In 1971 the social scientist Herbert Simon anticipated the attention economy when he wrote that in an information-rich world, the most scarce resource is the one that information itself consumes: attention. “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently,” he wrote. Here’s how the designers of our devices, social platforms, operating systems, and websites have decided to allocate our attention: They have placed a bounty on it, monetizing our data and our gaze. Advertisements and other types of persuasive communication — political ads, entertainment, social media alerts — are all gunning for that bounty. | |
— Zeynep Tufekci | |
From her article: “In Praise Of One-Trick Ponies“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: October 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Boxes |
2018 | Hoping For Better Come November |
An Honest Binge | |
2017 | Give And Keep |
2016 | No Change Here |
2015 | Campbell’s Law |
2014 | Dignified Values |
2013 | Unappreciated Skill |
2012 | Living Courage |
2011 | What’s Happening To Us? |
2010 | Toothbrush, Carbon and Monoxide Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! |
Posts Tagged ‘Wired Magazine’
A Poverty Of Attention In An Attention Economy
Posted in Economics, Quotes, tagged Advertising, Bounty, Economics, Gaze, Herbert Simon, In Praise Of One-Trick Ponies, Monetized, Persuasive Communication, Political Ads, Quotes, The Attention Economy, Wired Magazine, Zeynep Tufekci on July 14, 2020| 2 Comments »
Don’t Forget
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Meatsacks, Philosophy, Quotes, Ripley D. Light, Totally Wired, Wired Magazine on July 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Until we are bits in the cloud, we are bodies in spaces, and it would do us well not to forget the powers these meatsacks grant us. | |
— Ripley D. Light | |
From his editorial: “Totally Wired“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: October 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Boxes |
2018 | Hoping For Better Come November |
An Honest Binge | |
2017 | Give And Keep |
2016 | No Change Here |
2015 | Campbell’s Law |
2014 | Dignified Values |
2013 | Unappreciated Skill |
2012 | Living Courage |
2011 | What’s Happening To Us? |
2010 | Toothbrush, Carbon and Monoxide Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! |
It Is Still About Sharing And Cheering
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Amazon, Fandom, Films, HBO, Hulu, Human Imagination, Laurie Penny, Netflix, Philosophy, Quotes, Television, We Can Be Heroes: How the Nerds Are Reinventing Pop Culture, Wired Magazine on June 21, 2020| Leave a Comment »
This is a story about stories — and the way technology is changing the scope and structure of the stories we tell. Right now, in untelevised reality, we are in the middle of an epic, multiseason struggle over the territory of the human imagination, over whose stories matter and why. For me, it started with fandom. | |
… | |
While many millions of people out there felt that they had been written out of the future, not all of them agreed on who to blame. Some of us blamed the banks, blamed structural inequality. But some people don’t pay attention to the structure. For some people, kicking up takes too much energy, and it’s easier to kick down — to blame women and people of color and queer people and immigrants for the fact that they aren’t leading the rich and meaningful lives they were promised. | |
… | |
But there are different kinds of love, aren’t there? I used to believe that there was something universal about fandom, that our excitement and love for our most cherished myths could bring us all together. This wasn’t the silliest thing I believed in my early twenties, but I had, at the time, swallowed a lot of saccharine nonsense about what love means and the work it involves. I had not yet encountered in my adult life or in my fan life the sort of love which is always, and only, about ownership. | |
All nerds love their fandoms. For some of us that means we want to share them and cheer them on as they grow and develop and change. For others, loving their fandom means they want to own it, to shut down the borders and police their favorite stories for any sign of deviance. | |
… | |
Television and online streaming are driving the evolution of a new, powerful hybrid species of mass culture, one that can be collective without being homogeneous. As arc-based television explodes, becomes more diverse and more daring, the film industry is lagging awkwardly behind. Films are still hamstrung by their own format: They have to tell stories of a certain length that will persuade enough people to leave their houses, find a place to park, and buy a ticket on opening weekend, or else be considered a flop. This means mainstream cinema still needs to appeal to what the industry considers its broadest possible audience. So it’s superhero blockbusters, endless remakes and reboots, and sequels to sequels that dominate the box office. Safe bets. | |
Episodic narrative television, meanwhile, allows for many stories being possible at once. Intimate and intricate, it may be the novel form of our age — but to reach its true potential, it took the advent of streaming platforms. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO. Streaming technology changed one simple thing about the way we tell collective stories today: It made any show theoretically accessible to anyone, at any time. A TV writer is no longer obliged to appeal to a very large number of people at a specific time every week and hold their attention through ad breaks. Suddenly, TV became a medium that could find its audience wherever they were in the world, so long as they had broadband and someone’s login details. Nobody has to write “universal” stories anymore, because every show or series can find its audience — and its audience can engage on fan sites, forums, and various social media behemoths, in breathless real time. | |
