A Week of Being Kin Lane - April 20th, 2025
I am doing the work to shift my perspective as the API Evangelist from a producer (tech insiders) view of things towards more of a consumer view of things (the rest of us using tech). To help me invert the looking glass I am practicing writing from the surveillance perspective, learning what television on a Thursday night in the bedroom might have to say about us.
As I write about how work is now to program my job into this punchcard I am left wondering why does the origin of the computer reference Babbage and not the jacquard machine—why does this story resonates with those of us in the technology sector. Why these stories are well known and amplified as part of the compute narrative I feel are due to men who worked in telecom dismissed the need for multi-discipline discussion about our relationship with technology back in the 1950s.
Are things moving faster than ever before, or is that you are being manipulated? You can see this in action on social media with politics of Facebook and artificial intelligence on LinkedIn. The residue from this velocity tends to accumulate around some large language models as AI homunculi that are gunk’n up the AI gears. Personally I welcome a social media death as my Eugenics filter becomes the top Algorotoscope image across my storytelling about technology right now.
It is difficult to evangelize API, AI, or really anything technology wise right now with DOGE pilfering sensitive labor data, and all of this data powering tech companies like Palantir when it comes to track down and disappear people in this country. If we survive this presidency, we have to take a look at regulating how all companies manage their data, as well as how companies, organizations, institutions, and government agencies are digitally managing our data.
Audrey and I are listening to the Pacific Circuit by Alexis Madrigal. This story of Oakland, San Francisco, and the Pacific shipping circuit pulls back the curtain on how we’ve all been bought off from demanding anything meaningful by ensuring we all have cheap shit to buy. Much of Alexis Madrigal’s story I’ve heard before in other book’s I have read, but Alexis adds a view dimensions, but intersects it all in a really compelling way that further helps explain how we all got here.
Poppy and I continue to patrol Central Park each day, and we are thankful that the congestion pricing working so well as we make our way through midtown from Hells Kitchen to get to and back home from the park. Any victory against the conservative bullshit machine right now should be celebrated, but for me any victory against the automobile must also be showcased as I see the automobile and artificial intelligence are the two greatest threats to humanity we have right now.
