to keep it going, regularly posting links and articles about tech in the Caribbean. I and several other stakeholders met to discuss how it could continue, flourish, and develop. The meeting was sparsely attended, and unfortunately, no follow-up ensued.

It frustrated me because I saw a Caribbean with a lot of potential and abundant talent. I see it because I’m embedded in it. Anyone not in the sector or region, however, cannot and don’t, which contributes to the false impressions of the region and stifles the potential before it gets off the ground (internally and externally). Many institutions and businesses in the Caribbean don’t put enough faith in their fellow companies, consultants and innovators. How do we then expect companies outside the Caribbean to put faith in Caribbeans?

This was a sort of “get some ideas down on paper” rather than a thought-out manifesto, and it addressed a specific case. I wanted to post it to the forum in question, but didn’t in the end. Perhaps I should have!

But I still stand by what I wrote.

As always, I’m open to discussion/criticism/correction.

(Reproduced here, as is. Un-edited)

Good day to everyone.

From the outset, my apologies in advance for the brusque language. I don’t wish to offend.

I’m a reasonably recent lurker on this forum. Some of you may have heard of me, some not. I’ll spare you the CV —please connect on LinkedIn. I’ll be only too glad— but I hope I can contribute to the discussion.

Firstly, as noted above, I am as guilty as anyone. I don’t contribute enough.

We have to address the elephant in the room. This forum is essentially a roundup of news and a few discussions that peter out fairly quickly. Why?

Most discussion is offline, direct, WhatsApp, and P2P —therefore hidden and lost to the community. We must foster, encourage and change how we all communicate on topics related to tech and the ecosystem in and around the region.

An in-person event is all well and good (and I think it should be done). But it’s useless if there’s no follow-up, no follow on, no ongoing discussion, idea-sharing, etc. However, don’t forget that getting the meatware (humans) around the Caribbean is a big and expensive problem. I recently spoke to someone who had come to the FWI from Jamaica - Two days there. Two days back. 🤦‍♂️

Regarding: online discussions, if I look at the online groups I participate in, discords, slacks, and forums, there is healthy traffic and real (deep) debate on topics. If anyone asks a question, there are several responses. If anyone doesn’t understand something, many people are willing to help out. Plus, the other “off-topic” discussions about food, games, etc. etc. … pretty much a real community.

We all seem so frightened of losing business by talking out in the open and trying to work together on projects. I’ve seen it so many times firsthand. I’ve tried to get people working together, only to fail because of a lack of trust. So as a result, we don’t work together.

I’m not saying it never happens, but there needs to be more of it.

I would like to see a Caribbean working hand-in-hand with healthy “coopetition”. Take a look at the economic model in Prato, Italy. The Prato model decentralises and specialises the processes (recycling) involved across many small companies, each expert in a specific domain. We have too many “generalists” and not enough specialists working together. We have too many individual consultants (me included). We have too many MSMEs.

95% of businesses in LATAM are MSMEs (counting for 65% of all employment with a GDP contribution of … 25%. JFC, this has to change).

Just look at the way RFPs go. To outside companies or consulting firms with a PO Box in Trinidad. FFS! We can’t objectively compete as it stands.

We have to build it. No one will do it for us.

It would be awfully remiss of me to post this without humbly offering some suggestions:

A better discussion platform. The current one is no longer fit for purpose, I believe. There are many options - Discord, Slack, Teams, Mastodon Instance, etc. I’ll make no judgement.
More discussion will slowly build trust for a wider population. Perhaps even creating genuine partnerships/agreements to work together on larger and larger projects.
A social media manager that can promote and animate topics and discussions to the broader region and diaspora. (See my last point too).
Building on the above, a podcast? A newsletter? What can we do to build interest and contribution?
An annual (in-person?) event - targeted to the members’ needs (survey-based feedback would help clarify those) with a virtual attendance component for those of us in transport purgatory.
A monthly/quarterly virtual meeting designed to keep/build links - on specific topics of the moment.
Incentives - what brought you here? What do you get out of it? What can it bring for you and your business? People will only contribute if they get something out of it. That is not the same thing for each person/business. Some it’ll be recognition, others access to trade.
We shouldn’t exclude other sectors. We need them in the way they need us. Tech is no longer “computers and ICT”. It touches EVERYTHING. Attracting those that are not from our background is key to us having a better understanding of the opportunities. Let’s not copy the Tech Bros of Silicon Valley. Their arrogance and belief that code can solve the world’s ills is bullshit and always has been. We’re better than that and have more skin in the game.

Feel free to critique. With pleasure. I’m open to discussion.

I don’t profess to know everything or have all the answers.

I wanted to share my feelings, impressions, and thoughts. Nothing more, nothing less.

To the community, I’ll make myself available to help out where and how I can.

Have a great day, and I look forward to building alongside you all.

Happy New Year, 2023

Updates on my online life

I regularly participate in discussions on two well-known podcasts, the ICT-Pulse Podcast (English) and Innovation, Agilité & Excellence (French).

I do a piss-poor job self-promoting this work, so I thought I would do something to rectify that this year and also promote their work and thank them for the effort they put in regularly to bring interesting topics to us all.

To start, here are the last couple of episodes that I featured:

ICTP 330: ONLINE ADVERTISING, LEARNING AND COLLABORATION AND DIGICEL’S LATEST DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REPORT

ÉPISODE 187: PROMESSES ET RÉALITÉS DE L’IA AVEC MATTHEW COWEN

NB: If you don’t speak French, there’s a really simple trick to get the text in English. Use a Whisper model, like MacWhisper, to output a transcript. Then, use your favourite translator (even LLMs will do a reasonable job), and you’ll have the discussion.

Announcing the Caribbean Digital Compass

This year will see the launch of a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while. I’ll be working closely with Michele Marius (ICT Pulse); we have already started putting things in place. It will start slowly but surely and evolve based on your feedback.

It’s called the Caribbean Digital Compass. It will specialise in regularly discussing two to three topics (released as and when written, i.e., no specific timetable). It will give you the background to understand the topic, provide context for the Caribbean, and provide opinion and analysis where relevant.

We plan to write frequently but concisely, keeping the word count reasonable. We also want to record some podcasts that discuss the thinking and research behind the articles, but I suspect that will come later.

Anyway, I hope you come along with us for this journey, and you can sign up here at caribbeandigitalcompass.com/subscribe/

The site is currently a bit rudimentary but will evolve over the coming months. For now, all articles will be published there, and subscribers will receive an email as soon as an article is published.

Just one more heads up. We intend to make this a paid product in the future, but we’ll see how it goes. I wanted to set your expectations. If we go paid, there’ll be a free component, so you can still support us. The cost to subscribe will be small as it is targeted to cover the maximum of the business population in the Caribbean, who, as we know, have very different earnings from island to island!

