“Delicacies” is my incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks that I came across on the internet. Handpicked by a human, no robots, no AI. There is no fixed frequency for Delicacies: when there is enough material, I hit the publish button. That can be after a week, or after 3 months. No pressure, literally.
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The very best
Abstract of this great talk by Dr. Paul Pangaro. If you want a fascinating take on AI, this is it. Amen.
If you knew a person had no experience of the world but was good at stringing words into coherent sentences, what would you want from such a conversation? If you had to be trapped in conversation with either a human or an AI, which partner would you choose? These are questions already demanded of us. Today’s technology attracts us into interactions, mediated by algorithms designed by others, without our knowing what they do.
About the Summer of Protocols initiative and a reflection on season #1 by Venkatesh Rao
The Sublimation Hour: about the Las Vegas Sphere in a way you would not expect - by Drew Austin
“It’s popular to point out that our phones never appear in our dreams. I’ve always believed this is because our devices frame our reality so comprehensively that we imagine we live inside them, and only in dreams do we escape the physical constraints that break the illusion.”
The “Diagram Website”. A website of websites that you normally would not discover via a Google search. By Kristoffer Tjalve and Elliott Cost. I love the idiosyncratic category ;-)
Data & Society
A cross-border data privacy case: How Belgian MP turned sleuth to solve London Ulez fine mystery. Some fines amounted to thousands of euros, for allegedly contravening London’s emissions zone regulations.
“Since Belgium currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU, I’ve asked my government to seek a pan-European solution and claw back the hundreds of thousands of pounds of fines that I believe have been collected unlawfully.”
EU set to allow draconian use of facial recognition tech, say lawmakers.
"it appears the EU intends to compete with China not only technologically but also in terms of high-tech repression."
Innovation
Rodney Brooks’ yearly predictions scorecard, Jan 2024. A factual overview of overpromises, hype and real - no driverless cars yet!
And also, the Verge’s review of the Apple Vision Pro
And the biggest tradeoff of all is that using the Vision Pro is such a lonely experience, regardless of the weird ghost eyes on the front. You’re in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part in. After using the Vision Pro for a while, I’ve come to agree with what Tim Cook has been saying for so long: headsets are inherently isolating. That’s fine for traditional VR headsets, which have basically turned into single-use game consoles over the past decade, but it’s a lot weirder for a primary computing device.
FinTech, crypto and other distortions
Great report by Outlier Ventures on Tokenisation of Real World Assets
“This thesis is the culmination of years of work on the RWAs. One that’s been previously covered in The Convergence Thesis in 2018, followed by the Open Metaverse OS in 2021, the latter of which predicted a unification of the physical and digital worlds, underpinned by a decentralized financial system.”
AI, Robots, Algorithms
But what about brainless slime molds: smarter than AI? By Katie Losey.
“It’s been a consultant for NASA, shot at by police and mistaken for an alien. How a slime mold—a brainless, single-celled organism—mapped the dark universe, keeps challenging the top minds to rethink what intelligence even is and has an ability to fill us with wonder beyond the human kind.”
Military attack drones from White Stork, where Eric Schmidt has assumed the role of defense tech advisor and financier.
“The Weirdness Right in Front of Us”: On Wednesday, June 28th, 2023, Benjamin Bratton, Director of Antikythera and Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Speculative Design at the University of California, San Diego, gave a lecture at Central Saint Martins' Platform Theater on the topic of synthetic intelligence.
“a shift from a form of AI that is based largely in spatial references (inside versus outside, up and down, over - under) to one that is based on psychosocial metaphors”
I discovered Gordon Pask via the GenAI series of Eryk Salvaggio. Now, Eryk wrote a longer post about Gordon Pask and his relevance for today’s discussions on AGI or not. Highly recommended.
“Often assumed to be derived from cybernetics, today's generative AI ignores many of its concerns. This essay compares and contrasts two theories of the cyberneticist Gordon Pask with today's thinking of AI, by looking at Pask's conversation theory, black boxes, and "maverick machines".
And…
“ChatGPT is never answering a question”
Web3
About “Non-Blockchain Decentralization and Cryptography” or NBDC protocols - by Venkat Rao. Are “Vibemobiles” a thing now? ;-)
AR, VR, XR, Games
I only recently discovered this awesome Covid video series QUARANTIME with host Peter Hinsberg and Mickey McManus as a great listener/facilitator. This episode is about the visceral nature of Mixed Reality and Digital Twins in a way you would not expect. High-quality content and guests Timoni West - at that time VP of VR/MR tools at Unity, and now Director of Product XR tech at Meta - and Mark Enzer - Head of the UK’s National Digital Twin Programme. Recorded in Oct 2020, some speculations happened in the meantime. 1 hour and 40 minutes worth of your time.
The Tremendous Yet Troubled State of Gaming in 2024 - by Matthew Ball
“video gaming is faced with its own challenges. Chief among them is declining revenues (in contrast, total video, audio, and even book publishing revenues, which are still growing) and surging costs. The causes are interconnected, important, and about far more than “COVID.”
Space Elevator, a virtual reality space editor by NUMENA
Digital Ethics
About moral fashions, and what you can’t say about AI - by Alberto Romero
WEF “lost the sense” of Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message” - by Andrew McLuhan
New New Babylon
Somewhat related to the economic and governance dimensions of the New New Babylon, here is TIAL, The Institutional Architecture Lab by Sir Geoff Mulgan, Jessica Seddon, and Juha Leppänen as an effort to help the institutional design community coalesce, learn together, and grow.
Art related
Mesmerizing work by Chia Amisola, an internet / ambient artist
A film by Wim Wenders about the artist Anselm Kiefer
Aesthetics
Jean-Paul Gauthier Spring 2024 Show
About old and new architectural aesthetics. Architecture “As Found”. Nice expo in Antwerp till 17 March 2024.
Visual Trends 2024: taking stock of where our visual appetite is taking us, from the rise of childlike, crayon-covered graphics to swirly script and big, lumbering paint strokes
Music/Sound/Dance
Petervan’s Music Ride January 2024. Play in shuffle mode to increase the surprise factor. Enjoy!
DJ Gigola goes virtual
Books/Publications
Rudy Rucker asks ChatGPT-4 to continue writing his book based on a prompt of 500 words
Smile
Valentine flowers or cards? If you have an architecture-inspired mind, you may try these: