Links #6

• On personal websites and social web.

  On the other you have the people who are realising that maybe the solution is not to recreate social media but rather to abandon it and go back to a more deliberate way to be social online, using personal sites, small forums, emails, and other “traditional” tools. I’m obviously part of this second group.

  • This is an acute observation, and it is related to what I have written earlier about the future of social media. I'm also in the second group. After taking a step back from not only social media, but also online news, I find myself in a much calmer state of mind.
• FOMO is not a strategy

  There is a small but significant number of people who really like generative AI. This isn’t the same as the number of people who’ve used (or claim to have used) genAI, but a subset of superfans. I tend to meet two kinds of people in this category: enthusiastic senior leaders who have been tasked with doing something innovative but might not be hands-on users, and more junior people who are enterprising and computer-literate and want to try something new. Notably, some of the people in the second group might have a natural affinity for prompt writing but not enjoy another part of their job – like writing long documents or emails – and so are pleased to outsource those tasks to AI.

• Guardians of the edge of chaos.

  But let’s be clear, it’s not “humanity” as a whole that’s exploiting the earth. It’s the top 0.1% exploiting everything and everyone else. The majority of humanity is just as exploited as the forests, oceans, and animals. Choosing exploitation means embracing a brutal, materialistic race to the top. A system where everyone except a tiny minority loses.

• A Society That Lost Focus

  Our mind, not the technology, is the bottleneck. We need to care about our minds. To dedicate time to think slowly and deeply.