Category: Read Other People’s Stuff

If you’ve been wondering about my lack of new writing, it’s not because I have run out of things to write! Quite the opposite. I have a number of posts lined up, many which are partially-written.

For the moment, I have been honored to be asked to help in the editing of two books. Between that, my day job, my students at RIT, and my volunteer work, my cup runneth over!

In the meanwhile, here are some worthy works from other authors to keep your brains chugging away. Are you interested in:

• Technology criticism?
• What’s wrong with cover letters?
• What has technology done to us?
• Would you like a different take on what we presume about political positions?

I hope at least one of these things inspires you to think differently in some way or another. I will be back soon!

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🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpwxxyZ4GfA.

This is the most compelling software-related post I have read in a while:

• Matthew Rosenfeld (Moxie Marlinspike): My first impressions of web3

Web 3.0 harkens back to the days when engineers thought Object Linking and Embedding and Open Doc were the future. The reason those things failed is because it’s more difficult for average people to think (or care) about information that is distributed than information that is centralized. Think about this: What percentage of Word documents sitting on computers around the world today have a live reference to a chunk of cells in someone else’s Excel spreadsheet?

Something that I tend to think of as a rule for ascertaining the long-term success of a technology is: does the technology make sense for people, or does it make sense for engineers?

If you are interested, here are some things I have already written that complement this topic:

Blockchain Bunk

Slate Star Codex and the State of Things

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🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLlfK_GQwko.

From Stephen Wolfram, this is simply the most lucid (but lengthy) analysis of how Large Language Models like ChatGPT work:

What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?

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🎹 Music for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lamyY_8iwE.