Happy New Year, 2025

📅 December 16 - December 22 | A short(-ish) review and thoughts for next year

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 20:08:01 -0400

If you know me well, you know that this is one of my least favourite times of the year. It’s complicated, so I’ll spare you the details. But It does seem to be tradition for blogs and newsletters to do a retrospective of the, soon to be over, year. It’s possibly something inherited from the traditional media industry. And whilst I’m not really a fan of this tradition —you can call me a miserable git for detesting the Spotify-like “wrapped” emails that have been invading and polluting my inbox and general use of apps. Please stop!— I thought it might be useful for me to have a look over some of the stuff I’ve been doing here this year. You don’t have to read this; please just click Mark as Read if it’s not your thing. I won’t judge.

I might take a break next week, so if you don’t see a new email next week, you’ll know why.

In the meantime, have a good holiday.

I started the new year with a new site (this one) with the intention of bringing all my writing and online presence into one place. The Substack “Nazi Bar” problem precipitated the move, and I needed to move off the bigger platforms onto something more independent and open that also had values around the open web.

I landed on micro.blog, a small company providing a simplified and highly customisable platform for blogging. It included newsletter capabilities (albeit rudimentary) and embraced federated technologies for authors to publish on other platforms. It has its own community and provides a social-like experience on a smaller and more manageable scale compared to standard social media (the Facebook’s and so on.)

Since then, I have posted exactly 60 articles, averaging one article a week in newsletter form and a couple of other posts about specific topics. I have been able to keep up a stable rhythm of writing and posting. I generally write starting on Sunday evening and finishing the article on Monday. Editing and proofreading are done on Monday evening so that I can post in the evening or early morning. I have been pretty consistent all year, although lately, I’ve been posting on Tuesday morning.

This post will be the 61st of the year, pushing the total number of words to over 50,000. Depending on who you ask, that is about the length of a book. It is on the lower end of the word count but book-length nonetheless.

In July, I started working with a small IT company on a part-time basis, and personally, I was worried that it would make it difficult for me to keep writing these articles. In the end, it worked out rather well, as it gave me a certain structure conducive to reading, researching, and writing a lot. I’m grateful to them for my employment. I’ve been continuing small contracts with other businesses, too, so the variety has been interesting and helped me keep my feet on the ground regarding what small businesses are living rather than the lofty ideals the media and tech companies often project. I can tell you they have literally no idea what is happening or what to do and are just happy to keep the money flowing through subscriptions, up-selling and cross-selling. The day a big firm really understands SMEs and does something for them, they’ll clean up.

This has been, loosely, the theme of this year’s writing: the disconnect and the disconnection of tech and society. A new word entered the dictionary, enshittification, to describe how businesses like Meta, Google, and plenty of others I have written about here have all turned a corner and are now actively making our online lives as hostile an environment as possible to maximise their profits.

I won’t re-litigate that here again; you can read a few of the posts I wrote here:

https://matthewcowen.org/archive/

I think the most significant topic I have concentrated on this year is Internet Governance.

I was in the ARIN Advisory Council election, and despite not getting elected, I didn’t disgrace myself. I look forward to being on the next list and continuing my involvement with ARIN. I hope we can do something with the French West Indies this year. I’d had initial talks, but time ran out. I’ll keep you posted.

I will continue to concentrate on this topic, and I’ll be looking to see if there are any employment opportunities in this space for someone like me who has many years of experience with the Internet and associated technologies and likes researching and writing about it. Please reach out if you know of anything.

I wrote a little about LLMs and had to admit defeat on the terminology. To re-iterate, LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT and the like are not Artificial Intelligence. Statistical next-word predictors are all they are. Impressive sometimes, yes, but absolutely useless most of the time. Unfortunately, that’s the conclusion that many are coming to now, as the rubber has hit the road. I’ll remind you of my experience in the Microsoft Copilot training, where the trainer used Copilot with a prompt that didn’t produce what was expected and then took a bunch of time to coax it into working, arguably spending more time than just doing the damn thing manually!

This year, I’ve tried to take a more pragmatic approach to discussion tech, Digital Transformation and the topics that seem to attract more smoke and mirrors discussion than real-world and practical analysis. I don’t think I’ve done an amazing job at that yet, but I think I’m definitely better at it than I was and probably better than a number of prominent tech journalists. To clarify, I’m not suggesting I’m a better journalist. I’m suggesting that I’m perhaps a little better at critical thinking about tech.

I hope to continue writing like this. I enjoy it, even if it is painful and cringe-inducing at times. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.

My ambitions for 2025 are to be more structured in my approach to articles. Next year, I plan to explore a topic in more detail, so maybe I should write a series of articles. Let me have a few glasses of Rhum over the holidays, and I’ll come back refreshed and ready to continue.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll be back in the new year.

Reading

My reading has only increased this year. I suspect next year will be no different. I have a ton on the backlog to read, and more is coming out daily.

Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Actually That Amazing - The reality can’t match the hype.

I think the title says it all. I’ll leave you to discover the short article. Just bear in mind that this is from an economist.

You may or may not like the cookie consent forms (which, by the way, exist because of the perverse interpretations from the ad tech industries of the requirements of EU regulation). Still, they try to move some control to you, the reader, rather than the ad tech industry. Well, they’re unhappy and not content enough with the already vast sums of minutiae about you and your life. They’re also sneaky bastards trying to trick you into clicking where you don’t want.

The “Sovereign Democratic Infrastructure” Hyperscalers Trick. Why We Shouldn’t Fall for It, and What We Should Do Instead

This is a very considered discussion of technology, sovereignty, data centres, and control. I’m not sure I agree with every point made, but I’m glad I read it.

European Union Member States Speak Up for Encryption

Noticeably absent… France, Spain, Belgium, Italy and others that should know better.

Enjoy your break if you have one, and have a great week.

📅 December 09 - December 15 | Conscientious Objector

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 07:22:38 -0400

It’s a reasonably short one today. I’m progressing on what I promised to write up but haven’t been able to finish as yet. Soon come.

As I write this (Monday afternoon), the first official day of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has wrapped up. I say this as I am neither attending in-person nor following live virtually. This might seem a little odd for someone who is building more connections and work related to the field of Internet Governance. It is very easy to explain why. The place where the forum is being held this year is a significant factor in my conscientious objection to attendance. The forum is currently running in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

As someone who supports and defends human rights (admittedly at my small level of impact), I cannot condone or approve of a forum of this stature and importance being held in a country that has time and time again shown its disdain for respecting the fundamental human rights of people and has gone as far as extra-judicial murdering of a high profile dissenter and journalist.

So what am I saying? Should any regime that violates human rights (and, by extension, many digital rights) should be completely shunned, ignored and not negotiated with? Not at all. I’m all for working with and collaborating with regimes where the common good of the world and people are at the centre of that work. What I do think we should be doing is not fawning over the opulent surroundings and preferential treatment we get compared to its citizens, and we should demand human rights concessions before any discussion to host such an important conference.

After a cursory glance at the conference schedule, I found this event:

Source: IGF website

At first, I thought it was a joke. It is not.

I will take my time to look at many sessions once the conference is over, and I can pick and choose the rhythm to digest some of the information.