— Laurie Penny | |
An excerpt from her article: “We Can Be Heroes: How the Nerds Are Reinventing Pop Culture“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine | |
Issue: September 2019 | |
The article also appears online at: https://www.wired.com/story/culture-fan-tastic-planet-fanfic/ | |
[The online version of the article may be behind a paywall. In which case, you can probably find the hard copy at your local library. — KMAB] | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Sounds Like #LyingDonald |
2018 | Start Building |
2017 | Woof! Woof! |
2016 | Cast Out |
2015 | Small Pieces |
Happy Father’s Day! | |
2014 | Uncertain Work |
2013 | Unpatriotic And Servile |
2012 | What Price Freedom? |
2011 | Particular Importance |
Three From Bette… | |
Facing The Truth
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Life-long Mistakes, Opportunity, Paul Ford, Philosophy, Progress, Quotes, Technology, Truth, Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry, Wired Magazine on April 14, 2020| 7 Comments »
I’ve made a mistake, a lifelong one, correlating advancements in technology with progress. Progress is the opening of doors and the leveling of opportunity, the augmentation of the whole human species and the protection of other species besides. Progress is cheerfully facing the truth, whether flooding coastlines or falling teen pregnancy rates, and thinking of ways to preserve the processes that work and mitigate the risks. Progress is seeing calmly, accepting, and thinking of others. | |
— Paul Ford | |
From his article: “Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd May 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | How Much Is Your Education Worth? |
Is America Ready: Mayor Pete – 2020!! | |
2018 | Disruptive Definition |
2017 | A History Of Small Insights |
2016 | Be Uncommon |
2015 | Ooops! |
2014 | What Price Freedom? |
2013 | Remembering Val |
2012 | Good-bye, Val |
Survival Value | |
2011 | Traitors In Our Midst |
Life Ain’t Easy | |
Crowd Sourced Scouting Report
Posted in Quotes, Sports, tagged Branch Rickey, Concordia Open Source Software, Crowd Sourcing, Jackie Robinson, Kate Awaard, Major League Baseball, Quotes, Scouting Reports, Sports, Wired Magazine on April 13, 2020| Leave a Comment »
[Regarding volunteer crowd-sourcing transcriptions of hand-written (formerly) personal notes…] I do it a lot myself. Branch Rickey’s papers are just awesome. He is most famous for bringing Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball, and through crowdsourcing we were able to transcribe 1,926 pages of his scouting reports on prospective players. I would never have guessed how fun baseball scouting reports could be! One of my favorite lines is “I doubt if he has any adventure in his soul.” | |
— Kate Zwaard | |
From a column: “Concordia open source software“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, May 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Only One Direction |
2018 | Respect Is Long Gone |
2017 | Dream Of Dreamers |
2016 | Dear Automakers |
2015 | And Some Not So Brave Too |
2014 | In My Lifetime… |
2013 | Democracy |
2012 | Borrowed Expectations |
2011 | Not Necessarily True |
Sometimes Human Nature Stays The Same
Posted in History, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged 15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook, Facebook, Fred Vogelstein, History, Human Nature, Mark Zuckerberg, Nicholas Thompson, Philosophy, Quotes, Sam Lessin, Technology, Wired Magazine, Wired.com on March 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Perhaps the most telling email is a message from a then executive named Sam Lessin to Zuckerberg that epitomizes Facebook’s penchant for self-justification. The company, Lessin wrote, could be ruthless and committed to social good at the same time, because they are essentially the same thing: “Our mission is to make the world more open and connected and the only way we can do that is with the best people and the best infrastructure, which requires that we make a lot of money / be very profitable.” | |
The message also highlighted another of the company’s original sins: its assertion that if you just give people better tools for sharing, the world will be a better place. That’s just false. Sometimes Facebook makes the world more open and connected; sometimes it makes it more closed and disaffected. Despots and demagogues have proven to be just as adept at using Facebook as democrats and dreamers. Like the communications innovations before it — the printing press, the telephone, the internet itself — Facebook is a revolutionary tool. But human nature has stayed the same. | |
— Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein | |
From their article: “15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: May 2019 | |
Online at: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-15-months-of-fresh-hell/ | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Sometimes Too Subtle |
2018 | A Lot Like Teaching |
2017 | Wake Up |
2016 | I Like Dreaming |
2015 | Importance |
2014 | Unearned Humility |
2013 | Science Is Trial And Error |
2012 | Franklin’s Creed |
2011 | First Steps |
2010 | Home Ill… |
When?
