Implausipod

Is Joker 2 "anti-content", or is it just a challenging watch?  Join us for a quick ICEBreaker to discuss our first impressions of the film, and some thoughts that have crossed my mind in the day since.  Consider this a spoiler warning.

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Looking back in the year since the publication of our AI Reflections episode, we take a look at the state of the AI discourse at large, where recent controversies including those surrounding NaNoWriMo and whether AI counts as art, or can assist with science, bring the challenges of studying the new medium to the forefront.

Links and Referenced Episodes:
ALS.org story on Casey Harrell
NaNoWriMo Statement
AI Risk Database 
Implausi.blog Positive AI Archive
Implausipod E0012 AI Reflections
Implausipod E0020 The Sphere Before and After
Implausipod E0025 Echanger
Implausipod E0028 Black Boxes and AI
Implausipod E0031 GPT Squared

Full Bibliography is included in the transcript

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What is Soylent Culture?  Whether it is in the mass media, the new media, or the media consumed by the current crop of generative AI tools, it is culture that has been fed on itself.  But of course, there's more. Have a listen to find out how Soylent Culture is driving the potential for "Model Collapse" with our AI tools, and what that might mean.

Bibliography

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The New American Library.

Shumailov, I., Shumaylov, Z., Zhao, Y., Gal, Y., Papernot, N., & Anderson, R. (2024). The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget (No. arXiv:2305.17493). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.17493

Shumailov, I., Shumaylov, Z., Zhao, Y., Papernot, N., Anderson, R., & Gal, Y. (2024). AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data. Nature, 631(8022), 755–759. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07566-y

Snoswell, A. J. (2024, August 19). What is ‘model collapse’? An expert explains the rumours about an impending AI doom. The Conversation. http://theconversation.com/what-is-model-collapse-an-expert-explains-the-rumours-about-an-impending-ai-doom-236415

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

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Whoops!  Somehow the details of an Excession - an Unknown Unknown - got cut from Episode 36.  Fans of Irony will be enjoying this, I'm sure.  Kick back for another Icebreaker in this bonus episode, an addendum to Nescience and Excession, with an actual explanation of the thing that was in the title.

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Further detail looking at The Nostalgia Curve from Episode 35, and comparing it with the Fredric Jameson's "Nostalgia for the Present" (1989) to see what the established literature says about the topic.  We go into Jameson's writing on science fiction and Philip K Dick's "Time Out of Joint" (1959), and take a deep look at the Rumsfeld Matrix in order to introduce the idea of Nescience: the intentional act of not engaging with a known-unknown.

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The box office for the summer of 2024 has been driven by titles relying heavily on the audiences nostalgia, with titles like Deadpool and Wolverine and Alien: Romulus leading the charge.  But nostalgia as a driver for the movies isn't new, and we're seeing nostalgia across all areas of our society as well.  So what's going on?  What are the factors that places something along The Nostalgia Curve?

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What is behind the recent trend seeking a wistful return to a more idyllic age of the internet, real or imagined? We'll call this the Dial-up Pastorale. The trend became apparent in a number of papers and blog-posts that have popped over the last few months (or at least came to my attention).  Let's find out what is going on.

(Parts of this episode appeared in the May issue of our newsletter. You can sign up for that here.

Bibliography:
Chayka, K. (2024, May 1). The Revenge of the Home Page. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-revenge-of-the-home-page

Farrell, M. and Berjon, R. (2024). We Need To Rewild The Internet. https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet

Habermas, J. (2022). Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere. Theory, Culture & Society, 39(4), 145–171. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764221112341

Habermas, J. (with Lawrence, F. G.). (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (T. Burger, Trans.). MIT Press.

Star, S. L. (1999). The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377–391. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326

Varoufakis, Y. (2024). Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Melville House.

White, M. (2024, May 1). We can have a different web. Citation Needed. https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/

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What happens if your community disappears? How do online groups deal with the challenges of maintaining their social ties across fickle and fleeting platforms? And are there lessons to be learned by the TikTok creators from the online MMO communities that were shut down in the early 2000s?

Bibliography:

Bartle, R. (2003). Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders Press.

Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. NYU Press.

Koster, R. (2004). A theory of fun for game design. Paraglyph Press.

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. MIT Press.

Sennett, R. (2012). Together: The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation. Yale University Press.

The Matrix Online Videos—Giant Bomb. (2012, July 12). https://web.archive.org/web/20120712062536/http://www.giantbomb.com/the-matrix-online/61-9124/videos/

There Is Another: The End Of Star Wars Galaxies - Part 01 - Giant Bomb. (2012, January 7). https://web.archive.org/web/20120107150559/http://www.giantbomb.com/there-is-another-the-end-of-star-wars-galaxies-part-01/17-5439/

von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing Innovation. The MIT Press.

Links:

City of Heroes: Homecoming

Implausipod Episode 16 - Spreadable Media

The Implausi.blog Newsletter

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How much of your experience online is dictated by the environment you're in, and how it was constructed?  What is you rebuild Twitter, and it still ends up being toxic?  Did you fail, or succeed without knowing it?

These are the kinds of questions that arise when we look at technology from a deterministic point of view: that technology is the driver of cultural and social change and growth.  And while this ideology has its adherents, many of the assumptions about technology, and tech determinism are already Baked In to the way we deal with tech in the world.

Listen on as we explore what this is all about...

Sign up for the Newsletter here: https://implausi.blog/newsletter/

Bibliography:
Chee, F. Y., Mukherjee, S., Chee, F. Y., & Mukherjee, S. (2023, November 10). Musk’s X has a fraction of rivals’ content moderators, EU says. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-x-has-fraction-rivals-content-moderators-eu-says-2023-11-10/

Drolsbach, C., & Pröllochs, N. (2023). Content Moderation on Social Media in the EU: Insights From the DSA Transparency Database (arXiv:2312.04431). arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/2312.04431

FediForum.org. (n.d.). FediForum | Happiness in the Fediverse. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://fediforum.org/2024-03/session/4-d/

Green Blackboards (And Other Anomalies)—Penny Arcade. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2024, from https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies

Oldemburgo de Mello, V., Cheung, F., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). Twitter (X) use predicts substantial changes in well-being, polarization, sense of belonging, and outrage. Communications Psychology, 2(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00062-z

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the electronic frontier. MIT Press.

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Are the new GPTs - Generative Pre-trained Transformers - powering the current wave of AI tools actually the emergence of a new GPT - General Purpose Technology - that we will soon find embedded into every aspect of our lives? Earlier examples of GPTs include tech like steam power, electricity, radio, and computing, all tech that is foundational to our modern way of life. Will our AI tools soon join this pantheon as another long wave of technological progress begins?

Bibliography
Bresnahan, T. F., & Trajtenberg, M. (1995). General purpose technologies “Engines of growth”? Journal of Econometrics, 65(1), 83–108.

Kurz, M. (2023). The Market Power of Technology: Understanding the Second Gilded Age. Columbia University Press.

Nye, D. E. (1990). Electrifying America: Social meanings of a new technology, 1880-1940. MIT Press.

Rosenberg, N. (1982). Inside the black box: Technology and economics. Cambridge University Press.

Winner, L. (1993). Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology. Science Technology & Human Values, 18(3), 362–378.

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