July 4, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
My newsfeed of headlines produced a three-year young essay titled “How to Learn Better in the Digital Age.” The date on the document is November 2020. (Have you noticed how rare a specific date on a document appears?)
MidJourney provided this illustration of me doing math homework with both hands in 1952. I was fatter and definitely uglier than the representation in the picture. I want to point out: [a] no mobile phone, [b] no calculator, [c] no radio or TV, [d] no computer, and [e] no mathy father breathing down my neck. (He was busy handling the finances of a weapons manufacturer which dabbled in metal coat hangers.) Was homework hard? Nope, just part of the routine in Campinas, Brazil, and the thrilling Calvert Course.
The write up contains a simile which does not speak to me; namely, the functioning of the human brain is emulated to some degree in smart software. I am not in that dog fight. I don’t care because I am a dinobaby.
For me the important statement in the essay, in my opinion, is this one:
… we need to engage with what we encounter if we wish to absorb it long term. In a smartphone-driven society, real engagement, beyond the share or like or retweet, got fundamentally difficult – or, put another way, not engaging got fundamentally easier. Passive browsing is addictive: the whole information supply chain is optimized for time spent in-app, not for retention and proactivity.
I marvel at the examples of a failure to learn. United Airlines strands people. The CEO has a fix: Take a private jet. Clerks in convenience stores cannot make change even when the cash register displays the amount to return to the customer. Yeah, figuring out pennies, dimes, and quarters is a tough one. New and expensive autos near where I live sit on the side of the road awaiting a tow truck from the Land Rover- or Maserati-type dealer. The local hospital has been unable to verify appointments and allegedly find some X-ray images eight weeks after a cyber attack on an insecure system. Hip, HIPPA hooray, Hip HIPPA hooray. I have a basket of other examples, and I would wager $1.00US you may have one or two to contribute. But why? The impact of poor thinking, reading, math, and writing skills are abundant.
Observations:
Exciting times coming. I am delighted I a dinobaby and not a third-grade student juggling a mobile, an Xbox, an iPad, and a new M2 Air. I was okay with a paper and pencil. I just wanted to finish my homework and get the best grade I could.
Stephen E Arnold, July
June 22, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
With regulators beginning to wake up to the threats, risks, and effects of online information, I enjoyed reading “Fake Zero-Day PoC Exploits on GitHub Push Windows, Linux Malware.” The write up points out:
Hackers are impersonating cybersecurity researchers on Twitter and GitHub to publish fake proof-of-concept exploits for zero-day vulnerabilities that infect Windows and Linux with malware. These malicious exploits are promoted by alleged researchers at a fake cybersecurity company named ‘High Sierra Cyber Security,’ who promote the GitHub repositories on Twitter, likely to target cybersecurity researchers and firms involved in vulnerability research.
The tweeter thing is visualized by that nifty art generator Dezgo. I think the smart software captures the essence of the tweeter’s essence.
I noted that the target appears to be cyber security “experts”. Does this raise questions in your mind about the acuity of some of those who fell for the threat intelligence? I have to admit. I was not surprised. Not in the least.
The article includes illustrations of the “Python downloader.”
I want to mention that this is just one type of OSINT blindspot causing some “experts” to find themselves on the wrong end of a Tesla-like or Waymo-type self-driving vehicle. I know I would not stand in front of one. Similarly, I would not read about an “exploit” on Twitter, click on links, or download code.
But that’s just me, a 78 year old dinobaby. But a 30 something cyber whiz? That’s something that makes news.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2023
June 19, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
For some reason, I remember my freshman year in high school. My family had returned from Brazil, and the US secondary school adventure was new. The first class of the day in 1958 parked me in front of Miss Dalton, the English teacher. She explained that we had to use the library to write a short essay about foreign country. Brazil did not interest me, so with the wisdom of a freshman in high school, I chose Japan. My topic? Seppuku or hara-kiri. Yep, belly cutting.