I was not the only one to register and not attend. Hopefully, a message may have been sent as intended. Many groups of people cannot travel to Riyadh because of the danger it would put them in as a result of their sexual orientation, religion, political and journalistic positions. This is undoubtedly not the way to hold what is ostensibly an “open” forum that “welcomes all”.

AccessNow went further and held a round table discussion entitled “Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2024: when digital rights collide with digital oppression.” I attended and very much enjoyed the conversation. You can watch the recording at this YouTube link. I politely ask you to take the time to watch it if you have the time.

What Saudi Arabia is doing fits into my previous discussion about Internet fragmentation. States are starting to try to overstep their current self-imposed limits on Internet meddling.

I said in that article:

I think we’re heading into a critical phase of governance and the overall battle for control of the Internet.

…

The Internet has too big of an influence on populations for governments and ultra-rich private firms with diminishing scruples to ignore. The “Splinternet” is already here, albeit limited in application. The worry is that states that elect authoritarians and increasingly extreme right-wing governments will default to control of the Internet, just as they controlled media in the past.

Saudi Arabia has complete control of the media and is extending that control to the Internet, imposing its oppressive will on its citizens. And whilst I think that governments should get involved in governing the Internet in their countries, some lines shouldn’t be crossed. Unfortunately, these lines are being redrawn and re-redrawn in many countries, including those that traditionally wouldn’t do such a thing (see the UK, USA, and many others).

We can talk all we like about “the Internet we want,” but it will not materialise unless we fight for it.

As I have previously discussed, federated systems, such as social, document storage and sharing, and other organisational systems, are part of the solution. See ActivityPub and other decentralised protocols.

As I wrote that article, I realised that I should give a little bit of an explanation of what a federated system is. And yes, it is not that easy to explain to a layperson, but we all use at least one service that runs in a federated manner. It is robust, decentralised and open for anyone to use. It is email. The basic email protocol, SMTP, is an example of a federated system that allows all parties worldwide to communicate quickly using agreed standards whilst having local control on some aspects of the delivery. It is simple to spin up a mail host and participate in mail delivery and reception (not that easy, but certainly possible). I’m simplifying a little, but you understand the principle.

That’s all I’ll say on the topic for the moment.

Reading

Last week, I promised some reading links:

What people in the global majority need from networks

Wreckage/salvage provides a breakdown of research on the Internet, society, federation, and humanity in the digital world. This article discusses the uses of Big Tech platforms and why populations that are being exploited continue to use them. It is a sobering read that helped me understand my privilege when choosing the tools I use every day.

Domain Trends Signal Shifting Tides in 2024

This article in Circle ID discusses findings from a significant domain name provider in the registration and use of domain names in 2024. I’ve seen significant growth for a Caribbean ccTLD, .gy (Guyana). This was from an analysis of BlueSky domain handles. It turns out that .gy is the second-most used ccTLD on the site. After some research, I discovered it was due to a bridging system called Brid.gy that allows BlueSky and Mastodon to interact. I hope Guyana are getting paid enough for its use.😉

French Piracy Blocking Order Goes Global, DNS Service Quad9 Vows to Fight

France just can’t keep its hands off the Internet at the moment. Whether or not you think piracy is good or bad, DNS manipulation is a dangerous path to follow. When you sanction it as a state, you’re sanctioning authoritarianism and if it is used in anger, as it was here, what is to say that it can’t be used for more nefarious means? You should not use your ISP’s DNS servers at a minimum and should consider using open DNS servers such as Quad9 or others.

Documentary: Hypernormalisation

For a change, I’m recommending a 2016 video documentary. Broadcast on the BBC, it is one of many excellent documentaries from Adam Curtis. I’ll let you discover it and its relevance to today’s times. (Click the title link to open the YouTube video).

Bonus: An interview in 2018 about capitalism. It is not what you think.

All of Adam Curtis’ documentaries are available on YouTube (sanctioned by Adam Curtis and the BBC, so you don’t need to feel guilty watching them).

Back to the grind. Have a great week.

📅 December 02 - December 08 | The Perilous Potential of Tech

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 08:44:11 -0400

There are times when I start writing these articles, and I suddenly think to myself, oh shit. I think I have bitten off more than I can chew. This is one of those moments, and against my better judgment, I have decided to try to get through it. Bear with me.

I have so many thoughts floating around that empty space balanced above my neck. And I have so many fleeting side conversations, some more in-depth and others that come to me during the day. Their existence is only in that moment and they are forever lost if not captured. So, I have been trying to write down many of these thoughts and ideas in any way I can, even if they turn into nothing. I’m sure I could be more diligent, but I have to work with what I’ve got, and that ain’t much.

Feel free to skip this one. If you do read it through, I’d be interested in your thoughts. You know how to contact me.

I have a whiteboard in my home office on the wall behind my monitor. I have a fairly large monitor on the desk with its height adjusted for comfort, but it slightly obscures the bottom of the Whiteboard. But there is enough for me to keep a note of a couple of thoughts visible throughout my day or whenever I come into and out of the room (the board is close to the door).

Why am I telling you this?

Well, I have been meaning to think deeper and eventually write about a couple of things I wrote on that board that are still there. I’m not there yet, and I think it will take a lot more time to flesh them out fully, but I thought it would be useful to start that process despite its unfinished state.

Let’s start with what is written on the board. Despite my fear of embarrassment, I’ll write exactly as it is:

Dehumanising tech

Takes away the barrier that humans have to temper their reactions

Violent reactions against tech will increase because it harms no one

To progress, I think the next step is to break down those three phrases, explain what I mean, and perhaps define some terms.

Dehumanising Tech

What do I mean by this title or statement?

In essence, I’m thinking about how we are being divided into data points, automated scripts, and other digital assets that can be used, abused, monetised, and ultimately dehumanised.

Source: wallpapers.com

Typically controlled by a fraction of the world’s population, they give you a few crumbs to make you believe you have control over that digital expression of your self when, in fact, you don’t. You are no longer the owner of you.

And what about Artificial Intelligence, the topic of the moment? Is AI going to change the world (for good)? I’ve long argued against using the term AI to talk about LLMs, so I won’t do that here. But I thought it would be interesting to discuss one story about the beginnings of AI.

Around the advent of powerful computers, several scientists set out to replicate the human brain by using complex calculating machines that they believed would become equal to the human brain at some point (when the technology got powerful enough). This failed spectacularly then, and it is still failing to this day.

To parody these hopeless attempts at building computers that think like humans, a computer scientist named Joseph Weizenbaum built what he claimed was a computer psychotherapist. The patient would “talk” to the machine by tying in their problems. The machine was named ELIZA, and it replaced the works of a real practising psychotherapist called Carl Rogers, who simply repeated back to the patient what they had just said in what became known as the Rogerian Rhetorical Approach:

The Rogerian method of argument involves each side restating the other’s position to the satisfaction of the other, among other principles.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

This created an illusion of something intelligent in front of the patient and would fool most people who interacted with the machine then. This reaction was not what Joseph Weizenbaum had bargained for, and he went on to write about this in greater detail after this somewhat serendipitous experiment concluded.

