"The terms social network and social media are used interchangeably now, but they shouldn’t be. A social network is an idle, inactive system—a Rolodex of contacts, a notebook of sales targets, a yearbook of possible soul mates. But social media is active—hyperactive, really—spewing material across those networks instead of leaving them alone until needed."
#IanBogost, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/twitter-facebook-social-media-decline/672074/
In the dim
Why? If I’d asked them, they would probably have said: to reduce distractions and improve focus. Programming a computer is a bit like repairing a very tiny machine with precision tools while looking under a microscope. Quiet and calm help facilitate that process. Programmers may also just prefer the dark.
slip:4utete7.
Hey look, “quiet and calm” has the literal calm of calm technology. Bright, flashing lights are preceded by trigger warnings for a reason. I’ve been cultivating warm-toned lighting, and earth tones, in my working spaces for a long time. I cut my teeth on the Internet with VT-100 terminals, green type on black, cathode ray tubes and “screen burn-in” was a real hazard. These days a lot of my screens have ‘paper-white’ backgrounds with the black text. It’s been nice to watch the world catch up over the last few decades.
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The irony of this is the fash are convinced that universities are brainwashing kids into developing #CriticalThinking skills, exposing them to heterogenous viewpoints and diverse people, all of which triggers their latent authoritarianism.
“A lot of colleges and universities are at the point now where they have to stop being what they are. And have to start being something else.” - #IanBogost https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/dei-universities-are-broken/677288/
https://mastodon.world/@StillIRise1963/112320981892640949
#TechnoNarcissism is the unstated conclusion of #IanBogost’s piece in @TheAtlantic about the #CompSci problem in universities.
Need more #humanities blended in to foment #CriticalThinking in an ecosystem over-optimized for #STEM as a result of the economy and digitalization.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/computing-college-cs-majors/677792/
In this fascinating article from 2014 on the #Darmok episode, #IanBogost argues that the #Tamarian’s don’t speak in metaphors, but detailed procedural allegories. So, kinda like, “Sulu, at the helm when the Klingons attacked at Organia” would be, “shields up, break orbit, maximum warp.” #StarTrek
My son’s now old enough to get ‘loyalty cards’ for supermarkets, coffee shops, and places to eat. He thinks this is great: free drinks! money off vouchers! What’s not to like? On a recent car journey, I explained why the only loyalty card I use is the one for the Co-op, and introduced him to the murky world of data brokers.
In this article, Ian […]
https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/09/15/the-supermarket-is-a-panopticon/
Dunbar was an anthropologist, not a neuroanatomy researcher, and Dunbar's Number was an ethnographical observation, not a biological one.
"Your social life has a biological limit: 150. That’s the number—Dunbar’s number, proposed by the British psychologist Robin Dunbar three decades ago—of people with whom you can have meaningful relationships."
#IanBogost, 2021
That's your opening? Not off too a great start there Ian.
"Now, underneath the friendly and familiar blue icon with a white bird, that letter alone was displayed—X—as if my iPhone was affirming that Elon Musk’s Twitter had become an error."
A coherent explanation of the rise of social networks and its exploitation by content creation/distribution (social media) that may (hopefully) lead to its downfall. Tech editorial by Ian Bogost
The Age of Social Media Is Ending - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/twitter-facebook-social-media-decline/672074/
#IanBogost #TheAtlantic #SocialNetwork #SocialMedia #media #social #network #editorial
ramble, a dozen or so paragraphs, discretion advised
https://pdbowman.studio/quareidfaciam/marketplace/
Social networks vs. Social Media
Ian Bogost, author and professor at Washington University in St. Louis, talks with Jon about the demise of online social networks. In a recent Atlantic article, “The Age of Social Media Is Ending,” Bogost examines the platforms’ dipping trajectory and argues that people just aren’t meant to talk to each other this much.
#SocialNetwork #SocialMedia #RealTime #Limits #IanBogost #JonFavreau #Offline
I'm generally not Ian Bogost's biggest fan (though in another life I used to really enjoy his philosophical framework he called "Carpentry" — very basically, doing stuff can lead to philosophical inquiry and discussions) but I think his latest Atlantic piece on text-generating machine learning models is worth a visit:
What we talk about when we talk to computers...
How to Talk to a Computer
Treat it like a toy, not a tool.
By Ian Bogost
...But that’s not ChatGPT’s aim. It doesn’t make accurate arguments or express creativity, but instead produces textual material in a form corresponding with the requester’s explicit or implicit intent, which might also contain truth under certain circumstances.
Ian Bogost may not understand the difference between a software engineer, a systems administrator, and a web developer, but his latest book 'Play Anything' looks intriguing all the same:
http://bogost.com/books/play-anything/
"An automobile customer-management system has to integrate with dealers, suppliers, shippers, banks and lenders, regulators, legacy systems, and customers. But today’s software mostly stands alone. Instagram, a photo-sharing service valued at $35 billion last year, just uploads and downloads images between its servers and its app."