The idea that caught my teen attention was the idea that a warrior who was shamed, a loser in battle, or fighter wanting to make a point would stab himself with his sword. (Females slit their throats.) The point of the exercise was to make clear, this warrior had moxie, commitment, and maybe a bit of psychological baggage. An inner wiring (maybe guilt) would motivate you to kill oneself in a hard-to-ignore way. Wild stuff for a 13 year old.
A digital samurai preparing to commit hara-kiri with a brand new really sharp MacBook Air M2. Believe it or not, MidJourney objected to an instruction to depict a Japanese warrior committing seppuku with a laptop. Change the instruction and the system happily depicts a digital warrior initiating the Reddit- and Twitter-type processes. Thanks, MidJourney for the censorship.
I have watched a highly regarded innovator chop away at his innards with the management “enhancements” implemented at Twitter. I am not a Twitter user, but I think that an unarticulated motive is causing the service to be “improved.” “Twitter: Five Ways Elon Musk Has Changed the Platform for Users” summarizes a few of the most newsworthy modifications. For example, the rocket and EV wizard quickly reduced staff, modified access to third-party applications, and fooled around with check marks. The impact has been intriguing. Billions in value have been disappeared. Some who rose to fame by using Tweets as a personal promotional engine have amped up their efforts to be short text influencers. The overall effect has been to reduce scrutiny because the impactful wounds are messy. Once concerned regulators apparently have shifted their focus. Messy stuff.
Now a social media service called Reddit is taking some cues from the Musk Manual of Management. The gold standard in management excellence — that would be CNN, of course — documented some Reddit’s actions in “Reddit’s Fight with Its Most Powerful Users Enters New Phase As Blackout Continues.” The esteemed news service stated:
The company also appears to be laying the groundwork for ejecting forum moderators committed to continuing the protests, a move that could force open some communities that currently remain closed to the public. In response, some moderators have vowed to put pressure on Reddit’s advertisers and investors.
Without users and moderators will Reddit thrive? If the information in a recent Wired article is correct, the answer is, “Maybe not.” (See “The Reddit Blackout Is Breaking Reddit.”)
Why are two large US social media companies taking steps that will either impair their ability to perform technically and financially or worse, chopping away at themselves?
My thought is that the management of both firms know that regulators and stakeholders are closing in. Both companies want people who die for the firm. The companies are at war with idea, their users, and their supporters. But what’s the motivation?
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine that the senior managers at both companies know that they have lost the battle for the hearts and minds of regulators, some users, third-party developers, and those who would spend money to advertise. But like a person promoted to a senior position, the pressure of the promotion causes the individuals to doubt themselves. These people are the Peter Principle personified. Unconsciously they want to avail to avoid their inner demons and possibly some financial stakeholders.
The senior managers are taking what they perceive as a strong way out — digital hara-kiri. Of course, it is messy. But the pain, the ugliness, and the courage are notable. Those who are not caught in the sticky Web of social media ignore the horrors. For Silicon Valley “real” news professionals, many users dependent on the two platforms, and those who have surfed on the firms’ content have to watch.
Are the managers honorable? Do some respect their tough decisions? Are the senior managers’ inner demons and their sense of shame assuaged? I don’t know. But the action is messy on the path of honor via self-disembowelment.
For a different angle on what’s happened at Facebook and Google, take a look at “The Rot Economy.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 19, 2023
June 12, 2023
Here’s a graph from the academic paper “The Illusion of Moral Decline.”
Is it even necessary to read the complete paper after studying the illustration? Of course not. Nevertheless, let’s look at a couple of statements in the write up to get ready for that in-class, blank bluebook semester examination, shall we?
Statement 1 from the write up:
… objective indicators of immorality have decreased significantly over the last few centuries.
Well, there you go. That’s clear. Imagine what life was like before modern day morality kicked in.
Statement 2 from the write up:
… we suggest that one of them has to do with the fact that when two well-established psychological phenomena work in tandem, they can produce an illusion of moral decline.