Posted in History, Quotes, tagged History, Memory, Quotes, Remembering Things, Ripley D. Light, Totally Wired, Wired Magazine on March 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Now that I’ve turned my mind to reveling in the glory of technology, I’ve been gazing back at the olden, golden days. And the other day I remembered that, once upon a time, humans had to remember things. | |
— Ripley D. Light | |
From his editorial titled: “Totally Wired“ | |
Appearing in Wired Magazine, dtd: May 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Two Guides |
2018 | A Call For You |
2017 | Because I Read |
2016 | On What Matters… |
2015 | Social Security |
2014 | Bewitching |
2013 | Visiting Joy |
2012 | Dedication To Today |
2011 | Project Second Chance – Adult Literacy |
Turning Coal Into Diamonds | |
You Are Not Late (Yet)
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Augmented Reality, Cyberspace, Kevin Kelly, Mirrorworld, Philosophy, Quotes, Reality, Science, Technology, Welcome To Mirrorworld, Wired Magazine, Wired.com on January 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The emergence of the mirrorworld will affect us all at a deeply personal level. We know there will be severe physiological and psychological effects of dwelling in dual worlds; we’ve already learned that from our experience living in cyberspace and virtual realities. But we don’t know what these effects will be, much less how to prepare for them or avoid them. We don’t even know the exact cognitive mechanism that makes the illusion of AR work in the first place. [“AR” = Augmented Reality — KMAB] | |
The great paradox is that the only way to understand how AR works is to build AR and test ourselves in it. It’s weirdly recursive: The technology itself is the microscope needed to inspect the effects of the technology. | |
Some people get very upset with the idea that new technologies will create new harms and that we willingly surrender ourselves to these risks when we could adopt the precautionary principle: Don’t permit the new unless it is proven safe. But that principle is unworkable, because the old technologies we are in the process of replacing are even less safe. More than 1 million humans die on the roads each year, but we clamp down on robot drivers when they kill one person. We freak out over the unsavory influence of social media on our politics, while TV’s partisan influence on elections is far, far greater than Facebook’s. The mirrorworld will certainly be subject to this double standard of stricter norms. | |
… | |
I imagine it will take at least a decade for the mirrorworld to develop enough to be used by millions, and several decades to mature. But we are close enough now to the birth of this great work that we can predict its character in rough detail. | |
Eventually this melded world will be the size of our planet. It will be humanity’s greatest achievement, creating new levels of wealth, new social problems, and uncountable opportunities for billions of people. There are no experts yet to make this world; you are not late. | |
— Kevin Kelly | |
From his article: “Welcome To Mirrorworld“ | |
Appearing in Wired Magazine; dtd: March 2019 | |
The article also appears online at: https://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/ | |
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On This Day In: | |
2019 | Too Difficult To Try |
2018 | Hold Fast |
2017 | The Only Real Security |
2016 | Time Said |
2015 | If Only Common Sense Were More Common |
2014 | PTI |
2013 | What Now, Then? |
2012 | Big C, Little B |
Duty, Honor, Country | |
Almost Soulful Pleasure
Posted in Economics, Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Capitalism, Clive Thompson, Coding, Efficiency Is Beautiful, Optimization, Philosophy, Quotes, Wired Magazine, Wired.com on December 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Why do techies insist that things should be sped up, torqued, optimized? | |
There’s one obvious reason, of course: They do it because of the dictates of the market. Capitalism handsomely rewards anyone who can improve a process and squeeze some margin out. But with software, there’s something else going on too. For coders, efficiency is more than just a tool for business. It’s an existential state, an emotional driver. | |
