the dream of expert systems is back
10.03.2026 14:50
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the dream of expert systems is back
R.I.P. the adjective "generative". It was fun to use in former times.
y para colmo, lo formulan como pregunta.
An incredible contribution by @loicriom.bsky.social and @taschn.bsky.social to our Forum on Tech Oligarchy.
🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
From crowing about big data and algorithmic governance to the “promises” of the blockchain and Bitcoin and more, the world of the digital is everywhere structured by these fictionalist equivocations over the meanings of central terms, equivocations that derive an enormous part of their power from the appearance that they refer to technological and so material and so metaphysical reality. Perhaps one way of cashing this out, and I offer it only as a very speculative summary of some of Mirowski’s work in this vein, is as a challenge to an unacknowledged Platonism in much of our talk about but also our work with the digital, an idealization that even as it claims to be all about the stuff of the world at the same time turns away from the world in a profound way. Mirowski’s work makes us do exactly the opposite, demanding we take seriously every aspect of the technologies our world actually does present to us, and no less the ways our words and concepts make up that world.
Golumbia on Mirowski
If you missed the news about Elsevier and Wiley (and doubtless the rest to follow) remaking themselves as AI companies with plans to profit from selling AI summaries of academic work back to the institutions that produced the original work:
bsky.app/profile/benp...
Frustratingly relatable. Please take note, Swedish funding agencies.
In case you ever wondered how edtech companies, academic publishers, and big AI corporations, as well as HE institutions, make money out of your academic work, here's our new paper starting to unpack the assetization of academic content
It's the economy, stupid. 🫠
😂
Both “could” and “cannot”:
“I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,” says Altman.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
analytic phil 🤝 "AI" ethics 🤝 "effective altruism" 🤝 technofinance
Exactly this bsky.app/profile/spav...
Lastly, it feels great to publish in Science as Culture, where Barbrook & Cameron’s seminal essay “The Californian Ideology” appeared! I hope my piece helps carry that critique forward into the era of tech oligarchy & algorithmic governance.
50 free copies here. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QNVIT...
Worth reading this take on forced diffusion of #genAI
⬇️ exactly this & where much of the investment is increasingly coming from, not public markets but private credit, pension and 🥁 insurance funds…
‘Can anything halt Latin America’s lurch to the right?’
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
""It’s hard to script a clearer emblem of what I’ve called education’s auto-cannibalism: universities consuming their own purpose while cheerfully marketing the tools of their undoing."
Really enjoyed the conversation for the @jcultecon.bsky.social podcast. We discussed the paper we wrote with @arturocastro.bsky.social on how crypto embeds and reproduces neoliberalism, and how it participates in and benefits from crisis.
Enjoy the podcast, and please be patient with my Spanglish!
I was invited to discuss some recent work in @jcultecon.bsky.social's new podcast hosted by @philiproscoe.bsky.social and @addiemcgowan.bsky.social.
Thankfully, the episode doesn't only feature my own ramblings, which are redeemed by the contributions of Karl Palmås and @koraycaliskan.bsky.social.
In case you missed it, a podcast to enhance the design of all your weekends with @koraycaliskan.bsky.social @ulissess.bsky.social Karl Palmas and of course @philiproscoe.bsky.social and @addiemcgowan.bsky.social
I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation
Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures".
Open panel submissions portal is open! ls!
Deadline: 2nd February 2026
www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...
The FT got is architecture critic Edwin Heathcote to write about data centres and it's wonderful. www.ft.com/content/7692...
Out with the old cut and paste slide decks, and in with the new approach of prompting a model that confirms the slide decks were correct all along www.ft.com/content/de78... via @FT
We’re kicking off 2026 with The Design episode! Cultural economies of design. Find out how design shapes the way businesses and platforms imagine the future. @addiemcgowan.bsky.social and me with @ulissess.bsky.social Karl Palmas KorayCaliskan @jcultecon.bsky.social
youtu.be/M57gwqdwsXA
Fascinating piece on the role of the Mexican military as an economic actor nacla.org/the-militari...
Starting in the late noughties, cultural theorist Mark Fisher observed how the contemporary social condition is marked by the loss of a future. (Fisher, 2013) Tormented by the loss of political dreams that failed to materialize, he described a cultural state of being “haunted” by memories of a time when one could hope for a better, alternative future. Citing social philosopher Franco Berardi, Fisher argued his generation had been witness to a “slow cancellation of the future”. More recently, sociologist and STS scholar Richard Tutton (2023) has pointed out that these accounts are presented by theorists concerned about alternative futures to neoliberalism. While valid in their own right, Tutton points out, they “offer little empirical evidence that such feelings are experienced by groups of people in their everyday lives”. (Tutton, 2023: 448) He thus calls for a more empirically-oriented studies of “futurelessness” – a term sourced from psychology, based on studies of young people who find that their personal future opportunities are foreclosed, implying that it is futile to plan for the future. Heeding this call, this panel invites contributions that provide further empirical substantiation of whether or not a sense of “lost futures” or “futurelessness” is indeed experienced in particular professional settings. For Fisher, the loss of the future can be traced in popular culture – not least pop music – which seems to have lost the ability to grasp the present, and produce work that consciously seeks to articulate alternative futures. In this vein, this panel invites empirically informed work that focuses on how such a loss of futures is – or isn’t – expressed within the design professions, such as design, architecture, planning, or engineering.
We are pleased to invite proposals to our 'lost futures in design professions' panel at the EASST2026 (@easst.bsky.social) 'More than now: Exploring resilient futures' conference in Krakow (8-11 September). The CfP is open until 28 February 2026.
easst.net/conference/e...
Better stay away! Now that's intergenerational care ;)
we know this is a stretch but any of you jce fluent people out there active on tiktok? or know any good acad-related accounts? think of it as an exercise in intergenerational care