Okay. Illusion. This morning I drove past people sleeping under an overpass. A police vehicle with lights and siren blaring raced past me as I drove to the gym (a gym which is no longer open 24×7 due to safety concerns). I listened to a report about people struggling amidst the flood water in Ukraine. In short, a typical morning in rural Kentucky. Oh, I forgot to mention the gunfire, I could hear as I walked my dog at a local park. I hope it was squirrel hunters but in this area who knows?
MidJourney created this illustration of the paper’s authors celebrating the publication of their study about the illusion of immorality. The behavior is a manifestation of morality itself, and it is a testament to the importance of crystal clear graphs.
Statement 3 from the write up:
Participants in the foregoing studies believed that morality has declined, and they believed this in every decade and in every nation we studied….About all these things, they were almost certainly mistaken.
My take on the study includes these perceptions (yours hopefully will be more informed than mine):
In order to avoid problems, I will list some common and proper nouns or phrases and invite you think about these in terms of the glory word “morality”. Have fun with your mental gymnastics:
Wasn’t that fun? I did not have to mention social media, self harm, people between the ages of 10 and 16, and statements like “Senator, thank you for that question…”
I would not do well with a written test watched by attentive journal authors. By the way, isn’t perception reality?
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2023
June 7, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Perhaps to counter recent aspersions on its character, TikTok seems eager to transfer prestige from one of its popular forums to itself. Mashable reports, “TikTok Is Launching its Own Book Awards.” The BookTok community has grown so influential it apparently boosts book sales and inspires TV and movie producers. Writer Meera Navlakha reports:
“TikTok knows the power of this community, and is expanding on it. First, a TikTok Book Club was launched on the platform in July 2022; a partnership with Penguin Random House followed in September. Now, the app is officially launching the TikTok Book Awards: a first-of-its-kind celebration of the BookTok community, specifically in the UK and Ireland. The 2023 TikTok Book Awards will honour favourite authors, books, and creators across nine categories. These range ‘Creator of the Year’ to ‘Best BookTok Revival’ to ‘Best Book I Wish I Could Read Again For The First Time’. Those within the BookTok ecosystem, including creators and fans, will help curate the nominees, using the hashtag #TikTokBookAwards. The long-list will then be judged by experts, including author Candice Brathwaite, creators Coco and Ben, and Trâm-Anh Doan, the head of social media at Bloomsbury Publishing. Finally, the TikTok community within the UK and Ireland will vote on the short-list in July, through an in-app hub.”
What an efficient plan. This single, geographically limited initiative may not be enough to outweigh concerns about TikTok’s security. But if the platform can appropriate more of its communities’ deliberations, perhaps it can gain the prestige of a digital newspaper of record. All with nearly no effort on its part.
Cynthia Murrell, June 7, 2023
June 2, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
A colleague called my attention to the Fortune Magazine article boldly titled “Gen Z Teens Are So Unruly in Malls, Fed by Their TikTok Addition, That a Growing Number Are requiring Chaperones and Supervision.” A few items I noted in this headline:
I did notice several factoids and comments in the write up; to wit:
Interesting item one:
“On Friday and Saturdays, it’s just been a madhouse,” she said on a recent Friday night while shopping for Mother’s Day gifts with Jorden and her 4-month-old daughter.
A madhouse is, according to the Cambridge dictionary is “a place of great disorder and confusion.” I think of malls as places of no people. But Fortune does the great fact checking, according to the attestation of Peter V.
Interesting item two:
Even a Chik-fil-A franchise in southeast Pennsylvania caused a stir with its social media post earlier this year that announced its policy of banning kids under 16 without an adult chaperone, citing unruly behavior.
I thought Chik-fil-A was a saintly, reserved institution with restaurants emulating Medieval monasteries. No longer. No wonder so many cars line up for a chickwich.