Coders might have different backgrounds and political opinions, but nearly every one I’ve ever met found deep, almost soulful pleasure in taking something inefficient — even just a little bit slow — and tightening it up a notch. Removing the friction from a system is an aesthetic joy; coders’ eyes blaze when they talk about making something run faster or how they eliminated some bothersome human effort from a process. | |
— Clive Thompson | |
From his article: “Efficiency Is Beautiful“ | |
In Wired Magazine, dtd: April 2019 | |
Also online at: https://www.wired.com/story/coders-efficiency-is-beautiful/ | |
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On This Day In: | |
2018 | Cursive In The News |
2017 | Coffee Crunch |
2016 | Preparation |
2015 | Scarcely Asked |
2014 | They Resemble Us |
2013 | Both |
2012 | That’s Success! |
2011 | Losing At Dominos |
2010 | 1,001 |
Foundational Pillar Of Civilized Discourse
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Assumptions, Belief, Civilization, Civilized Discourse, Clock Watchers: The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom, Enlightenment, Facts, Logical Argument, Philosophy, Quotes, Values, Wired Magazine, Wired.com on December 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse. In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it. Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage. | |
— Herbert Lin | |
As quoted by: Virginia Heffernan | |
In her article: “Clock Watchers: The Beautiful Benefits of Contemplating Doom“ | |
In Wired Magazine, dtd: Apr 2019 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2018 | Seven Minutes. Not Six, Not Eight |
2017 | Falling Forward One Step At A Time |
2016 | And Without Expectation |
2015 | Just Do It |
I Am A Runner | |
2014 | Some Things I Learned (Mostly) In The Army: |
2013 | Who You Are |
2012 | Mine Stands |
2011 | Aversions |
Fostering Debate
Posted in History, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged Big Tech Platforms, Censorship, Democratic Values, Elevating Debate, Free Speech, Gatekeepers, History, Hunger, Institutional Antibodies, It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Liberal Tradition, Nazism, Obesity, Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, The Birth Of A Nation, Triumph Of The Will, Wired Magazine, Wired.com, Zeynep Tufekci on September 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The freedom of speech is an important democratic value, but it’s not the only one. In the liberal tradition, free speech is usually understood as a vehicle — a necessary condition for achieving certain other societal ideals: for creating a knowledgeable public; for engendering healthy, rational, and informed debate; for holding powerful people and institutions accountable; for keeping communities lively and vibrant. What we are seeing now is that when free speech is treated as an end and not a means, it is all too possible to thwart and distort everything it is supposed to deliver. | |
Creating a knowledgeable public requires at least some workable signals that distinguish truth from falsehood. Fostering a healthy, rational, and informed debate in a mass society requires mechanisms that elevate opposing viewpoints, preferably their best versions. To be clear, no public sphere has ever fully achieved these ideal conditions — but at least they were ideals to fail from. Today’s engagement algorithms, by contrast, espouse no ideals about a healthy public sphere. | |
============ The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech. ============ |
|
Some scientists predict that within the next few years, the number of children struggling with obesity will surpass the number struggling with hunger. Why? When the human condition was marked by hunger and famine, it made perfect sense to crave condensed calories and salt. Now we live in a food glut environment, and we have few genetic, cultural, or psychological defenses against this novel threat to our health. Similarly, we have few defenses against these novel and potent threats to the ideals of democratic speech, even as we drown in more speech than ever. | |
The stakes here are not low. In the past, it has taken generations for humans to develop political, cultural, and institutional antibodies to the novelty and upheaval of previous information revolutions. If The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will came out now, they’d flop; but both debuted when film was still in its infancy, and their innovative use of the medium helped fuel the mass revival of the Ku Klux Klan and the rise of Nazism. | |