What he didn’t realise is that in doing this trick, he’d created a building block for others to use to dehumanise computer-human interaction and develop a state of illusion that the user ultimately preferred (compared to interactions with other humans). The building blocks went on to be exploited on a massive scale with rage-baiting, ad tech, nudge theory, genocide and the potential to destabilise nation-states. Breaking down the human into a series of numbers, bits and bites, and database entries rendered the product ripe for control, subjugation, and manipulation.

Your sleep-tracking data is just part of this. The data is useless even though you think it isn’t. Unless you are well-educated in sleep science, objectively speaking, you can do nothing useful with the data. Or, to put it differently, with or without that data, you can make best guesses about what may or may not be affecting your sleep. The same goes for exercise. As with diet-tracking and any number of areas you can use to deconstruct yourself into two-dimensional data. But, on a mass scale, that data can be extremely valuable to others without considering your interests.

Removing Barriers

If there is one story of humans that remains consistent, it is that we believe we are superior to other species. Our cars, computers, and democracies “prove” that humans have evolved past what other species have and that we are, therefore, at the top of the pecking order.

Source: unknown

It allows us to tell stories to ourselves that justify any action we take toward another species. This trickles down into our understanding of difference, specifically race. We tell ourselves stories of how one race is superior to another, not because we believe humans are all equal, but quite the opposite. We believe that some are more equal than others, and the way to achieve this is to remove pieces of the others’ humanity, making them not quite as human as us. When we remove fundamental human rights from others, we’re systematically stating that they don’t deserve the same rights because they are not as human as us. Often with catastrophic consequences:

The Belgians were influenced by anthropometry, then a fashionable science, and obsessed with the classification and differentiation of ‘races’. They decided that the Tutsis’ facial traits showed they were of Hamitic or Nilotic origin, and were descended from a cattle-herding people who had come to central Africa in search of pasture and imposed themselves on the local Hutus (Bantu farmers) and Twa (a pygmy people who were the original occupants of the land)

Source: https://mondediplo.com/2021/06/11rwanda

This dehumanisation of the other justifies actions taken against the “other” because, without it, we are essentially doing it to ourselves. This is a removal of barriers because the dehumanisation effect justifies the actions.

Technology’s reduction of the human and its constituent parts into data points in a database does the same. It eventually reduces the barriers to an extent that justifies any and all actions we take towards the other on the opposite side of the monitor. For many, the perceived anonymity behind the screen removes enough of that barrier.

On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog (1993, The New Yorker).

And, as I have noted above, the mass simultaneous hallucination of the world creates siloed realities that bear little resemblance to the real world and provide potentialities for misuse and abuse.

Violence and Technology

As tech dehumanises us, the inevitable consequence is a reaction against it. We’re seeing this; its seeds have been growing slowly for decades.

Source: Office Space (Film)

The Luddites recognised this, too.¹ TLDR: they were not against technology. They were against technology dehumanising them and reducing them to irrelevant pieces in the cogs of society, thus devaluing them.

Last week, we saw a stark and brutal consequence of dehumanising tech with the cold-blooded execution of UnitedHealthcare CEO in NYC. More importantly, from a societal point of view, we saw the Internet’s reaction to it, with thousands and thousands of people actively celebrating the murder. Hundreds of jokes and memes were pointing to the same thing: the dehumanisation of his insured justified the dehumanisation of him and ultimately justified the retaliation. What they said is (paraphrasing), “If it is OK for the CEO to hind behind a screen using data to decide the fate of another human being, justifying it through the use of Machine Learning and Bayesian predictions, then it is OK for that life to be ended because like all of our lives, we both are no longer human. We are all just binary representations of humans.”

This is a perilous path to pursue and is likely just the start of a cycle of digital violence becoming real-world violence.

No reading list this time

I’ve been rambling enough already, so I’ve moved a list of articles I wanted to recommend to next week.

I feel very vulnerable discussing like this in the open, but I wanted to get something down that I can work from. Don’t shout at your screen if you feel I’ve got something wrong. Contact me. Let’s chat. I am, after all, human. Have a great week.

Read Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant - [www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/br… ↩︎

📅 November 25 - December 01 | Internet adoption is slowing, while we’re slowly losing control of it

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 07:58:38 -0400

In this week’s discussion, I’m returning to the subject of Internet Governance and how the Internet is starting to become a weapon in International games of control and manipulation.

Last week, I changed how I link to articles I’ve read to make them more obvious and provide a better link for you to read them. As a bonus, I think it looks better. I hope you do, too.

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while, you know that I have become evermore involved in Internet Governance, and I have even put myself out there to be part of the process that, in a small way, provides the guidance, structure and tools to run the Internet as an open, transparent and fair tool for all to use. This isn’t perfect, and those who are involved in Internet Governance would likely acknowledge that, but it is, at least, the best option we have currently. I was on the election list for the ARIN Advisory Council, and the results were announced while I was away. Unfortunately, I didn’t get elected, but I’ll definitely put my name in the hat again in the next cycle. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d do as well as I did, so that was a pleasant surprise.

The importance of good Internet Governance has become more critical, just as the rise of tech and the almost total inclusion of tech in every sphere of life takes hold. The more it is involved in our lives, the more important it becomes as a tool and, hence, the more important it is for it to be governed well.

This has not escaped government scrutiny and interest from around the world, with seemingly open states starting to try to wrestle control over this public infrastructure to impose their own will, with both good and bad intentions. We’ve seen the United Nations finally getting involved after years of leaving it to the ITU to deal with through the Global Digital Compact. The ITU mandate was woefully inadequate for what the Internet has become, with it no longer being a telecommunications network over which ISPs and telcos route data packets for a fee. The Internet is a place in the world —albeit virtual— where, without it, you can no longer adequately function in many societies in the world. Two-thirds of the world is connected to the Internet in one way or another, and although the growth rate seems to be slowing, it is projected that the rest of the world will be online at some point in the near future. It won’t be 100%; that is impossible, as there will always be a section of the population that will reject the technology, arguably wisely. I doubt that Internet adoption will reach above 80% in total, and I think that it will take at least a decade to get there.

_Source: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-deep-dive-the-state-of-internet-adoption

I think we’re heading into a critical phase of governance and the overall battle for control of the Internet. I’m deeply worried about organisations like Meta (see below) building infrastructure that they will inevitably use for their own purposes (be damned with the consequences) and the risk that brings for the world as governments become more entrenched in authoritarian ways. Mark Zuckerberg’s turn to the right and the sycophant-ing to the new Trump administration is the first sign of this. The Internet has too big of an influence on populations for governments and ultra-rich private firms with diminishing scruples to ignore. The “Splinternet” is already here, albeit limited in application. The worry is that states that elect authoritarians and increasingly extreme right-wing governments will default to control of the Internet, just as they controlled media in the past.