Interesting item three:
Cohen [a mall expert] said the restrictions will help boost spending among adults who must now accompany kids but they will also likely reduce the number of trips by teens, so the overall financial impact is unclear.
What these snippets tell me is that there is precious little factual data in the write up. The headline leading “TikTok addiction” is not the guts of the write up. Maybe the idea that kids who can’t go to the mall will play online games? I think it is more likely that kids and those lost little 21 to 25 year olds will find other interesting things to do with their time.
But malls? Kids can prowl Snapchat and TikTok, but those 21 to 25 year olds? Drink or other chemical activities?
Hey, Fortune, let’s get addicted to the Peter V. baloney: “Fortune is meticulous about its thorough research, its fact checking, and its proofreading.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2023
May 25, 2023
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Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
The TikTok service is one that has kicked the Google in its sensitive bits. The “algorithm” befuddles both European and US “me too” innovators. The ability of short, crunchy videos has caused restaurant chefs to craft food for TikTok influencers who record meals. Chefs!
What other magical powers can a service like TikTok have? That’s a good question, and it is one that the Chinese academics have answered. Navigate to “Weak Ties Strengthen Anger Contagion in Social Media.” The main idea of the research is to validate a simple assertion: Can social media (think TikTok, for example) take a flame thrower to social ties? The answer is, “Sure can.” Will a social structure catch fire and collapse? “Sure can.”
A frail structure is set on fire by a stream of social media consumed by a teen working in his parents’ garden shed. MidJourney would not accept the query a person using a laptop setting his friends’ homes on fire. Thanks, Aunt MidJourney.
The write up states:
Increasing evidence suggests that, similar to face-to-face communications, human emotions also spread in online social media.
Okay, a post or TikTok video sparks emotion.
So what?
…we find that anger travels easily along weaker ties than joy, meaning that it can infiltrate different communities and break free of local traps because strangers share such content more often. Through a simple diffusion model, we reveal that weaker ties speed up anger by applying both propagation velocity and coverage metrics.
The authors note:
…we offer solid evidence that anger spreads faster and wider than joy in social media because it disseminates preferentially through weak ties. Our findings shed light on both personal anger management and in understanding collective behavior.
I wonder if any psychological operations professionals in China or another country with a desire to reduce the efficacy of the American democratic “experiment” will find the research interesting?
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2023
May 19, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I spotted Twitch’s AI-fueled ask_Jesus. You can take a look at this link. The idea is that smart software responds in a way a cherished figure would. If you watch the questions posed by registered Twitchers, you can wait a moment and the ai Jesus will answer the question. Rather than paraphrase or quote the smart software, I suggest you navigate to this Bezos bulldozer property and check out the “service.”
I mention the Amazon offering because I noted another smart religion robot write up called “India’s Religious AI Chatbots Are Speaking in the Voice of God and Condoning Violence.” The article touches upon several themes which I include in my 2023 lecture series about the shadow Web and misinformation from bad actors and wonky smart software.
This Rest of World article reports:
In January 2023, when ChatGPT was setting new growth records, Bengaluru-based software engineer Sukuru Sai Vineet launched GitaGPT. The chatbot, powered by GPT-3 technology, provides answers based on the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Hindu scripture. GitaGPT mimics the Hindu god Krishna’s tone — the search box reads, “What troubles you, my child?”
The trope is for the “user” to input a question and the smart software outputs a response. But there is not just Sukuru’s version. There are allegedly five GitaGPTs available “with more on the way.”
The article includes a factoid in a quote allegedly from a human AI researcher; to wit:
Religion is the single largest business in India.
I did not know this. I thought it was outsourced work. product. Live and learn.
Is there some risk with religious chatbots? The write up states:
Religious chatbots have the potential to be helpful, by demystifying books like the Bhagavad Gita and making religious texts more accessible, Bindra said. But they could also be used by a few to further their own political or social interests, he noted. And, as with all AI, these chatbots already display certain political biases. [The Bindra is Jaspreet Bindra, AI researcher and author of The Tech Whisperer]
I don’t want to speculate what the impact of a religious chatbot might be if the outputs were tweaked for political or monetary purposes.
