Hello! This is still Olu Online, still talking about tech and ethics and tech ethics and how technology can help us flourish. I finished my version of alphabet superset recently and you can catch up with all the posts if you wish over at my blog.

I keep flip-flopping on newsletters. Where to write them. If I even should write them. Whether to pay for them. If I care about all the issues with the biggest free platforms, care more about the possible network effects whilst trying to grow, or if being a hypocrite even matters to me these days.

My blog post no, about boycotting web platforms, went viral-for-me and I listed Substack on there, so will have to go back and shamefacedly edit at some point. I don’t really understand how you grow a writing platform without social media, and maybe I’ll discover along the way that all my other platforms just work better for promotion and I’ll circle back to deleting this. Hold me to it, okay?

I’m still gonna try and make videos, but since what I want to do is have writing be a more substantial part of my practice and work and life I think I’m giving in and joining the party again here.

But you don’t want to hear me, you just want to dance! Thoughts in no particular order:

• Been thinking a lot about the likely AI bubble and how I’m softening a bit on AI use. I am not a financial or political pundit so it remains to be seen if this will end up being something of Enron proportions but I am worried about it on a soft human level. What will happen to jobs in the tech industry, aka people I know, aka my friends? I have friends in other industries too but yeah, I worry. Also will the industries already being decimated by terrible LLM practices (CGI, translation, copy writing) ever recover to pre-AI boom levels?

• On the aforementioned softening, I do see that it’s being pushed on all corners, wormed into every bit of every interface on bigger platforms, in our phones, in our ears on music platforms and podcasts and YouTube, in ads and in films… I don’t direcrtly blame people for being pulled in by other forms of propaganda and the AI arm of things is no less rich and powerful.

• No one will ever convince me slopper and clanker are slurs until sentient AI actually exists, sorry. Whether it will ever exist and/or exist whilst I’m alive and lucid enough to be suprised by it remains to be seen.

• I did a digital detox for 16 days this month and whilst I didn’t hate every minute I didn’t get as much value out of it as I was expecting. It was not The Vitamin and I’m bitter about it. Also I’m working on a video about social media so it was good fodder for that, but also a sign I was possibly going into it with the wrong attitude.

In terms of other writers for this stuff always going to recommend Blood in the Machine and Terrific/Horrific.

I think I’m tentatively thinking I will write this weekly. Reply, comment, like, reach out elsewhere if it would please you to do so.

Til next time,

Olu