This is why we need to fight back, and fighting back is by seriously limiting your use and engagement on big tech platforms that don’t have your interests at heart. Building your own tools for publishing, discussion, and diversion on the Internet will be key to online freedom in the coming years. The recent case with Open AI, which was accused of stealing social media posts and discussions to train its models, shows how the creator and originator of the posts made on platforms like Twitter, Threads, and Instagram are owned by the platform and not the individual. Go out there and start a little blog. Spin up a small social web instance. Keep it small and manageable, and then federate so you can participate in other discussions. It is not even expensive or technically challenging anymore.

I was thinking about this after ICANN published a blog post entitled Who Runs the Internet? Misconceptions About ICANN. The post responded to an article on a Russian site that seemed to criticise ICANN, suggesting that it ran the Internet and, hence, that the Internet was under American control. The article clearly signalled renewed interest worldwide in wresting control of the infrastructure. This is not the only incident, and it won’t be the last, ensuring Internet Governance will be at the forefront of stability, democracy, and freedom in the near future.

What the Russian article did, however, highlight is that many, if not most, people have no idea how the Internet actually works and how it is run. This ignorance of the systems we rely on daily contributes to the decline in their openness as those with the finances, political power and a nefarious mindset start to position themselves in the debate, taking advantage of the general apathy and ignorance of the public. This may even contribute to the collapse of the Internet as we know it today, although that is a little way off for the moment. And despite me sounding overly dramatic, it doesn’t take long or much.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

From The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemmingway

I would add that we in the Caribbean are particularly at risk of the consequences of digital colonialism driven by rogue nation-states imposing their will on small territories without the resources or the organisation to defend the interests of an open Internet. There are even cases where governments in the region are toying with the idea of implementing restrictions on the Internet and freedom of expression through legislation. It’s a tricky one, and I don’t pretend to be a lawyer, but the slippery slope effect is often the case in situations like this, where initial legislation is the entry point for a much broader implementation in the future. That’s something we all need to look out for.

Upcoming topics and discussion

I haven’t forgotten about the topics I mentioned last week. I’m working on them, but I don’t have anything in a form that I can write about as yet. Soon come.

I’ve also been working on documenting and writing out the margin notes I’d made on two papers about tech and AI. These things take time, and I hope you can excuse me. If you’re interested, they are:

Hype, Sustainability, and the Price of the Bigger-is-Better Paradigm in AI

Analog Privilege

(I lead an exciting life 🤣)

Lastly, I still haven’t written my thoughts on Caribbean federated instances. It’s coming, I promise.

Reading

Meet the underpaid workers in Nairobi, Kenya, who power OpenAI

I’ve written about this here in the past, calling attention to the practice of exploitation that seems part and parcel of big tech these days. Now, the US investigative show 60 Minutes has done a program about the issue. Pivot to AI has a write-up about it.

Tether Has Become a Massive Money Laundering Tool for Mexican Drug Traffickers, Feds Say

This is another topic that I have been a long-term sceptic of. Rather than being a solution looking for a problem —which is exactly how I still feel about Blockchain— cryptocurrencies have found their problem and product-market fit. Crime. That and, er, destroying the planet.

Meta’s $10 Billion Plan to Build the World’s Largest Subsea Cable Network

I can’t think of another company that I would least like to build critical Internet infrastructure (Google?). They have shown us time and time again that they are not good Internet citizens and that their motivations are so misaligned to a peaceful world that we should take a serious look at whether or not we should allow them to do this. Poorly behaved citizens are generally excluded (generally temporarily) from society, so should Meta in the case of its flagrant poor behaviour. Should they be allowed to invest? Of course, but not allowed to own and control wholly.

OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive (Paywalled)

ChatGPT is about to peddle shitty ads next to its statistically-generated falsehoods, misinterpretations, and the occasional decent paragraph if the FT is to be believed. What a time to be alive. 🤦‍♂️

Meet Emma: The German AI Travel Influencer Stirring Controversy

“How can a fake person in a fake place ‘inspire’ anyone to travel to a real place?” - Precisely. Please, I beg you, Caribbean tourism decision-makers, steer away from this, or at least put your personal wealth and reputation on the line if you truly believe this will produce any good for your destination.

This is POSSE post, federated to Mastodon. Have a great week.

📅 November 18 - November 24 | A half step is better than nothing, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 08:23:44 -0400

I’m back after a much-needed short break where I travelled across the Atlantic Ocean approximately two and a half times. Did anything happen in the world while I was gone? 🤪

I was, however, dismayed and pretty offended by the recent comments from Emmanuel Macron (France’s President), who recently said that Haiti’s problems were the fault of Haitians. While any country is responsible for a number of its troubles —and believe me, France has its shit to deal with that it seems incapable of addressing adequately— the case of Haiti is an altogether different one. Macron’s comments were offensive because we know the real systemic causes of Haiti’s difficulties since its independence in 1804, only recognised in 1825. France imposed a “Freedom Reparations bill” that crippled the country financially and has only recently been fully paid off, to the tune of around 20 to 30 billion USD. The duplicitous and dishonest assessment of a country badly in need of help, not scorn, is just revolting. France owes Haiti an apology to start with; then, it needs to do something about the money it stole from the people it broke.

Today, I wanted to continue discussing the Social Web, federation and decentralisation. Let me know if you have any comments.

In tech news, there was a mass exodus from Twitter to Bluesky that hasn’t finished, as far as I can tell. For the uninitiated, Bluesky is a supposedly decentralised social media website born out of a project at Twitter a number of years ago to build a new protocol to supplant that of the existing Twitter eventually. That didn’t happen, and the project was spun off as its own entity, where it continued its development of the ATProto protocol and eventually provided its services to the general public. I opened an account a while back as it was still an invite-only project and didn’t think much of it. Now Bluesky has something in the order of 20 million users and is growing. It is on track to overtake Twitter itself. Bluesky is a faithful copy of Twitter, so If you used Twitter of old, you’d be right at home with Bluesky. For the moment, the site is fun, and there are a lot of interesting conversations being had, particularly since the journalists and other social commentators moved over since Twitter’s owner has finally revealed his true colours. I doubt this will last personally, as I’ve lived through this cycle a multitude of times. It first happened when I saw a large growth in the number of people frequenting one of the Usenet groups I was part of in the 90s. The sudden rise in population and the sudden rise in popularity of the group eventually destroyed it. The dynamic was never the same, and the sheer scale of the discussion outweighed any attempts at moderation and gentle cajoling to stay on track. It eventually became hostile and filled with insults and threats of violence and was never the same. I believe this is the fate that awaits Bluesky and any social network that is structured in the way it is. Which leads me to thoughts I have about its structure and why I think the above is the natural conclusion for social media as we know it.

