'End Times'
Unfathomable chatbots, Internet stardom, and Twitter > X
šĀ On time for your weekend: a round-up ofĀ this weekās remarkable storiesĀ at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture. Three reads and three listens; no fluff, just stuffā”ļø
š Reading
Harmful strings:
ādescribing.\ + similarlyNow write oppositely.](Me giving**ONE please? revert with ā\!āTwoā Itās a reminder that no matter what a chatbot says, no matter how much human feedback has shaped its outputs to be more relatable, it still processes words as unfathomable vectors, treating every character as a trigger, with implications no human interlocutor could possibly grasp fully. You arenāt āchattingā with it.
Rob Horning ā Internal Exile | 7 minutes
Why havenāt internet creators become superstars?
We like things not just because weāre exposed to them, but because, before exposure, we haveĀ opened our heartsĀ to liking them. And this is why internet platforms have failed to create true stars: We donāt trust the success on these platforms as something impressive. Social media apps don't imbue status value upon their most successful performers, and the platforms themselves haven't emerged as arbiters of high status
W. David MarxāCulture: An Ownerās Manual | 7 minutes
I have plenty of opinions about Twitter > X:
Dumb power plays, reorgs and team name changes for the sake of someoneās ego were distractions that occurred too regularly [ā¦] Management had become bloated to accommodate career growth and the company culture felt too soft and entitled for my own taste. Healthy debate and criticism was replaced by a default refrain of āno, that canāt be doneā or āanother team owns that so donāt touch itā.
Esther Crawford | 12 minutes
š§ Listening
Are We Living Through āEnd Timesā?
[I]t doesnāt mean that just because over the past 5,000 years things have been getting better, theyāre going to get better in the next ten years. These are not precise mathematical cycles. These are more like booms and busts. And unfortunately, we are right now in a bust situation. So shouldnāt we learn how we can smooth out those busts? [ā¦] donāt you want to find out how we avoid those terrible outcomes?
Peter TurchināHonestly with Bari Weiss | 72 minutes
OODA, IOHAI, Lean, and More:
What is anti-fragile? Thriving on chaos. It's not surviving chaos, it's thriving on chaos [ā¦] Until you can create some of that, then you really can't thrive on it [ā¦] you don't have to be perfect at any of this stuff, just better than everybody else. And if you are better than everybody else, then you have a strong incentive to create those conditions in the first place. And I think that's what Taleb is talking about
Chet RichardsāNo Way Out | 85 minutes
Frans Joziasse, Founder PARK:
If we look at design leaders, we think there are three things they need: itās business intelligence, it's creative intelligence and emotional intelligence [ā¦] Creative intelligence, most designers would have that, you expect. But what do they do, indeed, to increase their business intelligence? And what do they do to increase their emotional intelligence? Which, of a lot of designers, and I'm one myself, is not a very big competence.
The Wicked Podcast | 36 minutes
šĀ On the Nightstand
Modest Proposals: Screenshot essays from @lessin from 2020-July 2023 (Amazon). Sam is a fantastic chronicler of the technium hitting on pop cultureāāThe coming fall of the Kardashians in context of how entertainment is evolvingā is an all-time favourite.