Stephen Downes

According to this article, "At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined 'intelligent search box' ... Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times." In fairness, Google search has been broken for a while now. And it's not hard to view the new tool as a way to integrate advertising more deeply into your online inquiries while appearing to be more useful than integrating it into your search results. Via Wes Fryer.

I signed up for this. I'm not sure it solves the Problem that is LinkedIn, but I appreciate the effort. "I designed it in such a way that it works against the grain. Quality writing (up to 2000 words) will be rewarded. Outbound links are not throttled. Text can be formatted. And there are no ads or suggestions." Still looking for an API. Here's the link: inContact.

This article doesn't answer the questions but looks into what the questions tell u about ourselves - and what we can do to address the underlying issues. In this case, we look at why we require students to use an LMS, and what might be at issue here. "The more complex the world becomes, the more agency students require. This means being informed not only about what they're learning and why they're learning it, but also about how they're being taught and what they can do to improve their own chances of success." Regular readers here should recognize the writing stile in this Contact North article.

If I recall my art history, this is also what happened when Monet began releasing his works in real life. "Someone shared an actual Monet painting as an AI-generated artwork and asked people to explain what makes the 'AI image' inferior to a genuine Monet piece. There was no shortage of 'sharp-eyed' critics eager to chime in." I wonder what the same critics would have made of Voice of Fire. Via Alan Levine.   

I have considered turning my hand to writing a book - a real book, not just a collection of blog posts - but I have also determined that such a book would not consist of the typical Wall of Text, not simply because the format is user-hostile, but also because I think text along is unable to capture the emotions and ambiguities a description of a complex world requires. And this leads me in the direction of writing - or 'creating', I guess - a book that looks more like a slide deck. No, not just a series of bullet points (I could just ask ChatGPT to do that for me if I wanted) but something that captures multiple perspectives in a single presentation. That's not one of the explanations offered here in this article, but I think it should be.

This is a discussion of account identity verification and is basically an endorsement of the ATmosphere Protocol (ie., Bluesky) to do this (I notice conversation at Cosocial.ca noodling around the same topic). Here's the stated objective: "A verification mark on this network must not encode, reference, or be conditional on a government-issued identifier, and no labeller, AppView, or app should publish a mark whose issuance required the user to present government ID to the operator of this network. The mark itself is the line: it answers 'who does this account belong to,' and that question must always be answerable without fees and without government ID." All very well, but I would answer back, "you mean, without government or corporate ID, right?" Because depending on a VC-backed platform for continuity of identity is as risky as depending on the apparatus of the state (these days, they sometimes blend into one). I personally think Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are a perfectly good tool for this and have written some proof-of-concept code around them. And we don't need to depend on Bluesky's VC funders for continued benevolence.