#technology

There’s a sad irony when someone jettisons from social media, they’re gone from our Online worlds but I’m so happy for them. And I mourn what we don’t get to hear from them. We don’t get to hear about how wonderful they feel, how beautiful their skin is now, and how they restored their mental health. We don’t know if they make more money or less money. We don’t get further inspiration from them to leave the Online. But being able to observe the Offline from the Online might ruin the magic and mystery hidden there. It’s a door hidden in an old wardrobe that you have to pass through to fully understand.

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Earlier today, I received a message from Ivan Minutillo, one of the core team behind Bonfire. He knows that I've got at least one client interested in Bonfire, but also we used to work together on MoodleNet, so he keeps me up-to-date with anything I might have missed.

On the one hand, it's good that the UK government has updated its Essential Digital Skills Standards. On the other hand, they're about a decade out of date (in the same way that the previous ones were even more out of date).

N.B. You should probably know that I wrote my doctoral thesis on digital literacies and I have opinions including that literate practices happen in communities, rather than being a solo intellectual pursuit.

I'm going to dive straight in.

I'm not sure my responses to this series of 29 questions warrant the tag 'true believer' but I haven't looked into the methodology of this 'AI Compass'.

Essentially my position is that AI is more consequential and useful than things like Blockchain, that it should be better regulated, and that it allows most people to do things they weren't able to do before.

The way in which Bo Burnham (who I’ve already declared a genius) speaks in this clip is not only intense and refreshing, but insightful.

In a discussion regarding the film, "Eighth Grade"" written and directed by Bo Burnham, Bo discusses phones, technology, the internet, social media, and their effects on kids and society. Corporations are trying to colonize our mind, capitalizing on every free second you have. Self-Esteem in the Age of Social Media.

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Ironically enough, I'm sitting in a public space with my earbuds in while I write this post. I live in a small town where what's described in this article is less pronounced, but it's still A Thing.

As someone who listens to a lot of music – I even use brain.fm to help me sleep – I'm very aware of the ability for headphones to create a 'bubble'. It can be comforting, but also isolating. My solution is to always take at least one earbud out when approaching someone I know, and to not have them in the entire time I'm working in public.

From The Salmon of Doubt:

We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

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