By this point, we’ve already seen enough to recognize that the core business model underlying the Big Tech platforms — harvesting attention with a massive surveillance infrastructure to allow for targeted, mostly automated advertising at very large scale — is far too compatible with authoritarianism, propaganda, misinformation, and polarization. The institutional antibodies that humanity has developed to protect against censorship and propaganda thus far — laws, journalistic codes of ethics, independent watchdogs, mass education — all evolved for a world in which choking a few gatekeepers and threatening a few individuals was an effective means to block speech. They are no longer sufficient. | |
— Zeynep Tufekci | |
From her article: “It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: February 2018 | |
On-line at: https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/ | |
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On This Day In: | |
2018 | The Births Of Spring |
2017 | Drug Epidemic In America |
2016 | Word Up, Chuck! |
2015 | Sometimes I Wonder About Things |
2014 | Still Racing |
2013 | Anew |
2012 | Make Both |
2011 | Are You Happy Yet? |
With Proper Guidance
Posted in Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Fei-Fei Li, Jessi Hempel, Quotes, Science, The Human In The Machine, Wired Magazine on June 25, 2019| 4 Comments »
On the phone, I ask Li if she imagines there could have been a way to develop AI differently, without, perhaps, the problems we’ve seen so far. “I think it’s hard to imagine,” she says. “Scientific advances and innovation come really through generations of tedious work, trial and error. It took a while for us to recognize such bias. I only woke up six years ago and realized ‘Oh my God, we’re entering a crisis.’ ” | |
On Capitol Hill, Li said, “As a scientist, I’m humbled by how nascent the science of AI is. It is the science of only 60 years. Compared to classic sciences that are making human life better every day — physics, chemistry, biology — there’s a long, long way to go for AI to realize its potential to help people.” She added, “With proper guidance AI will make life better. But without it, the technology stands to widen the wealth divide even further, make tech even more exclusive, and reinforce biases we’ve spent generations trying to overcome.” This is the time, Li would have us believe, between an invention and its impact. | |
— Fei-Fei Li (being quoted) | |
Quoted by: Jessi Hempel | |
From her article: “The Human In The Machine“ | |
Appearing in: Wired Magazine, December 2018 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2018 | MAGA? |
2017 | Neutral |
Family Over Ego | |
2016 | Hard Learners |
2015 | Goals |
2014 | Switch To Dogs… |
2013 | Times Change |
2012 | Ashes Not Dust |
2011 | A Handful From Saudi |
None Of This Happened | |
Take Responsibility | |
The Sensation Of Human Intimacy
Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, Science and Learning, tagged Alex Mar, Hiroshi Ishiguro, Human Connection, Human Intimacy, Love In The Time Of Robots, Philosophy, Quotes, Sensory Deprivation, Wired Magazine on October 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »
But what I miss more than sex is the feeling of closeness with another person, something I’ve never believed could be conjured up. And though the sensory deprivation has become a little extreme, most of the time — can I put a percentage on it? Is it as high as 80 percent? — I do not think about it. I am semi-radically independent and some kind of artist and in many ways an unconventional liberal woman. However alienating, for me this is a time of deep creativity. It’s that additional 20 percent of the time — that’s when I feel dizzy. | |
This is where I’m at when I fly 17 hours to meet [Hiroshi] Ishiguro. And as a result, if I am honest with myself, my time abroad feels particularly fraught. The very concept of “human connection” has never felt so enigmatic to me. It makes sense that someone would be trying to measure it, to weigh it, to calculate its dimensions. To be able to replicate the sensation of human intimacy would be to control the very thing that confuses us most and eludes so many. | |
— Alex Mar | |
From her article: “Love In The Time Of Robots“ | |
Wired Magazine | |
November 2017 | |
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On This Day In: | |
2017 | One Night In A Thousand Years |
2016 | A Considerable Amount Of Work |
2015 | Panzer Soldier |
2014 | Babies (I) |
2013 | Patriotic == Tell The Truth |
2012 | 30 Days To Go |
2011 | Altering The Course |