Author: Evan Menogue

Storing times for human events – Simon Wilison

BBC complains to Apple over misleading shooting headline – Simon Wilison

Daring Fireball: Federico Viticci on Apple Intelligence, With ChatGPT, as a Breakthrough Automation Tool

Australia’s ban on social media for teens is a mistake

How media works in the age of the internet influencers etc

The new rules of media – One Thing

Erin Kissane long read on the problems of modelling the internet on a dark forest where ‘bad things’ can happen.

The tragedy of the commons is a false and dangerous myth | Aeon Essays

Revenge Of The Humanities – by Steven Johnson

Steven Johnson works at Google on the NotebookLM product, a research tool with a long-context window.

This essay ponders what the future of AI might be when long-context becomes more available and might be a useful knowledge assistant. He also reflects on what the future strategies might be for organisations working with AI.

All of which suggests an interesting twist for the near future of AI. In a long-context world, maybe the organizations that benefit from AI will not be the ones with the most powerful models, but rather the ones with the most artfully curated contexts. Perhaps we’ll discover that organizations perform better if they include more eclectic sources in their compiled knowledge bases, or if they employ professional archivists who annotate and selectively edit the company history to make it more intelligible to the model. No doubt there are thousands of curation strategies to discover, if that near future does indeed come to pass. And if it does, it will suggest one more point of continuity between the human mind and a long-context model. What matters most is what you put into it.

You Exist In The Long Context

In The Context Of Long Context – by Steven Johnson

The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age | The Walrus