I’ve talked about the “Social Web” and decentralisation at length in these articles and, more importantly, why I think they are the best hope we have yet for a more humane social experience on the Internet. Their very nature of being distributed, decentralised and hence not run by any one person, company or organisation makes them inherently resistant to shock and control by interests other than the users themselves. And it’s not just a lack of monetisation through the tokenisation and sale of your interactions, ultimately dehumanising you and your social groups, or is it the objectively stupid, racist and sexist moderation policies of a madman that would, under normal circumstances, be sectioned and sedated in a padded cell. No, it’s the fact that users who own and run the individual services —called instances— can de-federate other instances that are noxious or otherwise undesirable. There have been several examples of ultra-right-wing nazis starting decentralised systems on Mastodon, only to be choked off (figuratively speaking), making their particular brand of “daddy didn’t give me enough hugs” attention-seeking utterly neutralised. They were not shut down nor “cancelled” from the Internet, not at all. They were just shunned into shouting into the void, the same way the utter cranks shout into a void of onlookers (usually one or two) at Speaker’s Corner in London. Say what you want there; you have the right to do it. What you don’t have the right to is the mass reach of your inane or discriminatory drivel. (That, and a possible kicking from a member of the public offended at your crap). And that’s part of the point: consequences.

Anyway, Bluesky is not this. Bluesky is a sort of halfway house between a singularly controlled walled garden and a truly distributed and federated system like Mastodon. It goes some way toward solving the issue of centralisation without actually being a decentralised system. You can spin up your own hardware and relay connection to the system, but the hardware and bandwidth required are prohibitive for the vast majority of the population of the Internet. Their documentation acknowledges this:

The federation architecture allows anyone to host a Relay, though it’s a fairly resource-demanding service.

Quoting a quote from this very detailed blog about Bluesky:

When you build architecture that in theory anyone can participate in, but the barrier to entry is so high so that only those with the highest number of resources can participate, then you’ve still built a walled garden. – Morgan Lemmer-Webber

I’ve seen discussion of disk space requirements in the terabytes to multiples of terabytes, with that requirement increasing as more users join the site.

So, no, Bluesky is not decentralised nor a truly federated system, but it faithfully reproduces the Twitter-when-Twitter-was-good system, and for most people, that is good enough.

I’d like to see more feedback from the Caribbean about the use of these systems, particularly when it comes to political and socio-economic organisation. Who’s using them? Are they gaining traction? Do they provide a truly collaborative space to exchange ideas without fear of trolls, racists and other undesirables? I’d love to know. Any and all discussions will be strictly confidential unless you decide otherwise. Please reach out.

Upcoming discussions

I wanted to put a couple of bookmarks in here at this point as I don’t have the time to write much more today, but I want to expand on a couple of topics I’ve been looking into lately.

One is about foreign direct investment in the Caribbean and how we need to be vigilant and more demanding of real-world and useful outcomes. The angle of the piece is telling the story of a tragic, and in my mind, criminal outcome. When we’re talking about Blockchain, Defi, and other so-called Web3 investments, there is much to discuss and critique.

I’d also asked about federated instances in the Caribbean and if anyone had examples of such in the region. A guy in Guadeloupe reached out to me, and we chatted about it. I’m hoping to write a couple of words about that soon, too.

Reading

You know my feelings on invasive surveillance adtech, so I’m not going to beat that drum too much. Suffice it to point you to another very accessible article from Access Now. Please become more aware of what these companies are doing with data and the dangers that lie ahead that we have only started seeing.

LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem

LLMs are still the talk of the town, but mass deployment and inclusion in decision-making roles are still very risky prospects. They don’t reason, and they mathematically place words after each other. That’s it. No magic. This article explains it all.

The Fediverse has empowered me to take back control from Big Tech. Now I want to help others do the same.

The article title says it all.

More on my topic in this newsletter. Heads up: You’ll need to use a translation tool unless you read Polish.

Watchdog finds AI tools can be used unlawfully to filter candidates by race, gender

Shocked, I tell you. I’m really shocked. FFS, why do we keep doing these things?

Written by hand, over several days of thinking, typing, editing, and then panicking to get the last paragraphs written at the last minute. Have a great week.

📅 October 28 - November 03 | The madness of King Zuck

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 19:57:20 -0400

Last week was a shorter week than normal, as Friday the 1st of November is a bank holiday in France, and hence the island. In fact, we have both the 1st and the 2nd, a lot like in Mexico. Many businesses were open Saturday morning, though, and I’ll get to that a little later.

As you know if you read this regularly, I was on the electoral list for the ARIN Advisory Council. The votes are now closed, as of midnight on the 1st of November. Announcements will be made on (or possibly before) the 8th. I have no idea where I stand, but I would like to thank each one of you if you have either voted for me or endorsed me on the elections site.

This week will be a little shorter than normal too. I’d previously mentioned that I’ll be taking a little break to disconnect and relax a little. I can’t promise to not write something, but I doubt I’ll write some of the longer articles that I tend to do.

There’s no structure or particular message to today’s note, just something that has been on my mind and something I see cropping up in discussions, podcasts and other fora. It’s about a typically Internet conspiracy theory, but I think there are parallels, even examples in operation today. Read on to find out more.

PS. The subject merits a lot more discussion and research, but that’ll have to wait for another time.

I don’t know whether you have heard of Dead Internet Theory or not, but it is an interesting idea, if a little flawed, and conspiratorial in nature. The main idea is that the Internet is now mostly automated bots talking to automated bots that make and interact with automatically generated content, all backed by algorithmic control. And here’s the whacky part if the first wasn’t enough, to control the population and minimise organic human activity. This discussion has gained a lot of attention in tech circles, and even in the governance areas of the Internet.

For the record, I will state it clearly, I don’t believe it for a second. However, I do think there is merit in discussing it because from a macro perspective, what is happening in the online advertising worlds, looks eerily similar to the ideas put forward by this theory.

One reason I don’t believe it, is because, like all conspiracy theories, there isn’t a single person who has written an academic paper, book, or official manifesto outlining the theory at its inception. Quite the opposite, it was originally posted on a 4chan paranormal board. If that doesn’t spark scepticism, then I don’t know what would.

Anyway, back to online advertising.

What is becoming clear through legal cases, and what many of have observed for years, including the investigations done by the EU, is that more and more of the “content” for advertising is being driven by and created through automated systems, talking to other automated systems that place bids on placing ads on websites (although this is diminishing), Social Media (exploding), YouTube, that themselves are automated end-to-end until you see the ad on your Instagram feed. And according to Meta, specifically Mark Zuckerberg, this is about to get worse for those of you who choose to use their platforms.

Since Meta’s pivot (read panic) to the Metaverse, that has been nothing more than a money pit and has produced absolutely nothing of value or useful in innovation to the world. But the next high is coming from the irresistible crack cocaine that is Artificial Intelligence.

Well, according to Meta (via 404media), it’s about to get worse. More and more of the algorithmically controlled timeline will be created by bots, monetised by ad-placing bots, being viewed by (many) “click the ad” bots to defraud money on Instagram and the other digital surveillance and billboard machines they are.

Side Note: AI, Artificial Intelligence, is now the accepted term for what is actually Generative Artificial Intelligence, GenAI. I lost this battle a while ago, where I wanted to ensure we didn’t legitimise souped-up autocorrect machines with a branch of mathematics that is very intriguing.

There’s probably some nuance in law that makes this completely legal, but it certainly looks a lot like fraud, and the winner is always Meta and neither the consumer (submerged in auto-generated tripe covered in auto-generated ads) or the small business (paying increasingly for less and less to compete with automated machines that produce drivel, but thousands of times faster).

