Doc Searls
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This Thing is Bigger Than Journalism
Journalism as we knew it is washing away. But the story is bigger than journalism alone, and bigger than a story alone can tell. (Image borrowed from the brilliant Despair.com.) We who care about journalism are asked to join the Save Journalism Project, and its fight against Big Tech. Their pitch begins, and adds, On the first point, we… Continue reading
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Aviation vs. Eclipse
Contrails form behind jet aircraft flying through the stratosphere. Since high-altitude aviation is happening all around the earth more or less constantly, planes are painting the sky everywhere. (Here is one time-lapse. And another. And one of my own.) Many contrails don’t last, of course, but many do, and together they account for much of… Continue reading
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Talking Artificial Intelligence with the Real Don Norman
Artificial is AI’s frst name. And Intelligence is a quality, not a quantity. You can’t measure it with a dipstick, a ruler, or an IQ test. If you could, you’d get the same result every time.* But being artificial doesn’t mean AI isn’t dangerous, fun or both. It is, and will be, what we make… Continue reading
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Fishing For Free TV Signals
I think I will be the last person in Bloomington to try getting free over-the-air TV from what’s left of all the major networks. But that’s just my style, so roll with me while I explain how I’m hoping to do it, with the antenna above, which I’ll need because here is what the Search… Continue reading
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Feed Time
Two things worth blogging about that happened this morning. One was getting down and dirty trying to make DALL-E 3 work. That turned into giving up trying to find DALL-E (in any version) on the open Web and biting the $20/month bullet for a Pro account with ChatGPT, which for some reason maintains its DALL-E… Continue reading
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Death is a Feature
When Parisians got tired of cemeteries during the French Revolution, they conscripted priests to relocate bones of more than six million deceased forebears to empty limestone quarries below the city: a hundred miles of rooms and corridors now called The Catacombes. It was from those quarries that much of the city’s famous structures above—Notre Dame, et. al.—were built… Continue reading
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Looking for DALL-E 3 Help
I just returned to DALL-E 3 after using its Microsoft version (currently called Copilot | Designer) for a while. But I can’t get in. See how it says “Try in ChatGPT↗︎?” When I do that, it goes to https://chat.openai.com/. After I log in there, it offers no clue about where DALL-E 3 is. So I… Continue reading
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Why selling personal data is a bad idea
This post is for the benefit of anyone wondering about, researching, or going into business on the proposition that selling one’s own personal data is a good idea. Here are some of my learnings from having studied this proposition myself for the last twenty years or more. The business does exist. See eleven companies in… Continue reading
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The Online Local Chronicle
After we came to Bloomington in the summer of 2021, we rented an apartment by Prospect Hill, a quiet dome of old houses just west of downtown. There we were surprised to hear, nearly every night, as many police and ambulance sirens as we’d heard in our Manhattan apartment. Helicopters too. Soon we realized why:… Continue reading
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The end of what’s on, when, and where
But not of who, how, and why. Start by looking here: That’s a page of TV Guide, a required resource in every home with a TV, through most of the last half of the 20th century. Every program was on only at its scheduled times. Sources were called stations, which broadcast over the air on… Continue reading
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Happy Birthday, Mom
Mom would have been 111 today. She passed in ’03 at 90, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that she was a completely wonderful human being: as good a mother, sister, daughter, cousin, friend, and teacher as you’ll find. There is a thread in Facebook (which seems to be down now) on the… Continue reading
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Ripples
The song “Ripple,” by the Grateful Dead, never fails to move me. Here’s a live performance by the Dead, in 1980, on YouTube. My favorite version, however, is this one by KPIG’s Fine Swine Orchestra, recorded by Santa Cruz musicians sheltering in place during the pandemic. That’s a screen grab, above. I am pretty sure… Continue reading
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On Blogs
Thoughts I jotted down on Mastodon*: 1) Blogs are newsletters that don’t require subscriptions. 2) Blogrolls are lists of blogs. 3) Both require the lowest possible cognitive and economic overhead. 4) That’s why they are coming back. I know, they never left. But you get my point. *I just learned that my Mastodon account is… Continue reading
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Mom’s breakfast
As a cook, my Swedish mother was best known for her Swedish meatballs, an indelicacy now familiar as the reward for completing the big-box retail maze called Ikea. Second-best was the limpa bread (vörtbröd) she baked every Christmas. She once won an award for that one. Maybe twice. But her most leveraged dish was the… Continue reading
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Assassinations Work
On April 4, 1968, when I learned with the rest of the world that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, I immediately thought that the civil rights movement, which King had led, had just been set back by fifty years. I was wrong about that. It ended right then (check that last link). Almost… Continue reading
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Cluetrain at 25
The Cluetrain Manifesto will turn 25 in two months. I am one of its four authors, and speak here only for myself. The others are David Weinberger, Rick Levine, and Chris Locke. David and Rick may have something to say. Chris, alas, demonstrates the first words in Chapter One of The Cluetrain Manifesto in its… Continue reading
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If Your Privacy Is in the Hands of Others Alone, You Don’t Have Any
In her latest Ars Technica story, Ashley Belanger reports that Patreon, the widely used and much-trusted monetization platform for creative folk, opposes the minimal personal privacy protections provided by a law you probably haven’t heard of until now: the Video Privacy Protection Act, or VPPA. Patreon, she writes, wants a judge to declare that law (which dates… Continue reading
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Privacy is Social
Eight years ago I was asked on Quora to answer the question “What is the social justification for privacy?” This was my answer. Society is comprised of individuals, thick with practices and customs that respect individual needs. Privacy is one of those. Only people who live naked outdoors without clothing and shelter can do without… Continue reading
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The Biggest Wow in Indiana
In the summer of ’22 we were still new to Indiana and in an exploring mood. Out of nowhere one afternoon my wife said, “Let’s go check out French Lick.” She just liked the name of the town, plus the idea of taking a half-day road trip under a sweet blue sky and big puffy… Continue reading