I will leave that to you.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2023
May 10, 2023
I read “American Psychology Group Issues Recommendations for Kids’ Social Media Use”. The article reports that social media is possibly, just maybe, perhaps, sort of an issue for some, a few, a handful, a teenie tiny percentage of young people. I am not sure when “social media” began. Maybe it was something called Six Degrees or Live Journal. I definitely recall the wonky weirdness of flashing MySpace pages. I do know about Orkut which if one cares to check was a big hit among a certain segment of Brazilians. The exact year is irrelevant; social media has been kicking around for about a quarter century.
Now, I learn:
The report doesn’t denounce social media, instead asserting that online social networks are “not inherently beneficial or harmful to young people,” but should be used thoughtfully. The health advisory also does not address specific social platforms, instead tackling a broad set of concerns around kids’ online lives with commonsense advice and insights compiled from broader research.
What are the data about teen suicides? What about teen depression? What about falling test scores? What about trend oddities among impressionable young people? Those data are available and easy to spot. In June 2023, another Federal agency will provide information about yet another clever way to exploit young people on social media.
Now the APA is taking a stand? Well, not really a stand, more of a general statement about what I think is one of the most destructive online application spaces available to young and old today.
How about this statement?
The APA recommends a reasonable, age-appropriate degree of “adult monitoring” through parental controls at the device and app level and urges parents to model their own healthy relationships with social media.
How many young people grow up with one parent and minimal adult monitoring? Yeah, how many? Do parents or a parent know what to monitor? Does a parent know about social media apps? Does a parent know the names of social media apps?
Impressive, APA. Now I remember why I thought Psych 101 was a total, absolute, waste of my time when I was a 17 year old fresh person at a third rate college for losers like me. My classmates — also losers — struggle to suppress laughter during the professor’s lectures. Now I am giggling at this APA position.
Sorry. Your paper and recommendations are late. You get an F.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2023
May 3, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Even as he declares “Social Media Is Doomed to Die,” Verge reporter and Snapchat veteran Elis Hamburger seems to maintain a sliver of hope for the original social-media vision: to facilitate user-driven human connection. This shiny shard may be all that remains of the faith that led him to work at Snapchat. Hamburger writes:
“From its earliest days, Snap wanted to be a healthier, more ethical social media platform. A place where popularity wasn’t always king and where monetization would be through creative tools that supported users — not ads that burdened them.”
Alas, those good intentions paved a road leading the same direction as the competitions’. Apparently, the pull of add revenue becomes too strong even for companies with the best of intentions. Especially when users are uninterested in ever footing the bill themselves. The article continues:
“When a company submits to digital advertising, there’s no avoiding the tradeoffs that come with it. And users get put in the back seat. … More ads appear in your feed, forever. ‘It won’t happen to us,’ we said, and then it did. Today, the product evolution of social media apps has led to a point where I’m not sure you can even call them social anymore — at least not in the way we always knew it. They each seem to have spontaneously discovered that short form videos from strangers are simply more compelling than the posts and messages from friends that made up traditional social media. Call it the carcinization of social media, an inevitable outcome for feeds built only around engagement and popularity. So one day — it’s hard to say exactly when — a switch was flipped. Away from news, away from followers, away from real friends — toward the final answer to earning more time from users: highly addictive short form videos that magically appear to numb a chaotic, crowded brain.”
The piece asserts users also have themselves to blame, both by seeking greater and greater social validation and by embracing new, ad-boosting features that offer an endorphin boost. They could also express more willingness to pay for social media’s services, we suppose, and Hamburger imagines a scenario where they would do so. However, that would mean completely tearing down and rebuilding the social media landscape since existing platforms rest on the lucrative users-as-products model. Is it possible? There may be a shred of hope.
Cynthia Murrell, May 3, 2023