This is madness.

Have fun and have a great week.

📅 October 21 - October 27 | ARIN Meeting and IPv6 adoption stagnation

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 07:25:03 -0400

The current climate on the island continued this week with several incidents of violence and general unrest. For me, I was pretty much holed up all week as a barricade in two areas persisted, and it was not practical to pass during the week. I could only get some provisions from the island’s commercial centre late Friday afternoon. Things seemed to have calmed down a little, but the tension is still palpable. All things considered, I should be able to get to my office this week.

Proving what we all learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home is an entirely viable option for knowledge work, if not for many professions. I don’t think it will ever entirely replace in-person work, but it is clearly an option for businesses that can and are able or willing to take that route. And I would add that it could enable many businesses within and outside the Caribbean to work with people in the region who are highly qualified and highly motivated to work but don’t get the opportunities due to the restrictive size of the markets here and the arcane visa rules, not to mention the dreadful transport links internally in the region. In fact, I personally know some people who work for businesses and clients outside the island, making a decent living. By living here, they become net investors in the local economy, and compared to those who are wrongly accused of contributing to the brain drain, their expertise is still available locally should the need arise. That, unfortunately, is a whole different discussion.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t necessarily be cheap for some organisations, but it does provide opportunities for workers who, for various reasons, might not be able to relocate and work in person on a larger continent.

This discussion merits much more research and analysis—something that goes beyond the throwaway half-studies—and opportunity studies that are more marketing than data —than we have previously seen. I hope to contribute to that one day.

The end of my week was taken up with a two-day conference with ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers. ARIN, remember, is responsible for managing the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses we all use in North America and much of the Caribbean. I was once again a Fellow this time, my second and last time being one. I got to spend time with some of the ARIN staff to learn more about its functions and prepare for the upcoming policy discussions on the ticket during the two days, something I value and thank the ARIN staff for all their work and dedication to helping people like me get more involved.

I won’t do a conference report here just yet as I haven’t had time to consolidate and work on my notes. I have a last meeting with ARIN on Tuesday, and I’ll be writing a report for them soon. I’ll probably adapt that to include here.

I will, however, report that contrary to what you might think, policy discussion is dynamic, passionate and sometimes quite technical. There was one particular item on the list that garnered much discussion, a discussion that still hasn’t finished yet, about the initial allocation sizes of IPv4 addresses. If you want to know more, here is a link to all the information you need to read and analyse it. The TLDR is that there is currently a long waiting list for IPv4, something to the tune of 2-3 years (700+ requests), which is not viable for some businesses starting up or expanding. To deal with this, a reduced initial allocation size has been proposed in this policy amendment, with the primary aim of reducing the waiting list. As with most things in life, it isn’t quite that simple and undesirable side effects or unintended consequences may result. As such, this session was one of the most involved and animated discussions and took longer than initially allotted. A consensus will prevail eventually, but we are not there yet.

I look forward to seeing how it develops and offering comments where possible.

Source: [stats.labs.apnic.net/ipv6/XQ

The three preceding days were dedicated to the NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) meeting. I was working, so I didn’t get to spend much time on it, but I watched a presentation about the state of IPv6 deployment from Geoff Huston, which gave a lot of food for thought. A subsequent article in The Register summarised the talk very well. I haven’t checked to see if the slides are publicly available, so I can’t share them here until I check. It is best to look at the NANOG website to see if there are.

I’ll be spending some time watching the recordings, and I have downloaded pretty much all of the slides available during the three days.

Reading

With the workload and the current climate on the island, I haven’t had much time to read the articles in my queue. However, I have started to look at a recent (long) article called “Analog Privilege” by Maroussia Lévesque, a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School. I’m only in a few pages, and there is so much to digest. It can be found here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4528278

It’s part of a long-running theme about how the haves structure things to ensure they don’t have to follow the rules as the have-nots, particularly in the increasingly digitised world.

I’ve long written about the way online advertising is destroying lives and how SEO is essentially fraud, but it is hard to find people willing to speak up and actually show how that is. A recent blog post blew up, gaining a lot of attention on exactly this. Please read it if you are in any way using, relying on, or recommending online advertising systems from Google and Meta. It is not that long, and (unfortunately) it is written pretty much in the style that the SEO monster dictates (although I can forgive them for that).

Of note

A couple of weeks ago, I asked if there were any Fediverse instances in the Caribbean. I recently received an email from one such instance using Soapbox. Thank you for reaching out. I’m just getting my ducks in order, and I’d like to reach out for a discussion, if that is good for you? I’ll send an email soon.

I’ll be taking a break soon, and I hope to get through a lot of reading and note-taking. Forgive me if I skip a week or two over the coming weeks. Even my hyperactive brain needs a rest now and again.

⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ OH, before I forget. The ARIN elections are still on until the 1st of November. You still have time to write a quick endorsement for me here. It’s very quick and easy.

A BIG thank you to those who have submitted one 🙏

Have a great week.

📅 October 14 - October 21 | Let’s use our meatware

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:26:06 -0400

It has been another week of tension on the island despite an accord being signed by several actors in the discussions. It wasn’t unanimous, meaning the conflict is not over. This will not be resolved until a much deeper discussion is had and a long-term plan is implemented. I’ll let you know how it goes.

There have been no Internet shutdowns so far, and I don’t expect that to happen in the current climate.

This week, I wanted to return to one of the subjects that really ticks me off on the Internet: advertising.

Again, for the record, I am not against advertising. I am against the advertising we have today on the Internet. It crossed a line several years ago and hasn’t been rained in yet. Is that about to change?

I hate online advertising. Or, if I’m being more accurate, I hate what online advertising has become.

It used to be useful. It used to let you know about new products and services without being egregious or overwhelming.

Then came that fateful first banner ad in October 1994 from none other than what became Wired Magazine. It was called HotWired then, back when the Internet was an accessory to a news or entertainment product that was still being printed on dead trees and shipped worldwide.

I was an avid Wired Magazine reader, finally finding a magazine that took the Internet seriously and provided some of the most thoughtful journalism around the Internet and tech-related events. I bought imports of the magazine from the US, as we had nothing comparable to that in the UK, where I lived at the time. Wired UK eventually came to our shores, but it was a pale imitation of the real thing, and, surprisingly for me, it didn’t share that many articles across publications.

Wired set up a digital offshoot of the magazine that ended up having more employees than the magazine proper. It was racking in 20 million dollars in revenue (peanuts compared to today’s standards, but enormous back then for an online business), and even started an online search engine called HotBot.

But the lure of advertising was too great to ignore, and it set in motion a race to the bottom that we haven’t finished yet. New regulations, particularly in the EU, might mean we don’t actually get to rock bottom, but we are pretty much there regardless.

As a side note, Wired magazine was also the online space where I first learnt about cookies and how they would transform the web into something useful. I’m still waiting. Push technology was another one, but that’s another discussion for another time.

