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On Anonymity

  In July 1993, cartoonist Peter Steiner submitted a batch of new drawings to the New Yorker. “I submitted it without thinking it was even the best cartoon in the batch,” he would tell the Washington Post 20 years later.  You’ve seen that cartoon, as it has spawned its own sub-memes for decades. It presented a dog, sitting on a chair, in front of a desktop computer. Next to him, another dog is…

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iSins and iVirtues

A visitor from another planet looking at today’s news headlines may believe the internet to be the most destructive thing ever invented.  From roaming groups of extremists spreading their message of hate to questions about the veracity of simple facts, it appears that we are dealing with one of the worst inventions ever created.  Of course, because this is the internet, no consensus as to what…

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What the Internet Is

Language has a strange way of defining boundaries. A proper phrasing leads to agreement; A misunderstanding sows discord. Agreement on meaning sits at its core. Take the word “internet.”  Use the word internet and it immediately opens up a myriad of meanings. The internet is both terrible and amazing at the same. But what is it? The internet is… an idea Look for a physical thing called “the…

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10 Rules for Our Times

With war in Ukraine and the Middle East, fires in LA, and worries about the upcoming administration, many of the people I know are feeling depressed and burnt out.  This topic recently came up in a discussion and I set up 10 rules for our times 1. Realize that this is one part in history and that we’ve been here before: I know it sounds crazy but this country has been in similar situations…

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23

There’s an odd pattern to getting older: Some things feel like self-indulgent nostalgia while others remain engraved as promises you were meant to keep. In the days following 9/11, it was common to exclaim “Never Forget” and yet, as other crises came along, American society moved on, forgetting the lessons of those days. What made America great in the days following 9/11, what made the world…

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Building Defensive AI

Since OpenAI revealed ChatGPT, Silicon Valley has been obsessed with generative AI and its potential for making creating content even cheaper than it is today. Few appear to be creating tools to identify and de-emphasize such content as part of our content consumption. The ones who will may well be laying out the most important tools to allow humans to continue consuming online content. A Tale…

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Burning Down The House

If you followed me on Twitter/X, you recently received my Twitter breakup message: Thanks for following me on Twitter but I’m now moving all this activity over to https://www.threads.net/@tnlnyc and https://mastodon.social/@TNLNYC so this will be my last message to you on Twitter. Looking forward to seeing you over there. I will remove you from my follower list on Twitter as I’m sending a…

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22

For most people, today is Monday, a day to remember the fun of the past weekend and get on to the workweek ahead. But for New Yorkers who were in the city 22 years ago, today is another marker on the calendar of a grim anniversary few remember to note: 9/11. Memory is a difficult thing. For the internet, memory is even more complicated. In the days following the attacks on the world trade…

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AI Copyright : It's complicated

Delving into the intriguing realm of AI and Copyright! How does generative AI challenge content ownership? Let's unravel the complexities of copyright, fair use, and the future of AI-generated creativity. Join the conversation! #AI #Copyright

The ownership of creative work has long been fundamental to the spread of ideas. Creators have been remunerated for their work, allowing them the ability to live off their creativity. The recent explosion of generative AI may destroy the creative arts unless we can better define who owns AI-generated work products and what AI copyright may look like. The Berne Convention The Berne Convention,…

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Beware the AI Hype

Every day, claims of an “extinction-level threat” by new generative AIs fill the press. Beware the AI Hype as it comes with a carefully crafted sleight of hand. Current State of AI Generative AI has some basic uses around remixing but gets everything else pretty wrong I’m not opposed to generative AI. MidJourney has created the picture at the top of this page. I have edited the content of this…

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Gen AI Doom Loop

Since the rise of ChatGPT, the tech industry has been obsessed with the power of generative AI. While coverage has focused on the impact of generative AI on creative work, little has been written about its long-term impact on itself. How AI works At their core, tools like ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Llama are advanced auto-complete systems. Looking at what is being typed, the AI systems guesses…

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Data Capture in the New Social Media Age

Data Capture in the New Social Media Age

With the arrival of Threads, a Twitter clone from Instagram, much is being made about the aggressive data gathering efforts from Meta within that new platform. So I became curious as to whether Threads was different from other offering or more of the same. As regular readers of TNL.net know, this is where I pull a spreadsheet and start gathering data from different sources to analyze it, showing…

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Alone Together

“F*** You Marvel” That anguished expletive came from a fan on the opening night of “Avenger: Infinity Wars,” as Black Panther disappeared into dust after the snap. There was a collosal shock in the movie theater and one could feel the experience of every other attendee reflecting your own experience of what you had seen (some on YouTube have recorded similar dismay yet the recording does not do…

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"The Vision Thing"

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about how Thomas Edison won the race to a commercially successful incandescent light bulb. At the time, many people had created incandescent light bulbs but the challenge was that none of them could last for more than a few minutes. Edison assembled a team of experts and gave them ownership in the company in exchange for figuring out a way to create such a…

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Gradually, Then Suddenly

This week marked a turning point in social media. Some parts, like the massive layoffs at Meta (owners of Facebook) and the ongoing drama at Twitter, made the news. But one critical part hasn’t, and it’s the one that will mark the beginning of a substantial change in social media history. To understand the move, you have to first look back and believe in Geoffrey Moore theory of change. In…

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20

Twenty years passed but the holes left in my heart by what happened 20 years ago will never get fully filled. This year, as the city is still struggling through recovery, I’ve been thinking about history vs. memory. To younger people who weren’t here on this day 20 years ago or were too young to really feel the impact, the events of 9/11 are something that is part of history, similar in weight to…

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An American Tragedy

I was recently telling a friend that I had no concerns about the future of the USA because, as bad as things as have ever been, there was one thing that was always clear about American democracy: ever since Washington stepped down, there had always been a peaceful transfer of power in this country. This rich tradition stood in contrast to other parts of the world, where violent behavior by losers…