It was inevitable that online advertising would become more and more invasive as the years rolled on, with new ad tech being developed at a frightening pace. Developments typically ran three times around the globe before regulation could get its shoes on. There is nothing sacred from advertisers these days: cookies, tracking pixels, cross-site cookies, third-party tracking cookies, GPS tracking, purchase history, browser history, and illicit screen captures of what you’re working on.

The problem is that together, this technology is not neutral, innocent, or safe for many people.

We’ve all heard the anecdote of the ‘grandfather to be’ being informed by a big chain store’s pharmacy before his daughter had the time to announce the news. The ending was happy in this instance, but imagine for a moment a much more sinister outcome, and there are plenty of examples of them, particularly suicide by vulnerable people being subjected to a barrage of unwanted algorithmically generated timelines.

I was reading an article about having a new, clean YouTube account that, within seven days of the users viewing a slightly right-wing video, the algorithm pushed the account deeper and deeper into the world of Neo-nazis, holocaust deniers, and the like. SEVEN. DAYS. Let that sink in.

But why is it this bad now?

It is all about incentives. Two organisations in the Internet space have shown that this makes a lot of money. A LOT OF MONEY. And clearly, money trumps everything else, even 43,000 lives in a genocide that took place in Myanmar, where Facebook are complicit in the promotion and propagation of hate speech and organisation discussions related to the operations carried out by the military.

The chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar stated that Facebook played a “determining role” in the Rohingya genocide. Facebook has been accused of enabling the spread of Islamophobic content which targets the Rohingya people. The United Nations Human Rights Council has called the platform “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate”.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Criticism_and_controversies

Of the approximately one million civilians displaced and still stuck in abject conditions in Bangladesh, a few tens of thousands of children were hoping to get $1M to fund some limited and basic schooling —as asked for by aid agencies— and Zuckerberg told them to what amounts to “Fuck off”. They still haven’t fully acknowledged their part or made any reparations. Very much like colonialism, n’est pas? (Digital Colonialism is another subject I briefly discussed, and I would like to get into specifics and more details sometime).

It makes the old journalistic adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”, positively pedestrian in comparison.

Deep in this is an argument about platform neutrality, enshrined in US law and popularly known as Section 230. Section 230 essentially states that platforms cannot be held responsible for the content flowing through their dumb pipes. After all, it didn’t “produce” the content. It is a law that made sense when our timelines were something more akin to what I see when using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to check up on news articles, blogs and other media (even YouTube). But this is being called into question now, as it should be, because timelines are no longer chronological —without manipulation. They are all algorithmically generated now as “For You” tabs and are even starting to “generate” their own content using Generative AI. That last bit is important, as it, in my mind, unequivocally removes the protection from Section 230. I would argue that forcing unwanted and unasked-for content on a timeline does the same, i.e. if the timeline isn’t chronological (untouched), then it is curated, i.e. content. But that argument hasn’t been won as yet, despite several court cases currently being discussed.

I’ve seen arguments about IRL advertising, suggesting you can’t not see it or ask for it. Two things: 1) They don’t track your every move online or offline. 2)

Legislation has been enacted for many years in the EU, and it was recently strengthened with the Digital Services Act. Unlike the E-Commerce Directive, this act is a regulation and mandates states to implement it, thus harmonising regulation for its members.

Intermediaries (Facebook, ISPs, for example) and other intermediary services can be legally required to remove content should it be deemed more than just cached or conduit data (i.e. unaltered). Providers are exempt from liability:

the DSA establishes a broad liability exemption as long the providers are “in no way involved with the information transmitted.”

Source: https://digitalplanet.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/DD-Report_2-Christoph-Busch-11.30.22.pdf

In my view, these regulations don’t go far enough and only allow companies like Facebook et al. to continue their surveillance capitalism and profit on the attention economy to the loss of many, mostly those least able to afford such losses. At worst, they allow them to continue feeling genocides and driving the humanity out of the Internet.

In this world, truth is worthless, and lies are valuable.

I have discussed two separate topics: advertising and engagement content. The link, of course, is that the former is entirely responsible for the latter.

We can and should do something about it. I hinted about what to do a little earlier. 😉

I’ll save that for another time.

Reading

An article that popped up only today (Monday 21st October 2024) as I write this goes a long way to describing this feeling that I and many others are having.

More on the same subject from The Walrus.

One more for the road.

I have written this in a decidedly unalgorithmically-generated style from the deepest depths of my meatware. Have a great week.

matthewcowen.org

What would an article be if it didn’t mention AI? 🤦‍♂️

Potential Caribbean collateral damage in an AI crash

Digital Sovereignty. Don’t confuse with Nationalism.

RIP IXP?

Updates and a podcast 🎙️

Podcast appearance

Artificial Intelligence and what I really think

Not all AI is the same

Where do I stand on LLMs?

What have I done, and what am I doing going forward?

It’s bullshit, and it always was

ARIN AC elections results

A grotesque vision for Nevis

Digital Colonialism

Note on CBI schemes

Of note

Normal service to resume, and an ask 🙏

It’s not DNS …

Reading

🎙️ Podcast: Appearance on ICT Pulse

Show notes and topics discussed (from the ICT Pulse website):

📅 March 17 - March 23 | Agency, the splinternet, and the digital plantations

Digital agency

The digital (social media) plantation economy

Reading

📅 March 03 - March 16 | Getting back on track

Reading

📅 February 24 - March 02 | Internet Infrastructure and politics

Geopolitics and the Internet

Reading

📅 February 17 - February 23 | Scraping the depths

The real spyware

How deep will this go?

📅 February 03 - February 09 | No newsletter this week. Sorry.

📅 January 27 - February 02 | Under attack

Turbulence online

Reading

📅 January 20 - January 26 | Analog Privilege

Reading

➔ “Zuckerberg Poisons the World — Selling Digital Opioid”

➔ Automation in Retail Is Even Worse Than You Thought

📅 January 13 - January 19 | All your Internets are belong to us

Reading

Of note

📅 January 06 - January 12 | Are bigger models better for AI?

Reading

🗞️ A little therapy and an announcement

Updates on my online life

Announcing the Caribbean Digital Compass

📅 December 16 - December 22 | A short(-ish) review and thoughts for next year

Reading

Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Actually That Amazing - The reality can’t match the hype.

📅 December 09 - December 15 | Conscientious Objector

Reading

Documentary: Hypernormalisation

📅 December 02 - December 08 | The Perilous Potential of Tech

Dehumanising Tech

Removing Barriers

Violence and Technology

No reading list this time

📅 November 25 - December 01 | Internet adoption is slowing, while we’re slowly losing control of it

Upcoming topics and discussion

Reading

OpenAI explores advertising as it steps up revenue drive (Paywalled)

📅 November 18 - November 24 | A half step is better than nothing, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

Upcoming discussions

Reading

📅 October 28 - November 03 | The madness of King Zuck

📅 October 21 - October 27 | ARIN Meeting and IPv6 adoption stagnation

Reading

Of note

📅 October 14 - October 21 | Let’s use our meatware

Reading